Patriarchy in Bond: A Feminist Analysis of Selected Short
Stories by Ruskin Bond
Mousrisha Roy,
Ph. D. Research Scholar
Department of English
University of Kalyani
Kalyani, Nadia, West Bengal, India
Abstract:
In the context of a third-world country like India, the
deep-rooted sexist social prejudices engender many crimes, ranging from
domestic violence to brutal rapes. It is therefore necessary to examine in a
feminist light the popular stories written by Ruskin Bond, which exert
influence on a large number of people. Bond’s stories often strengthen
patriarchy by projecting the patriarchal beliefs as the “normal” codes of
society. Not only he completely invisibilizes the presence of non-binary
people, but also most of Bond’s women are happily confined in their socially
subjugated positions. Most characters are presented in strict conformity to the
socially prescribed gender roles, and sometimes objectifications of women take
place explicitly. While some stories deal with women empowerment, detailed
study of these stories in their relation to the other stories underlines their
complex relation with patriarchy.
Keywords: Gender; Patriarchy; Ruskin Bond; Sexism
Introduction: Sexism, or patriarchy, is one of the
strongest evil forces of the contemporary world. Particularly in the context of
a third-world country like India, the deep-rooted sexist social prejudices
engender many crimes, ranging from domestic violence to brutal rapes. It is
therefore necessary to examine popular literature – texts which, because of
their popularity, exert influence on a large number of people – in a feminist
light, analyzing how both hostile and benevolent sexism, as discussed by Susan
T. Fiske and Peter Glick, are consolidated in them through the functioning of
the patriarchal forces like gender discrimination, gender binary, gender-roles,
objectification of women and so on. With this view this paper attempts to
analyze selected short stories of one of the most popular Indian authors -
Ruskin Bond.
Objective: As Louis Althusser mentions, “every social
formation must reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as
it produces, and in order to be able to produce.” (86) Like all social constructs
sexism also, in order to function as a dominant force of society, needs to
fabricate the social structure in such a way that this structure will in turn
nourish sexism. Just as the apparatuses mentioned by Althusser like school,
church and family, literature also functions to inject into people the
"'rules' of good behaviour", including the sexist codes (89).
Children grow up reading and unconsciously learning sexism, and when they
become adults they become trained enough to strengthen the sexist society,
which by that time becomes normalized to them. Thus, literature often plays a
crucial role in further constructing and consolidating the dominance of
patriarchy. Ruskin Bond being one of the most widely-read writers of India, it
is important to examine where his works can be situated in terms of their
handling of gender issues.
Discussion: Ruskin Bond is neither overtly patriarchal
nor particularly feminist in his portrayal of life, the locus of Bond’s
interest consisting chiefly of the relationship between Nature and human, of
human emotions, and of human relationships. Yet, gender functions as an
important factor in his works. Sometimes he consciously stands against the
oppression of women. In “A Case for Inspector Lal”, for instance, he depicts a
police inspector sacrificing his own promotion in order to protect from legal
punishments the girl who, in her attempt to escape from sexual assaults,
committed a murder. Nevertheless, patriarchy functions very subtly in many of
Bond’s stories, having no less impact on the reader for its being clandestine.
Instead of explicitly glorifying
patriarchy, Bond’s stories often strengthen it by projecting the patriarchal
beliefs as the “normal” codes of society. All his human characters are either
men or women, either boys or girls – there is no other gender, implying that
gender is a binary and not a spectrum. Denying representation to all those
people who do not conform to the binary of gender, Bond’s stories convey the
message that no such people belong to the mainstream society. Thus the
invisibilization of the non-binary people results in their marginalization and
othering.
Most of Bond’s women are happily
confined in their domestic, socially subjugated positions. Leela, in “His
Neighbour's Wife”, is content with her motherhood and her own loyalty to her
husband, and has no objection to her husband's extra-marital affairs. In “The
Photograph”, the carefree, adventurous girl who loved riding buffaloes and
swimming in muddy pool with ruffianly boys, grows into an elderly woman the
only adventures of whose life are knitting and relishing childhood memories.
Thus these stories teach the young readers that women should be tolerant and
uncomplaining even when they are wronged, and should sacrifice their personal inclinations
to adapt the socially prescribed role of a quiet, homely woman. Therefore the
image of a caring, tolerant and self-neglecting woman gets projected as the
ideal Indian woman figure. It is this ideal figure which the male readers learn
to expect in the women around them, and to which the female readers aspire to.
Indeed, this aspiration is a significant step in the process of what Simone de
Beauvoir would call their becoming women.
The ideal female figure must be adept
in silently performing all the duties traditionally assigned on women, and
should be always be subservient to men. The boy’s comment in “The Photograph”
that for a boy it is an act of disgrace to learn knitting, suggests how
particular works are thought proper only for a particular gender in our
society, even when there is no rationality behind it. Conformity to the
socially ascribed gender roles dominates the universe created by Bond. In “Sita
and the River” Sita, the ten-year-old girl who without any help from anyone
manages to save herself from the severe flood for a long time, is no less
courageous then Vijay, who later takes her into his boat. Indeed, before the
flood comes, Sita’s acts were not determined by her gender; “she could do all
the things a boy could do, and sometimes she could do them better.” (178) She
is therefore equally adept in the “feminine” tasks like cooking, sewing,
cleaning the house or grinding spices, and in the “masculine” tasks like taking
a boat across the river, mending a net, or even catching a snake. Yet when she
is with Vijay, Sita’s character is portrayed in a much more “girly” manner,
highlighting the difference between them because of their genders. Although she
can row a boat, she only once mildly offers to help him in rowing, and he also
dismisses this suggestion at once. He provides her with not only food but also
knowledge; she unquestioningly depends on his opinions just as is expected in a
patriarchal structure - be it about their safety from wild animals like python,
or about the existence of her island after the flood. In her dream she even
romanticizes the situation by imagining him to be lord Krishna who has come to
rescue her. He guides her to Shahganj to search for her grandparents, implying
that she could not have done this alone, her act of resting her head on his
shoulder further reinforcing the patriarchal conception of the strong male
providing shelter to the weaker female. Vijay and Sita’s conformity to their
gender roles reaches the zenith when she, who has climbed trees innumerable times
since childhood and has even saved her life by taking shelter on a tree waits
under a tree for Vijay to climb the tree and pluck fruits for both of them.
