Emerging Feminist Perspectives in Kavita Daswani's For Matrimonial Purposes

Resume of Contributor Sreejata Paul holds an MPhil degree in English Studies from Christ University, Bangalore. Prior to this, she had completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Her area of specialization is Gender Studies and Popular Culture, with particular reference to Indian chick lit. Her other research interests include Queer Studies and Postcolonial Studies. She has presented papers at the National Queer Conference and the National Conference on Minorities organized by the Department of English at Christ University. She has been a participant and trainer at the Jadavpur University Debating Society. She spends her free time teaching slow learners on a voluntary basis. Abstract This paper proposes to show that the new model of the feminine in Kavita Daswani’s For Matrimonial Purposes implies her protagonist Anju’s advocacy of emerging feminist standpoints. This paper examines gender using the method of textual analysis through the lens of Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. In contemporary heroine-centred genres such as chick lit, gender can no longer be viewed as a monolithic, stable, and essentialized identity paradigm. For Anju, her gender identity is a complex construction which is performative rather than expressive. The subversive potential of her performances allows her to overcome the regulations imposed on her, and to gain agency within both the private and the public spheres. Emerging Feminist Perspectives in Kavita Daswani’s For Matrimonial Purposes By Sreejata Paul MPhil in English Studies Christ University Mailing Address: Greenwood Nook Flat No. 8AL2 369/2 Purbachal Kalitala Road Kolkata - 700078 Kavita Daswani’s fiction is generally classified as chick lit. Earlier feminist literature by Indian authors in the 1970s or 1980s (such as Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee) largely dealt with the protagonist’s search for self-expression. However, chick lit (that became a major genre of women’s writing only in the 1990s and 2000s) features protagonists who are young, urban, educated, career-driven women. Moreover, chick lit also exposes the emotional vacuum of these women who seem to have it all, being able to express themselves creatively and aesthetically through their jobs. It is therefore necessary to ascertain how the specific concerns of the protagonists of chick lit can shape the way forward for feminism within the twenty-first century Indian context. This paper, through a close reading of a novel by Daswani, examines the role played by feminism in Indian chick lit. This paper intends to: ÿ Explore what kinds of feminist standpoints are advocated by Daswani’s protagonist ÿ Examine whether such standpoints are informed by earlier Indian feminist movements ÿ Examine the relationship between such standpoints and western feminism ÿ Ascertain how such standpoints will shape feminism within the Indian context in the future This paper proposes to show that the new model of the feminine in the chick lit written by Kavita Daswani implies the advocacy of emerging feminist standpoints by her protagonist. The primary text that this paper engages with is Daswani’s first novel, For Matrimonial Purposes. Here the context of arranged marriage and the element of diaspora both have implications for the feminist standpoints articulated by Daswani’s protagonist Anju. Loosely defined, chick-lit is a heroine-centred genre in which the trials and tribulations of the female protagonists form the main focus. As Caroline J. Smith asserts in the introduction to her book Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit, the protagonists of chick lit often mirror both their authors, and their target demographic. Hence, it is safe to say that the content of chick lit is relatable to most readers. As a result, chick lit has enjoyed amazing commercial success right from its introduction as a literary genre in the mid-1990s with the publication of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary in 1996. Despite their immense popularity, chick lit novels have been heavily criticized by individual reviewers and literary critics alike. It is generally thought that chick lit cannot be a vehicle for serious concerns (including feminist concerns) for two reasons – because it is a constrained form of writing, and because it is very formulaic in terms of its structure (Geest and Doris 1). Stephanie Harzewski, in her book, Chick Lit and Postfeminism, says that chick lit is mainly affiliated with consumerism. Harzewski’s larger point is that chick lit cannot be considered a site of feminist concerns in any light whatsoever. She is of the opinion that it indicates a shift from earlier feminist agendas, like equal work or equal pay, to lifestyle concerns. It is undeniable that chick lit does raise issues of gender criticism at times by showcasing heroines who work in previously male-dominated careers like copywriting, and earn enough to support their extravagant lifestyles. However, the genre ultimately undermines such gender criticism. Moreover, chick lit exhibits an uneasy relationship with second-wave feminism, and thereby confirms its embrace of a postfeminist perspective. Critical writings on chick lit, like Harzewski’s book, are hard to come by. The only ones available focus exclusively on Anglo-American chick lit, and ignore the