Social Criticism In The Novel 'Kamala Markandaya'

ABSTRACT

“Spirit of tradition boats is all about the design, not necessarily the materials they are built of. It is imperative they have a nice sheer as this is the key to a pretty yacht and is what differentiates a modern practically minded design from a more classic, aesthetically driven one.” -Richard Gregson Kamala Markandaya’s novels are overwhelmingly social documents. Her novelistic documentation of rural poverty and hunger, tension between tradition and modernity, national upsurge, psychological maladjustment and husband-wife relationship and problems of the Indian immigrant’s abroad and racial antagonism as evidenced in her nine novels is impressive. As a novelist her greater interest lies in story and social comment than

She is the narrator of this first person autobiographical novel. Her three sisters, Shanta, Padmini, and Thangam are married long before she is gradually; the village headman dwindles in his position, being a man of no consequence. By the time Rukmani achieves womanhood, his prestige is much diminished. Consequently, they cannot find a rich husband for her and she is married to Nathan a poor tenant farmer. After the completion of necessary religious ceremony, Rukmani and Nathan leave for their village. They sit in a bullock cart and it begins to move.

“Words died away, the listening air was very still, the black night waited. In the straining darkness. I felt his body moving with desire, his hands on me were trembling, and I felt my sense opening like a flower to his urgency. I closed my eyes and waited, waited in the darkness while my being filled with a wild, ecstatic fluttering, waited for him to come to

The rural India is seen through her eyes, and it is her view-point that dominates the novel. Her view-point is also that of the novelist. Fortunately enough, both, are women and confirmed traditionalists. She represents the women folk of rural India but she also represents the novelist. Tension is the essence of her character, which reveals her spiritual qualities and the inner stuff of which she is made. Hence her character is more complex than that of others who figure in the novel. This has given a weight to her image in the novel though it is a fact that a much weightier Rukmani was needed. As the central character and protagonist, she adopts the dramatic role of a sad chronicler of the traditional life of an Indian village in