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Mosaic of Cultural Confluence: Exploring the Power Dynamics in Pramodya Ananta Toer’s Coastal Narrative

 


Mosaic of Cultural Confluence: Exploring the Power Dynamics in Pramodya Ananta Toer’s Coastal Narrative

 

Sikha Mohan A.L.

Ph.D. Research Scholar

PG and Research Department of English,

All Saints’ College, University of Kerala,

Thiruvananthapuram, India

 

Abstract: The paper “Mosaic of Cultural Confluence: Exploring the Power Dynamics in Pramodya Ananta Toer’s Coastal Narrative” examines the hegemonic and cultural elements that results from power relations, which are always apparent yet ignored when it comes to social inequality. As the consequence of a bridal knot, the story follows the traumatized life of a young girl from a fishing village who is uprooted and adopted by an aristocratic family. There, the protagonist experiences isolation and hopelessness as a result of her separation from her culture and community. She is torn from both her old and new culture and her hopes for a bright future that appears to be separate from the madding crowd. The protagonist’s experience highlights the intersectionality of issues such as gender, alienation, displacement and hopelessness. These elements are often intertwined and can perpetuate social hierarchies without compulsion, instead are normalized through cultural dissemination. The paper attempts to delve deeper into the social structure that hems the society where the marginalized and less privileged groups are coaxed to comprehend the analogy that exists in the society.

 

Keywords: Displacement, Alienation, Hegemony, Power structure, Cultural dissemination

Culture is a shared set of values, beliefs and practices that structure a society, the people and their ways of life. It embraces everything from their basics like language, religion, cuisine, tradition, ethnicity and art. Moreover, these elements form the base of an individual’s identity and thereby interpret and comprehend the world around them. The culture of an individual or a collective is influenced by factors such as geographical location, economic conditions, social classes, ethnicity, and more leading to variations. The prominence and prestige of a person in a social hierarchy make him follow specific values and also impels others to follow and maintain the power dynamics. It involves the ways in which individuals or groups assert influence, control, and authority over each other. According to Pyo Merez, “it involves understanding the relationships between those who hold power and those who do not, and how power is used to influence others, make decisions, and control resources.”

Ideology, in its essence, encompasses the cultural beliefs that are specific to a particular society or sect. It advocates existing social hierarchy and power structure, which also influence class, beliefs, norms and even quotidian actions. Hegemony, as a closely interconnected concept pertains to the exercise of control over a group, encompassing not only coercive measures but also the processes of dissemination and normalization. Such a practice benefits the upper echelon to instill their whims and fancies over a subordinate mass. And these underprivileged or marginalized groups must accept these norms as natural and desirable.

The elite groups use institutions such as media, religion, entertainment, education to infuse the dispersal of power structure, thereby normalizing the status quo. By framing certain ideologies as ‘normal’, the blue-bloods reinforce their power in society.

Pramodya Ananta Toer’s breathtaking literary skills are used in portraying the life of a girl from the coast which sketches the real-life story of his grandmother. The author is known for exploring the social and political themes in Indonesian society and criticizes the inhumane practices of the upper-class noblemen. The prevailing hegemony in the society marginalizes the coastal community who eke out a living, as inferior. The protagonist of the novel is under double oppression as she is a girl from a marginalized community wedded off to ‘Bendoro’, an upper-class official. She becomes the epitome of resilience and survival as Toer says “But you are everyone, Grandma. You are all the people who have ever had to fight to make this life their own.”

Pramodya Ananta Toer’s The Girl from the Coast brings forth the challenges a nameless protagonist faces in a society where a particular status quo is maintained. The paper tries to reveal her struggle for survival in an estranged environment and how the elite group is treating her along with her community and culture of people. From being a pleasant girl of a coastal community, she is uprooted to the city through the wedding knot.  Though the protagonist is not given any name, towards the end of the novel, the author acknowledges it as a biography of his grandmother; who is wedded to a dagger, in the absence of the groom: “She was now the wife of a ‘keris’, a dagger standing in for a man she had never seen”. (4)

The protagonist is displaced from a comfortable childhood where she can breathe without the tension of being suppressed. From being a butterfly who flies in the field to a caged bird in Bendoro’s house, she endures a lot which has transformed her inner self into an entirely different person, whom she never dreamt of: In the village, she has been able to say whatever she wanted to say, to cry when she wanted to cry, and to scream with delight when she felt happy. But now, in this house, she had to be silent; there was no one willing to hear her voice. All she could do was whisper. And in this prayer room, even her movements had to follow a prescribed script. (31)