subgenres of colour chick lit. However, chick lit has started to diversify its content by now focusing on protagonists of various ages, races, nationalities, and also protagonists at different stages of their lives (exemplified by the appearance of bride lit, mommy lit, and hen lit). Indian chick lit, also known as Ladki lit, falls in this trajectory. Sunaina Kumar, writing for The Indian Express, says that Indian writers are infusing the genre of chick lit with “bindis, saris, and bangles” (Kumar 1). However, the concerns of the heroines in Indian chick lit are neither similar to, nor derivative of, the concerns of their white counterparts. This is well captured by Jyoti Puri in her 1997 study entitled “Reading Romance Novels in Postcolonial India”. This study deals primarily with how and why young, urban, Indian, middle-class, female readers derive pleasure from reading the Mills & Boon and Harlequin romances that had found their way to the shelves of Indian bookstores in the 1990s before Indian chick lit emerged as a marketable commodity in the publishing industry here. Puri also engages with the issue of how such Mills & Boon and Harlequin romances ultimately fail to address the concerns that directly affect these readers’ lives within the socio-economic setting of India. With arranged marriage sometimes replacing romance, and with advice from aunts and astrologers replacing self-help books and women’s advice manuals, it can be argued that the subgenre of Indian chick lit rewrites the dominant discourses of chick lit as a whole. However, the most integral part of Indian chick lit is the East-West cultural conflict. Many of these novels are written by Indian women settled abroad. Daswani is one such author, who lived in Hong Kong for three decades before shifting to Los Angeles after marriage. Daswani says that women like her have the advantage of a dual perspective – that of the freedoms of the West and the constraints of the East – the conflict between the two providing incredibly funny and poignant stories, as she says in an interview with Sunaina Kumar that Kumar cites in her article for the Indian Express (Kumar 3). However, Indian chick lit is as heavily criticized as Anglo-American chick lit, though not necessarily for the same reasons. Roshan G. Shahani and Shoba V. Ghosh say that Indian chick lit operates in a decontextualized and ahistoric present, where the ease with which its protagonists reconcile the conflicts between tradition and modernity diffuses actual feminist concerns that women have had to deal with collectively in Indian society (Shahani and Ghosh 3814). However, this paper intends to show how Daswani is able to capture the climate of the 1990s and 2000s, when American television series are being aired and watched by the urban Indian youth, and when a more equal footing is desired in marriage by the same section of the population, not necessarily as an effect of the former, but certainly happening at the same time as the former. Daswani’s novels have been criticized all the same. In a review of For Matrimonial Purposes for Sawnet.org, Reeta Sinha says that though some of the incidents in the book will resonate with Indian readers, one is generally left asking whether Daswani has had her head buried under sand for the last ten years, for the concerns that she has outlined seem both dated, and sadly inconsequential, for contemporary readers. Reviews like this, which make comments but do not justify those comments, are easy to come by. However, there is only one essay available that examines Daswani’s fiction critically. In reading Daswani’s For Matrimonial Purposes and The Village Bride of Beverly Hills, Butler and Desai see these novels as a site for the construction of a transnational, racialized, feminine subject embedded within neoliberalism, heteronormativity, and racism. There are no essays that consider Daswani’s fiction solely and specifically through the lens of feminism. In order to do so, it is necessary to examine the roles played by diaspora and arranged marriage in Daswani’s novel. Ancient marriage rituals, as discussed by P. Mukherjee in his book Hindu Women, reveal why arranged marriage is oppressive to a greater degree than a marriage which takes place by intention of the bride and groom themselves. Mukherjee says that were eight kinds of marriage in total. Four were considered righteous or ‘dharma’ because these were arranged by the fathers of the bride and the groom, and paid for by the bride’s family. In this case, the bride’s family received a negotiated ‘bride-price’, but her personal wealth or ‘stridhana’, in the form of a material bridal gift given to her by her parents at the time of marriage, was inherited by the groom’s family. These four righteous forms of marriage, which were beneficial to the male line, ultimately evolved into what we now call ‘arranged marriages’. On the other hand, the remaining four forms of were considered non-righteous or ‘adharma’. These forms of marriage went on without any involvement of the kin on either the bride’s side or the groom’s side. Moreover, they were “female-emphasized” because the bride kept her stridhana, her family did not bear the economic burden of the wedding ceremony, and it was she (not her parents) who received the ‘bride-price’. These evolved into what we now call ‘love marriages’. As a result, a woman in a non-righteous form of marriage was devalued