Leela's second husband Arun's
description of Leela's physical appearance, in “His Neighbour’s Wife”, with the
mention of her “handsome” body free of “surplus flesh”, her oiled skin and red,
juicy lips borders on objectification, questioning whether the reason behind
Arun’s desire to marry Leela was sheer lust, more so because he claims that he
“did not fall in love” with her (48). Leela argues men should marry because
wives can reduce expenditure for food by cooking herself. Later Arun also says
that as his wife he would prefer a simple girl rather than someone with good
academic records. Thus the story not only suggests that cooking and other
houseworks are to be done only by women and not by men, but also convey the message that instead of
having higher education, women need to be “handsome” and adept in household
works in order to get married, marriage being young women’s ultimate goal in
the patriarchal consciousness/imagination. As instead of achieving this
patriarchal goal Aunt Mariam of “A Guardian Angel” employs her sexuality to
earn a living, she is denied the narrator’s legal custody, although she was the
only one to take care of the orphan child until the “financial issues became
clearer” (84). Being a woman in charge of her own sexuality, she is considered
“not a fit person to be a child’s guardian.”
(87) Though later
the grown-up narrator calls her his guardian angel because of the love she had
for him, the story makes no comment about the social injustice towards her.
In “Death of a Familiar” the
narrative itself sides with the male point of view. Sunil’s objectification of
women, his voyeuristic interest in watching female bodies in magazines as well
as in roads, the sexual undertone of his having “fun” with girls (91), his
habit of insulting and even molesting women and later his being pursued and
beaten by husbands and brothers of those girls, his being expelled from school
for sexual offences – everything are portrayed in a casual, playful manner,
implying that these offences are not bad or serious enough. Even though other
characters like the narrator’s landlady point out Sunil’s improper acts, the
narrator defends them, suggesting that these are small mistakes which Sunil
commits because of his lack of maturity. Towards the end of the story when
Maureen, the much older school teacher with whom Sunil falls in love, leaves
him to marry someone else, the narrative completely blames her, projecting
Sunil as a victim. The narrative claims that Sunil’s pure love for Maureen
“moved him inexorably towards manhood”, replacing his shallowness with
“unsuspected depths of feeling and passion” (96, 100). However, there are no
evidences in Sunil’s acts which can validate this claim. Even though he knows
that he needs to earn a living in order to marry Maureen and therefore decides
to work in his uncle’s paper factory, for a long time he does not actually take
any action, believing that as she really loves him she will wait for him
forever. Moreover, he becomes a regular drunkard. Seen from Maureen’s
perspective, it is quite obvious to believe that he is not serious enough about
the relationship. Yet her perspective is never explored in the male narrative,
instead projecting her as a villain who never really loved Sunil and for whom
Sunil’s life became devastated.
Conclusion: Ruskin Bond’s main purpose in his writing is
not to critically deal with any social issues, but to focus on the experiences
of the individuals. Usually these experiences do not have any wider
significance, and the only power these might exert is on the individual’s life
and consciousness – sometimes even completely changing him inwardly. These
individuals are common men and women of India, mostly presented through first
person narrative. While painting their lives Bond also has to paint as the
backdrop their society, i.e., the Indian society, which is essentially filled
with patriarchal notions. Therefore, in making his stories proper mirrors of
the society, Bond has to highlight the patriarchy and its
normative structure in a society where these experiences are daily patterns of
life. Through these short stories Bond actually portrays the function of
patriarchal society and the nature of the subjects deeply dependent on its
various pattern, but at the same time Bond also subtly projects the equality of
the female characters and thereby instills an alternative thought in the mind
of the readers. So, even though Bond’s stories often portray sexism, it is not
Bond but the already existing sexist society which is to blame for it.
Works Cited
Althusser,
Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” “Lenin and Philosophy”
and Other Essays, translated by B. Brewster, Monthly Review Press, 2001,
pp. 85-126.
Beauvoir,
Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila
Malovany-Chevallier, Vintage Books, 2011.
Bond, Ruskin.
"A Case for Inspector Lal." "The Night Train at Deoli"
and Other Stories, Penguin Books, 1988, pp. 116-121.
---. "A
Guardian Angel." "The Night Train at Deoli" and Other Stories,
Penguin Books, 1988, pp. 83-87.
---. “Death
of a Familiar.” "The Night Train at Deoli" and Other Stories,
Penguin Books, 1988, pp. 88-100.
---. “His
Neighbour’s Wife.” "The Night Train at Deoli" and Other Stories,
Penguin Books, 1988, pp. 48-51.
---. “Sita
and the River.” "The Night Train at Deoli" and Other Stories,
Penguin Books, 1988, pp. 177-209.
---. “The
Photograph.” "The Night Train at Deoli" and Other Stories,
Penguin Books, 1988, pp. 21-23.
Glick, Peter
and Susan T. Fiske. “The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating Hostile
and Benevolent Sexism.” Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 70, no. 3, pp. 491-512.