Subjugation of Widows: With Reference to Githa Hariharan's Short Story "Revati"

Abstract

It is said that the scientist looks at the extraordinary and explains it in terms of the ordinary, whereas it takes a writer to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary. A short story writer is like a miniature artist - with a few strokes she must sketch out enough of the narrative to draw in the reader. Githa Hariharan is primarily known as a novelist - her novel The thousand faces of Night had won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Novel. But here she reveals herself as a master of the short narrative as well. The second published literary works of the renowned Indian English writer, The Art of Dying (1993) won wide applause for its relevant and bold theme. The twenty stories in this short story collection are based on the contemporary Indian life and demonstrate the writer's literary skill with a precision of style and magical imagery. Hariharan is also a social activist who portrays social issues in her literary works. The present paper attempts to discuss how the modern writer- Githa Hariharan presents the disappointment widows face in the modern society. She makes the purpose of her writing limpidly clear in "Revati",  one of the short stories in her collection entitled, The Art of Living. Revati is about a child widow, who suffered throughout her life. The story highlights the plight of Revati who passes her entire life in loneliness. She is considered to be a burden on society. She is considered to be an unnecessary interference in the respective families. In Revati, Githa Hariharan has focused on the marginalization of women in Indian society. In the patriarchal Hindu society the identity of women is always determined by her husband. Different factors were responsible for woman subjugation. They can be categorized as social, cultural, traditional, and so on. Culture and society had imposed many kinds of norms on women. The modern feminist writers have been attempting several times to put forward the frustration of widows in their writings.