because she was held responsible for draining the groom’s family of economic resources, whereas a woman in a righteous form of marriage did not have any economic status at all (Chawla 5). Things have, of course, changed since then. However, Indian feminism has always focused strongly on issues related to marriage. For example, in the colonial period, Indian feminism focused on the abolition of sati, fixing of the age of consent, and the sanctioning of widow remarriage. Again in 1979, campaigns against dowry murders started in Delhi. Madhu Kishwar says that while western feminism has always depended on the State as the crucial agency that will ensure the protection of their individual rights, Indian women have asserted their rights in a way that does not estrange them from their families, their kinship groups, or their communities (Kishwar 8). Mary E. John critiques Kishwar’s argument by saying that feminists should, with sufficient reason, look sceptically at such notions of community for they amount to a regression into the patriarchal equation of women with the private familial sphere, not against a colonial power as during the nineteenth century, but in the name of preserving our culture (John 6). Kumkum Sangari reaches a synthesis of these two opposing viewpoints when she says that in India, “notions of femaleness, self or identity” are inseparable from forms of collectivity such as family, class, and religion, so much so that they cannot be framed in terms of “a single unified axis.” She believes that a concept of “multiple identities” should emerge “through several criss-crossing ideologies” rather than a single one, and that these identities should exist in close relation to each other, and not as “atomised entities” (Sangari 871). This kind of multi-layered understanding of gender identity is well captured by Daswani. This paper shall examine gender using the method of textual analysis through the lens of Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. Anatomy has been destiny for women for the longest time. Notions of women being the weaker sex/gender have been used to make women ineligible for equal opportunities as men, with regard to education, career, sexual and financial independence. However, in such contemporary heroine-centred genres as chick lit, gender can no longer be viewed as a monolithic, stable, and essentialized identity paradigm. Daswani’s protagonist, for instance, is not confined only to the space of the home. She is able to migrate freely to foreign shores. Her gender identity is a complex construction which is performative rather than expressive. For Matrimonial Purposes, published in 2003, is Daswani’s first novel. It is the story of Anju, who had embarked on the ‘Great Official Husband Hunt’ at the age of 17. At 34, she is still single and has been living in New York for the past 7 years. Anju has been to every seer and saint, chanted every mantra and followed every fast recommended to her, and yet she has remained unmarried. She has followed her family’s every dictate and met several prospective grooms, but she has always found some reason or the other to reject them. Anju has grappled with the performances expected of her and indulged in some of her own making. This paper deals with the revision of gender norms. Gender is thought to be an attribute possessed by all humans that must then be externalized through their behaviour. However, for Butler, gender is not expressive but performative. She says that there is no gender identity “behind the expressions of gender”; rather this identity is constructed artificially through the ‘expressions’ that are said to result from it (Gender Trouble 25). A gendered body is nothing but a collection of ‘doings’. Such doings have been performed for centuries before one’s time, and will be performed for centuries after one’s time as well. This historical aspect of the performance of gender means that all current and future possibilities are conditioned and limited by it. That is to say, the performance of gender is also an iteration of previous doings that then become established as gender norms. Butler says that the imposition of “normative phantasms” of gender is a violence that is committed daily (“Against proper objects”, 1). She also calls it a “regulatory fiction” elsewhere (Gender Trouble 24). However, gender is an act that can be done differently, undone, or done away with entirely. We need to ask what effect this kind of revision of gender norms might have. After centuries of patriarchal control, no pure or pre-patriarchal model of the feminine subject can be fully recovered. Hence, what we reach as we dismantle gender norms through performance is a new model of the feminine. And this new kind of identity has implications for the practice of feminism in the academia, in activism, and in the lived realities of women as well. Before we are able to articulate what model of the feminine is created through Anju’s subversive performances in For Matrimonial Purposes, it is necessary to examine how gender norms operate to create the stereotypes she is expected to conform to. At the root of such regulatory gender norms lies the unequal status accorded to men and women in Indian society (whether native or diasporic). Daswani shows evidence of the unequal treatment of men and women through an unusual medium – that of the photograph intended for matrimonial purposes. When a man sends his