Manju Kapur's A Married Woman and the Politics of Neo-feminism

Manju Kapur, author of the acclaimed Home and Difficult Daughters takes on socially-critical and woman-oriented themes in her latest book, A Married Woman. On its surface, the book is a chronicle of the socialist generation of Indians post-independence, dealing with self-imposed limitations, socio-economic privations, and a yearning for much more. If one looks past the middle-class values and minor rebellions, though, there is a certain cosmology, to borrow Ergo's term, being expressed through the character settings.

Before we go into that though, it might be helpful to establish a few definitions, part of a thought process that I have been evolving slowly and seems to fit multiple contemporary social movements. We are all familiar with the great -isms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from communism to liberalism to conservatism to feminism. Each has, in it's own way caused significant social change, and each has seemed right to True Believers and dangerously flawed to Doubting Thomases. In their success, though, many of these movements had the seeds of their downfall. By being inclusive, but not sufficiently enough to include minority interests or disbelievers, they fractured society into multiple camps, each believing the other to be wrong.

The final decades of the twentieth century saw the rubbishing of many of these social constructs, with the fall of communism, the Clinton years that discarded old conservatism like a frayed glove, and the rising independence of urban women from the shackles of feminist rhetoric. That last statement is intentionally hyperbolic to illustrate the rancor with which non-believers attack True Believers.

More worryingly for society, the old war-horses have adopted a different strategy in their battle for global domination of human thought, an age-old approach that had seen success in the past. Much like the Church responded to threats to it's spiritual and temporal dominance by an aggressive take-no-prisoners strategy that saw the deaths of millions in medieval Europe, the -isms adopted a 'with-us-or-against-us' mindset. Neo-conservatives are perhaps the more visible contemporary application of this formulation, but the faith of neo-liberals in the healing power of market economies, the violent rhetoric and actions of neo-classical Islamists (neo-terrorists?), are following a similar model.

Thus we are faced with the prospect of a global fight to the finish between ideologies that each have millions of adherents, and equally, millions of critics. Each ideology offers much to its believers and eternal damnation to those out in the cold. Neo-liberalism, for example, with its unstinted faith in free markets, trade, and limited government intervention believes that a rising tide lifts all boats, yet expects a continual ceaseless improvement in productivity, profits, and social contribution, even if not everyone starts at the same level, as is the case, after years of colonial depredation and continental neglect.

Coming to neo-feminism and the book at hand, a committed liberal secular humanist will doubtless applaud the significant strides made in enabling women to participate in society in equal terms with men - something that should not have been needed to struggle for, but, much like colonialism, the lack of access of women to opportunity, and in many cases, the literal silencing of women's voices has meant the human race has lost out in the long run. At the same time, the radicalization of the movement, criticized by Betty Friedan et al, has over-extended the gains and introduced a counter-response that is impacting the benefits accrued.
The expectation that most neo- movements have on their defined constituents is that they must first acknowledge the One True Ideology, whichever it might be, and all the pre-conceived notions of its identity, even if they are out-dated and irrelevant. Further, the adherent must believe that the current state of society is deficient and change is needed, which can only be provided by the ideology in question.

To illustrate, free market adherents must acknowledge that all other economic models are flawed, and neo-Islamists must embrace the true Jihad, even if they would prefer the inner struggle. In the neo-feminist model, it seems that the adherents expect the acknowledgement of oppression and the inability of the individual to effect change to her circumstances, given the forces against her, from family to society to the weight of expectations. Only then can she rebel against this framework and enter into an enlightened independent state, even if it means she loses whatever was good and valuable in the existing framework.

In Difficult Daughters, Astha has reached a state of ennui with her comfortable middle-class existence and yearns for more than the quotidian woman's role as helpmeet, sexual object, and poop cleaner. The different priorities of her husband and social pressures, however, mean that she has never acted on her inner desires and aspirations, or even acknowledged them to herself. Her frustration with the way things are, enables her to overlook, in the author's manufactured cosmology, the better conditions she lives in, when compared to her parents, other middle-class Indians of the eighties and many women who can barely speak a word or suffer atrocities too horrific to mention. Astha has little to complain about, and yet, she operates as if it is society's greatest crime to limit an individual's passions merely because she is a woman.

Her convictions are put to the test when she finds not one, but two outlets for her passions. Following the death of a street theatre activist in a communal riot in the troubled early nineties, when that other neo-ism, neo-Hinduism was on the rise, Astha connects with a social group. She makes a few paintings to be sold in an exhibition sponsored by the Manch, and begins to express her creativity through painting, filling her self-imposed emptiness with art. She also encounters a younger woman, the widow of the activist, who has an arguably more barren existence. The two connect at multiple levels, and are drawn to each other. The younger seduces the older, and after a while, it is, to use Al Stewart's lines, "just plucking/The fruits of the bed was enough/It grew to be less like fucking/And more like making love"

  Astha is enlivened by their romance, to the point that she begins to fantasize of an independent, unfettered existence, together with Peepalika. She steals time away to be with her lover, until her husband begins to suspect, not quite the truth, but at the very least, that his wife could have the unthinkable - an independent life. Things appear to be going swimmingly, but the generational gap, as it were, between Astha and Peepalika, makes the younger woman realize the implausibility of any lasting, permanent co-existence. She jumps at a chance to go abroad for a Ph.D. Astha, presented finally with the fork in the road that she had wished for all her life - independence versus 'slave labour' - balks. She returns into the fold, unable to take the leap.

One will not attempt to judge her choices, or even her actions. Let us consider instead the million other women, and indeed families, where there is a natural and easy co-existence and inter-dependence, and yet unfettered freedom, independent thought, and space enough to live two lives while still building something together. There is a need for the individual to recognize his or her own role in a relationship, vis-a-vis the contribution of the other.

There is another danger of the enforced rebellion. Many people are content not to 'expand their horizons'. They are not looking for independence at the cost of losing a certain degree of contentment in the existing social structure. They are happy to be sheep, slaves, collaborators, or whichever epithet the True Believer might apply to them. This contentment comes from the innate desire for security. The choice is theirs, and yet, similar arguments were used in older movements to dissuade people from joining emancipation movements, free markets, or suffragists. The difference is that most of the big battles have been won today. The Neo-classical movements have little to offer that does not already exist. These are not half-made revolutions. The shackles have already been broken. Progress for the sake of progress may mean a race over the precipice.