Jonathan Safran Foer, an American novelist often talks about the theme of displacement and human experience along with the ways people tussle with the deracination, be it physical, cultural or emotional. The protagonist in The Girl from the Coast undergoes a plethora of emotions when she is uprooted from her comfortable childhood environment. It is quite discernible that the girl has not tasted her springtime enough and is completely clueless about her upcoming life. At the same time, her parents find an alternate side to this marriage. They believe their daughter will be saved from the toils of being in a fisherman community sweating or running about collecting the sun racks of drying fish when it rains. The author portrays two sides of the same coin which ultimately ends in ennui. To substantiate the darker side of displacement, it is worthwhile to observe Jonath Safran Foer’s words in Everything is Illuminated:

What? She said once to herself, and then once aloud, what? She felt a total displacement, like a spinning globe brought to a sudden halt by the light touch of a finger. How did she end up here, like this? How could there have been so much- so many moments, so many people and things, so many razors and pillows, time pieces and subtle coffins- without her being aware? How did her life live itself without her? (n.p)

Displacement often leads to estrangement when a person is disconnected or alienated from anything on an emotional or relational level. In this novel, the protagonist is isolated from everything that she can claim as hers to an entirely new scenario that is novice to her. This disparity in the environment where she belonged and now belongs makes her estranged from her true self. She finds it difficult to fit into the new space where she is pushed into. Viewing from an outer circle, her status must be elated but as a person, however, she feels like being ensnared in a golden cage. As she is displaced from her home and planted in an entirely different place, her struggle to fit in makes her question her identity as a person. “She felt like a chick that had been removed from its flock, having to live alone, with no friends, among a group of strangers she would never get to know. She wasn’t allowed to have friends. All she could do was give orders or wait for them to be given to her.” (41). Since time immemorial, marginalized cultures have had to undergo suppression by the elite class. As a result, women in the lower strata of hierarchy endure double oppression owing to their gender. The protagonist is taught to obey her husband like a slave obeys her master: "A woman must be with her husband. That’s the way it’s been for me," the mother consoled. It doesn’t matter if you live in a rundown shack or whether or not you’re happy; you have to learn to please your man.” (61). This advice the girl receives from her mother makes her confused and blank for a while. Her gender is yet another cause for this wreckage. She has no power over herself as she is asked to serve her husband without any objection: “The girl turned quickly and dropped to the floor, first kissing his feet and then throwing her arms around his legs. When he lowered his body to sit on the edge of the bed, she raised his legs and pressed her face against the soles of his feet”. (97). Such gestures and thoughts are ideologically instilled into her mind as normal. Knowingly or unknowingly, she is willing to appease her master, who happens to be her husband, at any cost. This agonized girl is trained from the very beginning that she has to become something other than her true self and deny her exact feelings in order to appease others. A girl should be selfless to be tagged as the ‘epitome of womanhood’. To authenticate this, one can observe what Glennon Doyle, an American author and queer activist, contemplates:

We weren’t born distrusting and fearing ourselves. That was part of our taming. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. So we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition. Instead, we lock away our true selves. Women who are best at this disappearing act earn the highest praise. She is so selfless. Can you imagine? The epitome of womanhood is to lose oneself completely. That is the end goal of every patriarchal culture. Because a very effective way to control women is to convince them to control themselves. (n.p)

The protagonist’s desire to be accepted always slips through the cracks. Though the girl tries to convince herself that she is accepted by Bendoro, the reality lies antipodal:

She didn’t know what an ass was, but her servant told her it was one of those runt horses you could see daily in the city, transporting people and limestone cargo. Was she an ass? No. Bendoro would never have an ass for a wife. That wouldn’t seem strange at all. Over and over again she tried to convince herself that she was not a beast of burden, but her heart would not be lifted. (73)

Social disparity is visible throughout the novel, where Pramodya Ananta Toer tries to bring out the economic, class, and cultural differences. The girl, along with her entire community, is treated as inferior even by Mardinah, the servant girl at Bendoro’s house. The privilege of being Bendoro’s relative and coming from the town gives her the audacity to remind the protagonist of her inferior birth. The village is divided into poor peasants and affluent elites. The ones in higher strata often cooperate with the Dutch authorities so that they can reap the benefits, while the peasants always suffer under their oppression. The girl, along with other female characters, is subjected to the whims and fancies of the patriarchal power structure. Throughout the novel, the author tries to elucidate the social, cultural, and economic injustices that were prevalent during the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia. When Toer talks about the incident where the girl's relatives are shushed as they do not belong to the upper class, he sheds light on the denial of basic rights of common people: "The girl’s mother took a deep breath, then exhaled loudly. "Please, not so loud," the servant said again. "The only people whose voices are supposed to be heard in this house are those of important visitors who have come to see the Master, and the Bendoro himself, to be sure." (12). The noble class always needs to be respected. It is said that the deepest fear the elites hold is being disrespected by the commoners. However, the girl, being Bendoro’s consort, is scared of the respect she will receive from her villagers when she goes back. That acknowledgement shakes her identity and self, which makes her take an alternative path when she is pushed out of Bendoro’s house.