photograph to be seen by prospective brides, there is no need for embellishment of any sort. So the tailor from Chicago poses with a measuring tape within his own work space to show that he is a successful businessman and he lives in a more developed nation than India and therefore, he deserves a tall-fair-slim (the holy trinity when it comes to desirable attributes in a prospective bride) girl from a financially well-off family as his wife. On the other hand, when Anju is supposed to send her picture to a banker working in Spain, she must put a lot of thought into it. She knows she must rely on some “savvy marketing” when it comes to her photograph (For Matrimonial Purposes 43). Anju chooses a photograph of herself on a sunny afternoon in Central Park. She therefore downplays her commitment to her career, and shows the relaxed side of her that bears evidence to the facts that she is well adjusted to an overseas setting and is cheerful by nature. All this ultimately points at how Anju is likely to be able to adjust within the structural setting of her in-laws’ household after marriage and will not attempt to overturn the status quo in that setting. Such patriarchal attitudes are the very basis upon which gender norms are built up. Discourse creates subject positions for the self to occupy. Hence, it follows that the discourse of gender also creates ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ subjects. However, in the construction of feminine subjects through representation, the discourse of gender also governs how such subjects can and should behave within a social setting that is largely patriarchal. As a rule, parents of girl children start training their wards in all the desirable qualities that a groom might want in his bride from a very young age. Anju is no exception. As a little girl, Anju is taught to remain quiet and polite at all times, and never to speak unless spoken to. Anju is a model student in this respect. That is why when her report cards from school always come back with comments saying she is too shy and introverted, and that she needs to interact more, Anju is confused. This disjuncture between what Anju is taught at home and what is expected of her at school captures well the transitional stage between tradition and modernity that India is supposed to be caught in. Since the only form of ‘development’ considered acceptable by a postcolonial nation such as India is the western model of development, it is the western theories of education that are prevalent in schools. Many of these theories (such as the Social Development Theory of Lev Vygotsky) stress the importance of social interaction as a method of knowledge acquisition. Hence, students are expected to engage actively in discussions with teachers and peers in the space of the classroom in order to facilitate the process of learning. However, such expectations are at odds with familial indoctrination. It is not just the social behaviour of women that gender norms seek to control. Even women’s appearance is judged on the basis of a stereotypical representation of the ‘ideal’ woman, which is built up on the basis of gender norms. This stereotypical ‘ideal’ woman must be tall, slim and above all, fair. Anju is dark-skinned and that is one of the reasons that are believed to have contributed to her repeated rejections from prospective grooms. Towards the beginning of the novel, and in Anju’s girlhood, homemade remedies (such as chickpea flour mixed with lime juice) are recommended to her by her aunt to lighten the shade of her skin. These methods seem to be in complete contrast to the American consumerist beauty regime with its prescriptions of manicures and oxygen facials that Anju herself opts for when she is in New York. It is as if India exists in a vacuum; in a still- traditional past that is untouched by consumerist fancies and self-improvement techniques. However, that is not the case, as Daswani shows later. Every time she is back home, Anju is asked to use a fairness cream known as “Promise of Fairness”. It is no matter that the above mentioned cream has been scientifically proven to contain more mercury than the permissible limit; women all over India are besotted with the prospect of having the same skin colour as the ‘goras’ they see on television shows such as “The Bold and the Beautiful”, the rights to screen which are bought by Indian networks for astronomical prices and which have subsequently begun to be screened for Indian television viewers in the 1990s. India may have progressed from homemade beauty solutions to industrially manufactured ones, but our perceptions of beauty are still governed by what is valued in the west. The question then arises, how can one shape one’s resistance to such a patriarchal and inflexible setting? Resistance, after all, takes different forms in different cultures. Moreover, resistance should be shaped according to the specific cultural setting one resides in. In an Indian setting, where arranged marriage is the norm, opting for love marriage may be construed as resistance, but that is not so in a western setting. On the other hand, where women’s marriage is concerned, western forms of resistance include opting for divorce and refusing to get married. The possibility of the first is almost absent in the Indian setting. Anju acknowledges this and moreover, she represents it in a positive light to her American boyfriend Jeff