Women Employment and Empowerment in The
Binding Vine
Jyoti
Kumari
Assistant Professor
Government Degree College, Lanj
Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, India
Abstract:
Employment in simpler terms is to have a
position of having a job which pays in return. The gainful employment has not
been accessible for women since ages because of cultural and historical
influences. Equal opportunities of employment for women are recent phenomenon
and a result of women’s long movements. But even in these modern times women
face a lot of disparities in their homes, society and workplaces. The primary
duty of any woman is to attend her household chores and look after the needs of
children and the elderly. Even if a woman is employed, she still has to perform
her duties at home and manage a balance between home and work. The traditional
Indian society is not of very liberal mindset regarding women’s employment and
independence but still things are getting better. In their jobs also, women are
treated as less competent even if they have the same qualifications and skills
as their male counterparts. She is not given any authoritative voice in her job.
Many studies demonstrate that there is a very little number of women who get
appointed at the authoritative positions of the companies. Women are constantly
raising their voice against this discrimination.
The
literature written in Indian subcontinent has tried to portray the employment
of women as an opposition and threat to Indian values and women’s morals. The
woman has been categorised in two categories as ‘an ideal woman’ and ‘an evil
woman’ in literature. In this paper, the researcher will be dealing with the
novel, The Binding Vine by
Shashi Deshpande and explore the themes of women’s employment. And how through
this employment, they not only raise their voice but also for the voiceless
women in the society. The character Urmila, a college lecturer helps the
victims Shakuntala also known as Shakutai in the novel and her daughter Kalpana
to get justice. The filmmaker, Priti also uses her profession to empower and to
give voice to the women who have been silenced by the patriarchy.
Keywords: Class, Employment, Empowerment, Stereotype
Introduction:
The novel, The
Binding Vine is a women centric novel by Shashi Deshpande. The novel mainly
focuses on women characters, their problems and resolutions to these problems
are also provided or at least been thought over by women. Through this paper,
the researcher will be looking at the theme of sisterhood and employment in
Indian society. And how employment and awareness enable women to raise a voice
and to create a space for sisterhood.
About the Author:
Shashi Deshpande, born in 1938 is a prominent Indian novelist and a
recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award. She was born in Karnataka and her
father was a Kannada dramatist and writer Adya Rangacharya. Deshpande has
degrees in Economics and Law. She has also studied journalism and been a
journalist for few months in the magazine ‘Onlooker’. Her first collection of
short stories got published in 1980. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award for
the novel That Long Silence in 1990 and the Padma Shri in 2009. Her
novel, Shadow Play was shortlisted for the Hindu Literary Prize in 2014.
She has written four children books, a number of short stories, nine novels and
an essay collection titled as “Writing from the Margin and other Essays”. As a
response and protest against Akademi’s inaction and silence on the murder of MM
Kalburgi she returned the Sahitya Akademi Award received by her earlier.
Thematic Analysis of the Novel:
The main character of
novel is Urmila who is a college professor. The novel begins with the loss of
Urmila’s daughter, Anu. She has been in great despair but she soon joins her
job because she is practices professionalism regarding her job. But the misery
of her lost daughter makes her connect deeply with rape victim mother daughter
duo, Shakutai and Kalpana. The novel has other women characters who are working
professionally or doing any jobs outside their homes to get wages and salary.
The novel revolves around how Urmila helps the mother of a rape victim, Kalpana
in order to get justice for her.
The novel has another
working woman character Vanaa, who is a medical social worker and is also best
friend of Urmila. It was in the hospital where Vanaa works, Urmila met Kalpana
and her family. Kalpana belongs to an economically weaker section of the
society, lives with her mother Shakutai and siblings. Kalpana works in a shop.
Shakutai, Kalpana’s mother was proud to say that her girl was smart enough to
get a job and she has also learnt to speak English. But she has mixed reactions
to her daughter’s personality and achievements. Being brought up in a
patriarchal society, Shakutai believes that its Kalpana’s fault in getting
herself raped. Because she attracted attention towards her by going against the
normative and restrictive dress code and behaviour. Her mother doesn’t want a
case to be filed in the name of rape because it will smear her as well as her
family’s name. She is more concerned about getting her daughters married.
This shows how a rape
victim is seen by the society. They always hold the victims responsible for
this heinous crime perpetuated against them. Even the police who are
responsible for keep a check and control the evils of society also observe
these patriarchal thoughts against women. They don’t act objectively in the pursuit
of justice. The police don’t want to file a case of rape but of a car accident.
It is because they also act in a biased manner and become oppressors of women.
They also think that it will be no good to file a case of rape because it will
only blemish family’s name. And partially because they feel that if she is a
working woman and goes out of her house to earn then she would be raped at some
point or the other. They say that it happens with working women.
Police officer says, “She
is unmarried, people are bound to talk, her name would be smeared. For all you
know she may be a professional, we see a lot of that” (Deshpande 88). It shows
that the professional women are more likely to be exposed to the violence and
the society also blames them because they dare to cross the so-called safe
threshold of their homes. They don’t show any sympathy or empathy for the
victim but put every blame on them. They don’t want to modify the patriarchal
system but the only remedy they can think of is to let the women be caged
inside their homes. But later as the things unfold in the novel, we find that
even her home is not safe for a woman.
