SOURCE: Kaur, Iqbal. “Protest against Sexual Colonialism: Kamala Das's My Story.” In Women's Writing: Text and Context, edited by Jasbir Jain, pp. 223-32. Jaipur, India: Rawat Publications, 1996.

[In the following essay, Kaur explores Das's attitude toward gender roles and views My Story as a protest against the sexual discrimination of women.]

Sexual colonialism refers to the relationship between the sexes which is ‘a relationship of dominance and subservience’. It refers to the relationship between sex and power and as Kate Millett puts it “Through this system a most ingenious form of ‘interior colonization’ has been achieved”. Men are the colonizers, the women colonized and as Simone de Beauvoir perceives it, the position that women occupy in the society is “comparable in many respects to that of racial minorities in spite of the fact that women constitute numerically at least half of the human race” (Parshley 9). She argues that “this secondary standing is not imposed of necessity by natural ‘feminine’ characteristics but rather by strong environmental forces of education and social tradition under the purposeful control of men. This … has resulted in the general failure of women to take a place of human dignity as free and independent existents associated with men on a plane of intellectual and professional equality, a condition that not only has limited their achievement in many fields but also has given rise to pervasive social evils and has a particularly vitiating effect on the sexual relations between men and women.” Sexual colonialism, thus, has a reference to the imbalance of power between the two sexes.

This paper deals with protest against colonialism as voiced by Kamala Das in her autobiography My Story. She finds it intolerable that woman be assigned the status of the colonized and that she be the victim of the colonizer's ‘brutal indifference’ to her. She protests against women's socialization into an unquestioning acceptance of their destiny as inferiority, passivity, submissiveness and dependence; against society's expectations that a woman should conform to her ‘Angel in the House’ image. Revolting against the rigid gender divisions that a sexist culture wishes to establish—divisions according to which men are superior, Godlike, while women are inferior, inert, “afflicted with a natural defectiveness”, Das has voiced, without any inhibition, her restlessness with the fact that the sex-roles, as perpetrated by a society ruled and governed by men, trap women in wifehood, and motherhood and do not allow them any freedom for self-actualization. Marriage as an institution nauseates Kamala Das because it legitimizes violence on women and gives men a legal control on women's bodies.

Kamala Das condemns the gender divisions created by the male dominated society and pities the lot of women because they have been losers in the war of the sexes. The male desire to relegate women to margins suffocates her. She writes:

Even the air-conditioner helps so little,
All pervasive is the male scent of your breath.

(My Story 192)

Kamala Das finds it difficult to reconcile with man-woman relationship as a relationship in which man is the ‘Subject’, the ‘Absolute’ and woman is the ‘Object’, the ‘Other’.

Interestingly enough, the society that Kamala Das belongs to and which she is grappling with in My Story is a matriarchal one. But, unfortunately it is as much obsessed with the myth of male sovereignty as any patriarchal society. Kamala Das was disturbed by the fact that women had been trivialised and marginalised but more disturbing than this was the fact that even the matriarchs had accepted their biology as destiny and did not revolt against their colonization by men. A society in “which being female and being fully human were mutually exclusive” nauseated her. Since she had an acute consciousness of the fact that the society tried to trap women in their biology, she came to hate her female body. She writes:

I felt then a revulsion for my womanliness. The weight of my breasts seemed to be crushing me. My private part was only a wound, the soul's wound showing through.

(110)

She defined female body as the “silly female shape”, “the clumsy gadgetry” that “ruined a beautiful relationship” and “always, always damaged bonds” (193).

Even as a child Kamala Das had an overwhelming awareness of victim-victimizer relationships that exist between men and women as well as an awareness of the adverse effects of sexist culture on female psyche. Her father, who thought himself sovereign, expected total submission from his wife and she did display a passive acceptance of the scheme of things which negated women. As soon as he got engaged to her mother, he “stipulated” and that too “firmly” what all she was to wear and what all she “was not to wear” (4). He announced “that his wife was not to wear anything but khaddar and preferably white or off-white” and “After the wedding he made her remove all the gold ornaments from her person, all except the ‘mangal sutra’.” Kamala Das imagines that to her mother “it must have seemed like taking to widow's weeds” but the inner experiences of woman in the over-masculinized culture are insignificant and are not taken into consideration. Kamala Das voices her restlessness with the fetters of femininity in My Story as well as in her poetry. In one of her poems entitled “Suicide” she writes:

But,
I must pose.
I must pretend,
I must act the role
Of happy woman,
Happy wife.

Thus, the male-governed society leaves a woman no choice so far as acting her satisfaction with her position as the inessential is concerned. In the society to which Kamala Das belongs, it was impossible for a woman to rebel against the masculine yoke, against a male's overwhelming sense of superiority because a male, she was given to understand, was no less than a god. She narrates that her grand-uncle “did not have enough money even to buy the books that he wished to read” (14) but he “looked every inch a king” and used to call his second wife “the most empty-headed woman he had known” and “she used to laugh melodiously at such comments”.