by saying that a couple in an arranged marriage are much less likely to get divorced than a couple in a love marriage. What she fails to consider is the kind of shaming an Indian woman goes through following divorce, whereas the western attitude to divorce is more open. It is because of victim shaming that women refuse to get divorced within the Indian context. The possibility of non-marriage does exist in an Indian setting as well, but the question of agency in making such a decision becomes problematic. Within the Indian marriage market, younger women are able to exercise more choice when it comes to choosing their grooms than older women do. As a woman grows older, her ability to exercise this kind of choice becomes limited. Hence, if she opts for non-marriage at an advanced age, it is thought that she took such a decision because of a lack of options. That this decision could have been taken independent of such circumstances is unimaginable. Familial constraints, such as the inability of younger siblings to marry unless the oldest one does so, also limits women’s agency regarding the choice of non-marriage. Because of this kind of alteration in the meaning of social behaviour as per setting, it is important to foreground the question of the value of women’s actions in their distinct cultural settings. Anju feels guilty that she spends too much money on high-heeled shoes. However, in a western cultural setting, that guilt would seem both misplaced and unnecessary. In the rhetoric of western feminism, Anju’s spending habits are an evidence of her freedom of choice when it comes to the disposition of the income she has earned through her own capabilities and skill set. It is, in fact, a glorification of the equal opportunities that feminism has made possible for women like her. However, it is also couched in the rightist rhetoric of capitalism. In contrast to this, in a country like India where poverty is rampant, spending on shoes is seen to be an overindulgent practice. Within this socio-economic framework, Anju’s guilt seems justified. The rhetoric of rights, that is such an essential component of western feminism, is completely missing from Anju’s narrative. As a grown woman, Anju has every right to leave home and settle down in a foreign country. In fact, if Anju were born into an American family, then her exercising of that right would have gained her parental approval. However, since she is born into an Indian family, it is just the opposite. Her ‘right’ to migrate freely between foreign spaces is not a given. Moreover, it is construed to be proof of a rebellious and disrespectful attitude. Not only does Anju refuse to use the rhetoric of western feminism, she also feels a disjuncture with any person who advocates western feminism too strongly. For example, she feels a discomfort bordering on irritation when she goes for a counselling session with the most famous therapist in New York, Lorraine Vinas. Vinas is almost the very embodiment of liberal western feminism in that she is self-centred and her entire reading of Anju’s mental state refers not once to her diasporic status, but only to her inability to maintain her individualism. Vinas has a bawdy crystal statue of her naked self at one corner of her office, and she tells Anju that Anju has problems with asserting herself solely on the basis of an experiment in which she pulls Anju’s finger and Anju is unable to say “No” to her very forcefully. In refusing to accept Vinas’s assessment of her personality, Anju reveals how focusing on the individual is a limited political strategy in a non-western setting where the family plays such an important role in shaping women’s personality. Anju knows that ignoring her family will not only make her unhappy, but it will not provide her the space to express her gratitude for their presence in her life. Without acknowledging the contribution of her family in shaping who she is as a person (even when certain aspects of her personality would make it seem that she is rebellious and does not heed the wishes of her parents), Anju cannot articulate how she will function for the rest of her life. Even though the rhetoric of rights is missing from Anju’s narrative, the rhetoric of choice is not. However, the ‘choice’ that Anju speaks of is not one that western feminism has made possible for her, but one that Indian feminism has. Where previously brides were not even allowed to see their grooms before marriage, now brides not only have the right to meet several prospective grooms and interact with them before the engagement, they also have the right to veto any man they may find unsuitable for themselves. This right to veto is a hard- earned achievement of the campaigns against under-age marriage, widow remarriage and dowry deaths that have all formed such a central focus in Indian feminist activism. Though she doesn’t say it in so many words, Anju does not believe that the right to veto ought to be given up willingly. With every man she rejects, a different aspect of Anju’s emerging feminist consciousness is revealed. Anju first breaks off her relationship with Jeff because they do not share the same cultural perceptions. This may seem to be a rather frivolous reason for rejecting a man. However, Anju is aware that the difference in cultural background may make it difficult to sustain a long-term relationship. Within the melting pot of America, the markers of all