You are Bendoro’s consort. Your position and power rest in his authority. As you yourself must know, Young Mistress, the path to honor and nobility is not open to everyone. What the girl had once known in the village was that only the strong and powerful sailors were thought to be worthy of honor and respect. They sailed the seas and caught hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fish in their nets. And the fisherman who was shown the most respect was the one who brought the biggest fish home. He was the hero, but he would not sell his prize catch. He would divide the meat among the neighbors, leaving the backbone for himself, which he would place above the doorway of his home. (79)

The girl who is acquainted with such unity and sharing stands aghast in the environment where she feels left alone. Later, she finds it difficult to identify herself with her villagers, as they respect her calling herself Bendoro Putri, as well as the elite class, which often reminds her of her origin. This paves the way for her to stick to her true self, causing an identity crisis.

Identity crises are often marked by feelings of confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety. The protagonist wrestles with questions about her identity and freedom. When she is forced into a married life with a man she hardly knows, she has to go through unexpected paths and ways. This dilemma leads her to a crisis of existence, in which she toils and moils herself. Though she tries to make amends with her solitude, her disconnection from her own culture and community leads her to undergo an existential crisis. Losing her cultural identity makes her question ‘why’ this life. After marriage, she neither belongs to her village nor does she belong to the upper class. She has to navigate through a world where she barely possesses any aids to support her. "She kept hearing the words "Bendoro Putri—Mrs. Bendoro," the Bendoro’s wife. The words stung her. Here, in her own village, she was now someone else. All the eyes, fixed upon her but respectfully lowered whenever she looked their way, seemed to be mocking her. (166)

All the experiences she had in her village during her visit made her deviate from her path of destiny. Once, it was a place where she could breathe and live peacefully. Later, her comfortable shelter has turned to something bitter that she is afraid to taste. She finds herself detached, even from her parents, when they treat her with the utmost respect. The author says:

To her dismay, her fellow villagers continued to ogle and stare at her and to act toward her in a feigned and, for her, most annoying and disconnecting manner. It was her parents, however, that caused her the most distress, acting so distant, making her feel like a coral atoll, separated from the motherland, with only the lonely sea around her. (175)

Similarly, when she is brought to a different cultural environment from her childhood village, she experiences a notable cultural clash where she is torn between her indigenous Javanese culture and the imposed Dutch culture. Her identity becomes tied to her husband’s household, erasing her individuality. The change in roles and expectations vested in her challenges her sense of self and identity: "This was her life: no relaxed conversations, no trading of gossip, no smiles of friendship. She had a closer relationship with the furniture in the house than with the other people who lived there. (240). In the novel "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", Mohsin Hamid substantiates his view on the identity crisis as follows:

It is not always possible to restore one’s boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship; try as we might, we cannot reconstitute ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be. Something of us is new outside, and something of the outside is now with us.(n.p)

According to what Peter Handke focuses on in his novel Repetition, there is a comparison of the traumatic mind to the skin of a snake. "It symbolizes looking at the past and the lost parts of oneself in order to understand former selves by describing the discarded skins left on the path. (90).The elements of estrangement, displacement, disparity, and crises lead to anxiety and trauma in the protagonist. The distressing effects of trauma can be traced through cultural marginality. It deals with the experiences of individuals living within different cultures but integrated into neither of them. All these awkward situations that the girl and her community has to undergo happen as a result of the power structure that exists in society. Through assimilating power, the upper class gets hold of control and exerts power over the lower strata of society. The normalized rules and principles instilled on the commoners by the elites make them suffer in silence as their voices go unheard. Though they accept their destiny, their struggle for existence and questioning about the meaninglessness of life occur throughout. The remarkable resilience of the underprivileged goes unnoticed owing to the societal structure as they assimilate the rules and ways thrust upon them. To shed more light on this, one can observe what Joe Ambercrombie says in The Last Argument of Kings: "The lowly have small ambitions and are satisfied with small indulgences. They do not deserve fair treatment. They need only think that they do."

 

Works Cited

 

Abercrombie, Joe. Last Argument of Kings. Orbit, 2015.

Doyle, Glennon. Untamed. The Dial Press, 2020.

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Everything Is Illuminated. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013, p.132. Accessed 27 Aug. 2023.

Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

Merez, Pyo. “Power Dynamics: Understanding the Complexities of Interpersonal Relationships.” The Conducts of Life, 15 Apr. 2023, theconductsoflife.com/power-dynamics/. Accessed 27 Aug. 2023.

Nair, Neethu A. “Encapsulation of Traumatic Experiences: A Reading of Peter Handke’s ‘Repetition’.” Trauma Literature: Reflections and Ruminations, Authorspress, 2022, pp. 87-91.

Toer, Pramoedya Ananta. The Girl from the Coast. Translated by William Samuels, Hyperion, 2003.