Kamala Das's My Story contains ample evidence of her “awareness of the arrest of feminine development brought about by an economic system, a family structure which produced in women dependency, insecurity, lack of autonomy, and an incomplete sense of who they are even at the level of bodily ego” (Waugh 85). The feminine mystique, she feels, has always been exploited by man who treats woman as his slave. She talks about an oilseller who:

drove his white cow and the three women of his house round and round his old mill, to extract oil from the copra and the sesame while he rested, leaning against a tree, abusing them in pornographic language which only amused his victims, for he ways always a good provider and they were, by nature, masochistic.

(28)

This is sexual colonialism in its ‘most overpowering form’. It does not let women feel that they are being victimized. Kamala Das who craves for a less oppressive climate for women, seems to be drawing the reader's attention to the close link between women's oppression and the material conditions, i.e., control on women through economic force.

Woman, Kamala Das feel, has always belonged to the deprived categories of humans, while men believe that the privileges they enjoy are theirs by right. Disgusted with the kind of gender arrangements which treat woman as a slave and thwart women's desire to seek freedom, to seek a right to exist as an independent human being, Kamala Das writes:

You planned to tame a swallow, to hold her
In the long summer of your love so that she would forget
Not the raw seasons alone, and the homes left behind, but
Also her nature, the urge to fly, and the endless
Pathways of the sky.

(192)

Kamala Das, who right from her childhood wished to subvert the established order which supports the imbalance of power between the sexes, brought all her unconventional views to marriage. “I hate marriage” she declared. “I hate to show myself naked to anyone. …” (72) She had a fierce aversion to marriage because for her a married adult was a “clown in bed”, “a circus performer”. She made fun of the “sexual acrobatics” which “the dignified couples” perform in the dark.

The male manufactured definitions of femininity nauseated her. She detested the male gaze because it situates woman as an object. The sexual politics that prevailed in the relationship between her mother and father and several other couples around her also shaped her views on marriage. the power politics in sex-relationships was repulsive to her. So, she wanted to escape marriage—the bondage. The way she tried to plea the postponement of her marriage, shows her keen desire for “flight from womanhood”, “What is the hurry?” she asked her grandmother. Even when her marriage “was fixed” she tried to escape it. “Not yet, I said. Let me go back to Calcutta to finish my exams …” (85). She felt very uneasy to realize that her life “had been planned and its course charted by … parents and relatives”. Her marriage was fixed. She could not escape her destiny but she displayed tremendous courage in flouting the traditional image of ‘the perfect woman’. She refused to be a traditional bride and behaved like a “tomboy” on her wedding day. She refused to hide in her room “looking demure and shy”. She refused the traditional bridal bath, she refused to wear “a good saree” and dressed up in “a white sari”. She detested “the extravagance” of her wedding. In fact, she says: “All this glut made me feel cheap and uncomfortable”. She had an uneasy feeling that she was devalued as a person in her own right that “the bride was unimportant and her happiness a minor issue” (90).

Kamala Das who wished for herself ‘a place of human dignity’ detested the sexual haste of her husband on the wedding night. She associated the sexual relationships with the fantasy of being attacked, subdued and injured! She, who wanted to assert herself as a “free and independent existent” could not accept the status of an Object, a commodity and this perhaps, was responsible for her frigidity to which she makes several references in My Story. She confesses: “I was cold and frigid. I did not know what sexual desire meant. … Sex was far from my thoughts … I had no need at all for rough hands riding up my skirts …” (87) and so on. She is intolerant of man's obsession with his erotic needs and writes. “The word mate with its earthy connotations made me uneasy. I felt lost and unhappy” (87). She felt shattered to realize that her husband could be just a sexual companion and not an emotional companion. She refers to her wedding night as “that unhappy night” because she says: “without warning he fell on me, surprising me by the extreme brutality of the attack” (92). She refers to this sexual attack as a “rape”—a rape of her spirit perhaps. She did not let the rape be successful and says:

I remained a virgin for nearly a fortnight after my marriage. He grew tired of the physical resistance which had nothing to do with my inclinations.

(93)

She who wanted to question the very concept of femininity, to reject the traditional feminine world and to defy the overwhelming “male ego” could not be “just another of his admirers”. She could not “submit to his clumsy fondling”. She could not reconcile herself with being treated as just an object, a non-entity and not a partner in the game. The one who was seeking “a pure, total freedom” had the agonizing awareness that she was not valued by her husband for her own singular being and this gave a death blow to the feminist utopias she had been cherishing since her childhood days. The one who “wanted to be given an identity that was lovable”, soon realised that she was not needed by her husband except as a slave, a prisoner. Her resentment against the way “the ruling sex” tries to control the subordinate sex is visible in expressions like:

You called me wife,
I was taught to break saccharine into your tea and
To offer at the right moment the vitamins. Cowering
Beneath your monstrous ego I ate the magic loaf and
Became a dwarf. I lost my will and reason, to all your
Questions I mumbled incoherent replies.