racial and cultural differences with respect to minorities must be melted away. Minorities must in fact conform to the dominant white, upper class, heterosexual version of culture that the American State endorses. Anju’s relationship with a white man may then require her to relinquish all that makes her Indian. Despite her confrontation with the supposedly privileged space of American society, she is unwilling to do so. Next, Anju rejects Raju because he is determined to continue his relationship with his English girlfriend Lucy even after marrying a suitable Indian girl. Raju knows that his parents will not accept an English daughter-in-law and so he has not even tried to introduce them to Lucy. Instead he is willing to marry an Indian girl whom his parents approve of so that it does not seem that he is disrespectful of their wishes. Raju is worried about upsetting or disrespecting his parents, but not about disrespecting his wife or his girlfriend. Anju is clear that she will not marry a man who does not respect the woman/women in his life. Anju also rejects a man named Kumar whom she meets on the Internet because Kumar is outraged by the fact that she does not live with her parents. Anju is proud of the life that she has single-handedly built for herself in the United States. She will not marry a man who views her through the politics of ownership and control that dictates that a girl must live within the visual perimeter of her parents until the day she gets married and that she must only allow one man’s gaze to devour her for the rest of her life. Finally, Anju rejects Puran for his unappealing dress sense. Dress has always been an indicator of geographical location, social class, economic position, status etc. In that sense, judging by dress is nothing new; it is not a result of the so-called superficial lifestyle that Anju has in New York. What Puran is wearing clearly identifies his geographical location in Africa, his mundane profession as a daily provisions store manager, and his identity as someone who deliberately steers clear of the ‘natives’ in Ghana. Anju is looking for a groom who indulges in the same kind of lifestyle as hers, and who is also well adapted to his place of residence (preferably somewhere in the United States, by all accounts). Dress is therefore a pretty accurate way to judge a man on the criteria that she is looking for in her groom. What we need to consider is what makes Anju eligible to exercise such choice of prospective grooms. She is from an urban, upper class, upper caste background. Women living in the rural interiors of India, or belonging to a lower class and caste, certainly do not have the same degree of freedom regarding their marriages. Where rural women are concerned, not only their families but local administrative bodies such as khaps and panchayats also exercise significant control over their marriages. Moreover, women of lower classes and castes cannot hope for any betterment of their status and finances through marriage in most cases. Anju may not be aware of how lucky she is, but any perceptive reader is likely to be. Anju’s family also has a role to play in her choice of prospective groom. The choices that she is presented with have to be approved by her mother. However, her mother’s criteria do not match Anju’s. Living as she does in New York (interestingly the site of the Stonewall Riots, the very first demonstration in favour of gay rights), Anju is aware of homosexuality as an attribute in human beings that cannot be changed. Her mother’s lack of awareness in this respect makes it okay for Anju to marry a gay man. The older woman lives in a society that has been, since the coming of the British and the imposition of their social mores and laws through the Indian Penal Code, extremely conservative regarding sexuality. That is why she believes that everyone changes after marriage, even to the ridiculous extent of changing one’s sexual orientation. In a way, Anju’s mother believes that identity is neither essentialized nor stable. However, this belief of hers is ill-founded and unacceptable for Anju. Anju’s mother has lived through the 1970s and 1980s, when Indian feminist activism was focused on campaigns against domestic violence and dowry deaths. That is why she does not believe that there is any merit in remaining in a marriage with a husband who beats his wife. That a woman might leave her husband because they are incompatible is unimaginable to Anju’s mother. That this is perfectly understandable for Anju is a testament to the fact that she has been exposed to the legacies of other feminisms. Believing that it is wrong to completely subordinate one’s pre-marital life according to the wishes of one’s husband (even when those wishes are not overtly expressed or forced on the woman) is a legacy of second wave feminism, of consciousness-raising, even of chick lit that is said to have evolved out of consciousness-raising novels such as Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying. Anju has been exposed to such a legacy because of her time in New York, and also because of the American television shows she had been watching in India itself. When Anju finally gets married, she wears the saree her mother had worn for her own wedding. This shows that she respects the past even as she’s one step away from what promises to be a better future. 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