Shakutai has been
abandoned by her husband and for their survival; she works as a bai or domestic
help. Her job is much more about her necessity. She has tried many odd jobs to
make their ends meet. She tells Urmila that she has even looked after a
paralytic old woman for a year and cleaned up her filth. She did all this so
she could give a better life to her children. She wanted her children to be
educated and respected by others. Even though she believes her daughter to be
responsible for her rape but she doesn’t leave her. She stays by her side and
visits hospital every day. She wants her daughter to live. When hospital
authorities, after four months decide to transfer her to a suburban hospital,
she leaves no stone unturned to keep Kalpana at the same hospital. There is a
shortage of beds in the ward and Kalpana needed only nursing which would have
been done in any other hospital. But Shakutai couldn’t visit her daughter
because of the kind of money it needed to travel the distant hospital. But
authorities don’t think about it. It shows how inhumane a so-called humane
profession could be.
Shakutaihas been very
certain about not revealing the incident of Kalpana’s rape to people but when
she sees no other way to protect Kalpana than printing her story in the
newspaper, she agrees to do it. She only asks Urmila if it will help Kalpana
then they should proceed further with this. This story created awareness and a
sense of solidarity among women. Shakutai tells Urmila that there is a morcha
going on in the support of Kalpana. The matter comes in the notice of
government and her case opens up and a proper investigation takes place. And it
later gets revealed that the husband of Shakutai’s sister, Prabhakar has raped
her.
The character of Priti
enters Urmila’s house in the novel when others were watching a movie. She was
planning to become a filmmaker. She has discussed about Mira’s story to be
shown in her movie. She wants to show a real world in her movies as she asks,
“But Urmi, don’t these movies make you angry? They are such total male
fantasies...” (Deshpande 37). To which Urmila answers “Well what do you expect?
They are made by men and so…” (Deshpande 37). It is always the male perspective
through which a woman character is represented.
Movies being an
ideological state apparatus confirm and strengthen these stereotypes further
against women in the minds of audience so it becomes very important to have a
female filmmaker to portray things from women’s perspective. As the movie which
is being watched in the novel represents every Bollywood movie because of the
same plot and same binaries like rich man/poor girl, simple man/ sophisticated
girl, city man/ village girl. Women are often portrayed as sex objects both for
hero and the villain. Hero becomes the hero only by saving heroine’s honour and
accepting her even after her spoiled situation and her purity is restored by
his forgiveness. And it indeed is very problematic, the idea of purity for
women is very crucial in every culture as a form of oppression against women.
These kinds of plots encourage patriarchal mindset in the society even more.
Women themselves imbibe the feeling of being a sex object and personality.
Priti wants to use Mira
as a symbol of all the voiceless women in patriarchal society. Mira was
Urmila’s mother-in-law who died while giving birth to her son at the age of
twenty-two. It was Mira’s diary and poems through which Urmila explores Mira’s
life and her personality. Mira’s husband was obsessed with Mira but there was
no love between them. Through her poetry the readers come to know about the
marital rape she was constantly a victim of. She was into an unhappy marriage
but her writing kept her alive.
She was an aspiring
poet. During her college days she met a renowned poet named Venu to whom she
has given her poems to read. But his response was “Why do you need to write
poetry? It is enough for a young woman like you to give birth to children. That
is your poetry. Leave the other poetry to us men” (Deshpande 127). Urmila tells
the readers that Venu’s poems are everywhere, on radio, T.V and even in films.
She says, “Something comes through when I think of Venu’s poems everywhere and
Mira’s voice silenced” (Deshpande 128). If women and their creative expression
had not been condemned, their issues also would have made a voice in the
mainstream. People could have been made to see things from their perspectives and
hence been informed.
Priti is concerned
about women and their issues. But because she has been away from India, she
does not have much understanding of Indian society, traditional and cultural
values. She wants to work like Westerns. As Urmila does not want the life and
oppression of her mother-in-law to be exposed through a movie but later Urmila
realizes that only because of the fear of disgrace, she cannot hide this story
or the facts of oppression to the world. As Urmila says, “then I saw Kalpna, I met
Shakutai, I read Mira’s diary, her poems. And I have begun to think yes, I have
managed, but I have been lucky, that’s all. While these women… you understand
what I’m saying, Vanna? They never had a chance. It’s not fair, it’s not fair
at all. And we cannot go on pushing it - what happened to them- under the
carpet forever because we are afraid of disgrace” (Deshpande 174). Later Priti
makes a movie on sati. An incident which according to her happened recently
made her to do a film on sati and it was getting all sorts of good remarks by
her critics and peers.
Women getting into
professions make a space for women’s issue to be on the forefront to bring
changes in the society. We need women authority or voice in every sphere so
that things can get fair representation or at least a representation to which
women can relate to. And men too can understand the perspective of women
because they too have seen or understood women through men’s perspective or
their prejudices for women, not directly from women. Women are always viewing
themselves in these movies’, media or literature through men’s perspective when
they think this representation is their real personality, they try to alter
themselves according to their gaze which is patriarchal. So, women poets, writers
or film makers can change or at least counter this stereotypical representation
of women.
In this novel, women
being in charge in their employments are not only reaching and raising the
voice of less privileged women but also trying to revive the silenced voice of
women against injustice. Women coming to fore in diverse arenas of society
represent and raise voice for others. For women their employment is not only
about their survival and money but it also transcends to the modification and
betterment of society.
Works Cited
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Lagging?” 25.03.2020. bwpeople.in, https://bwpeople.businessworld.in/article/working-women-lagging-/25-03-2020-187217/ Deshpande, Shashi. The Binding Vine.
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Kadam, Ravi. N. “Empowerment of Women in
India.” International Journal of Scientific and Research Publication, Vol.2,
No.6, 2012.
Sharma, Siddhartha. Shashi Deshpande’s
Novels: A Feminist Study. Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2005.
Sawant. Tukaram S. The Female World in Shashi
Deshpande’s Novels. Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, 2017.