(192)

She revolts against the fact that the male psyche tends to treat woman as a desirable commodity. It causes her great anguish that men expect total servility from their wives. Her husband too was an egoist, a bit too sure of his conjugal rights and believed in ruthless exploitation of woman as an absolute Other. She narrates:

During his stay in Malabar, he spent most of his time with his cousins and his sister-in-law, paying me little attention and never bothering to converse with me. At night he was like a chieftain who collected the taxes due to him from his vassal, simply and without exhilaration.

(98)

Kamala Das has also articulated in My Story her restlessness with the traditional sex roles according to which a woman is to find her total fulfilment in submissive domesticity. She protested against the division of world into two spheres, a sphere that belongs to men and another that belongs to women, and the one that belongs to woman, she tells, was confined just to the four walls of the house. Kamala Das was expected to:

Dress in sarees, be girl
Be wife … Be embroiderer, be cook,
Be a quarreller with servants.

—“An Introduction”

Though “the categorizers” expected her to “Fit in”, to “Belong”, “to choose a name, a role”, Kamala Das tried to defy the male definitions of femininity. She refused to fit into any schemes, to play the role of a trapped housewife. So,

My mother-in-law sulked, for she felt that I was spending too much time away from child and my domestic responsibilities. Whenever she said disgruntled things my husband grew angry, and his anger was directed against me and the baby.

(102-103)

Mr. Das could not tolerate her assertion of feminine subjectivity and “stopped me from going up to the terrace for the rehearsals in the evening. You must remember you are a wife and mother, he said” (103). But she, who was struggling to create a new order, a brave new world where women too could be treated as human beings, could not develop a sense of her invisibility. She reacted against the traditional society's definition of womanhood, against the traditional sex-roles and was resolved not to be a stereotype. She writes:

I kept myself busy with dreary house work while my spirit protested and cried, get out of this trap, escape.

(103)

She tried to view the social set up with a woman's eye and wished to challenge it. She felt that her refusal to assume the socially defined traditional feminine role was one way of transcending her ‘femininity’ which is associated with passivity and inferiority. So, when marriage stifled for her all possibility of autonomy, and divorce did not seem possible in a traditional orthodox society like hers, she decided to put an end to her life. It is a different matter that she did not succeed at it but the very fact that the suicide was attempted shows her desire for “flight from womanhood”.

A woman with an intense desire for sexual revolution, she wants a utopian state of affairs in which the unequal boundaries of gender do not exist. She presents the picture of such a state of affairs when she writes:

When he
And I were one, we were neither
Male nor female.

(136)

No wonder, it is almost impossible to concretize this vision. So this desire for a feminist utopia entered into a conflict with the traditional image of femininity - a conflict which drove her almost to madness. She felt that she was “a misfit everywhere”. She says: “I brooded long stifling my sobs …” (109). But, in spite of the fact that she had to stifle her sobs, she was not prepared to stifle her need to choose, to act like an authentic being. Literary creativity came to her rescue and helped her return to sanity. It enabled her give an outlet to her unfulfilled desires and provided her an opportunity to establish her identity. So, even though there was no other possibility of going beyond her situation, she could still do so by creative writing. Thus, the sense of selfhood which in the case of Kamala Das was too strong to be annihilated got sublimated in writing. Creative writing served as a therapy and helped her confront and transcend the overwhelming realities of life. It helped her “Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff / Which weighs upon the heart”. Her parents, relatives, husband, children all imprisoned her in her femininity, but creative writing enabled her to go beyond the bonds of femininity and to give expression to her revolt against sexual politics. The writing of My Story itself was an act of defiance if we situate her in her socio-cultural background. The Nalapat women, as she tells us, were orthodox and puritanical. They showed an unquestioning acceptance of the traditional sex-roles which tend to doom women to immanence. They did not dine along with men and many of them hardly ever stepped out of the house. They lived a life of self-negation and never thought of taking decisions for themselves. Hence, it required exceptional courage to challenge the long established social system and to preach “a new kind of morality” and Kamala Das did display tremendous courage in revolting against the sexual colonialism and providing hope and confidence to young women that they can refuse and reject the victim positions, that they can frustrate the sexist culture's efforts to exploit, passivise and marginalise women.

Works Cited

Das, Kamala. My Story. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd. 1977.

de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex trans. H. M. Parshley. Penguin 1972.

Millet, Kate. Sexual Politics. London: Abacus, 1972.

Parshley, H. M. “Translators Preface”, The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir, Penguin 1972.

Waugh, Patricia. Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern. London: Routledge, 1989.