Original Research Paper Literature Volume : 2 ¦ Issue : 12 ¦ Dec 2017 ¦ e-ISSN : 2456-5040

FEMALE CONSCIOUSNESS IN GITHA HARIHARAN'S THE

THOUSAND FACES OF NIGHT

Dr. N. Palani
Assistant Professor of English, Jairam Arts and Science College, Salem – 636008, Tamil Nadu, India.

ABSTRACT
Female consciousness is a movement to liberate woman herself from her patriarchal attitudes and stereotyped behavioral pattern and suffocating the patterns might be
woman conforms to these due to fear and the feeling of enslavement. All the women of her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night are conscious in various levels and
occasions. Though they are conscious, they are unable to overcome the stamp which is practiced by the society traditionally. All her women feel comfort by
remembering their past memories of the stories told by the elders especially their grandmothers. They feel solace through their ghosts of the past. The Thousand Faces
of Night represents the lash about of three women of consecutives generations for their survival in their relationship with man and society. The lives of three women
Mayamma, Sita, and Devi who symbolize three different generations age-old, middle, and modern. The novel pictures more than a thousand faces of women who are
silent harassed for their endurance in the dark with despair and distress in the patriarchal civilization.

KEYWORDS: consciousness, patriarchal, traditionally, memories, survival, generations, civilization.

Devi, the protagonist of the novel listens to the stories, fables, and myths told by ries Baba says that a sinner is released from his or her sins only through penance.
different narrators like her grandmother and the maidservant, Mayamma of the He also tells her the stories of many traditional Hindu philosophies and the sto-
novel that include ideal woman protagonists like Parvati, Sita who follow in the ries introduce her to the complexities of the Hindu traditional thought and philos-
footsteps of their husbands, and the stories of ferocious women like Gandari, ophy even after her marriage. Devi relates her empty life with the traditional
Ambika, Ambalika, and Amba who take their revenge. Devi in her adolescence women and their duties to their men. A woman is corned by either men or women
has listened to her grandmother's stories which were drawn from the Ramayana throughout her life in the form of tradition and culture but men are free from this.
and the Mahabharata, their focus is on women's pride, destiny, and self-sacrifice. As Mahesh is not governed by anybody but Devi is monitored by her father- in-
The status of her imagined heroines from the stories gives her a change in her law though she is a matured woman.
mind.
Devi tries to fit herself in the role of a dutiful wife and daughter-in-law just as her
Devi as a impractical personality likes the modern life. But her homecoming mother did years ago. Her mother Sita accepts the life as it is given by her family
sucks her back to conventional Indian family life. Though she has lived in Amer- that of being obedient to her father-in-law's words. But Devi feels that her educa-
ica for a few years she still becomes susceptible to her milieu and civilization. tion has not prepared her for the vast, yawning chapters of her womanhood. Devi
Devi gives us the image of a new generation who follows the footsteps of mythi- finds that her life is very dull and boring with so much of leisure; she seeks
cal characters of the stories told to neither her nor the elder women like Mahesh's permission to learn Sanskrit to understand Baba's quotations better.
Mayamma and Sita who, sacrifice their individual interests for the happiness of But Mahesh simply neglects her request and the wish at least to play cards with
the family. The mythical characters impress her and she is conscious of her him is mercilessly disapproved. He never speaks a single affectionate word to
Indian ethnicity. Devi. But Mahesh satisfies his physical desires without paying any attention to
Devi's feelings and emotions and his insensitiveness and inability to understand
The stories of her grandmother which are drawn from the Ramayana and the her properly shocks her and gives rise to a feeling of splendid loneliness in her.
Mahabharata, focus is on her narration on the lead up to her womanhood, a com- Devi's depressed life represents thousands of women's life and they expect the
mencement into deep possibilities. Devi understands that the stories of women hands of their husband's for every thing yet mostly they are neglected. Mahesh
she knows are more filthy than their legendary counterparts and wants to do views the role of a wife as confined to the hours only. He does not even take into
something as a sign of remonstration equal to the heroines she grew up with. She account her education. Devi's married life is quite unhappy and she finds many
imagines herself the very personification of the avenging goddess. This percep- things lacking in her life. She finds herself in a deep despair and disappointment
tion of Devi signifies the events that are looked for to happen and her building up and feels marriage has been imposed on her and she considers marriage a torture
of her mind to revolt against any sort of injustice to her in the course of her life. to her and it hangs like a knife above her neck always.
After returning from America Devi conforms some difficulties in making adjust-
ments to day-to-day realities but soon realizes it is not very easy to change the old Devi finds herself entrapped in the marital bond and feels her freedom is being
order of things only because she has returned from a brave new world but home- thwarted, the gaping emptiness threatening her very existence. She remains
coming sucks her back to traditional family life. Yet she wants to be conscious of alone in the house with Mayamma, the old housekeeper and feels a terrible lone-
her life not to be trapped by the traditional values and her mother Sita is role liness and a state of uselessness. Baba convinces Devi only but not Mahesh and
model to her. to him women only have to maintain Indian tradition but not men.

Devi is projected for an arranged marriage by her mother and she could not Her sense of idleness overcomes as her father-in-law passes away and her gentle
neglect her mother's arrangement and Devi with her husband Mahesh moves to mother-in-law Parvathimma leaves the house to seek salvation away. She cannot
Bangalore after her marriage. He works for a multinational company as a change the mentality of her husband and all her efforts get failure that becomes
Regional Manager and he needs to travel a great deal leaving Devi alone. Being a conscious of her state and leaves home because she is unable to change the atti-
manager he believes in managing everything in life as he does for his company tude of men in her life and she represents the modern women. Bharathi
and marriage is just a required milestone to him. He is unable to pull himself out Mukherjee suggests a self consciousness of the novelist to explain to shadowy
from emotional filthiness and he is a poor manager of emotions; his faint nature and indeterminate reader the nuances of the civilization essence of India.
could never make him a reliable husband.
Devi is quite disappointed and angry that she is denied her individual freedom
When Mahesh is on tours Devi feels “like a child whose summer holiday had and compelled to follow her husband's self-contained footprints with clumsy
slipped away from her when she was not looking” (50). She follows the ways of feet that stumble at sharp edges and curves. Mahesh is totally indifferent towards
life to a traditional woman from the stories of Baba, her father-in-law, a retired Devi and turns his house a place for parties and playing cards with his friends for
Sanskrit Professor who tells her a few stories of ideal mythical women, virtu- many times without considering the feelings of his life partner and she becomes
ously of womanhood and the path of salvation to a woman. She feels that the sto- conscious that her life is unhappy and meaningless and she thinks some other
ries of Baba demand her to lead a traditional Indian life. His stories of saints and way to relief herself like contemporary women. Devi finds failure both in ver-
their wives endorse the traditional Hindu concept of Dharma. He elaborates bal and physical satisfaction with her husband Mahesh and she feels no safe and
codes of virtuous women and the role to be played by a woman in married life. security with him. She lives like a foreigner in her own home with her own fam-
ily members and she is neglected by her own life partner without any right
Babha points that the women are led into bakthi only by serving their husbands grounds. Devi is taken to a gynecologist by her husband.
but no salvation of their personal to search. Summing up all his illustrative sto-
Copyright© 2017, IEASRJ. This open-access article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License which permits Share (copy and redistribute the material in
any medium or format) and Adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) under the Attribution-NonCommercial terms.

International Educational Applied Scientific Research Journal (IEASRJ) 23

 Original Research Paper Volume : 2 ¦ Issue : 12 ¦ Dec 2017 ¦ e-ISSN : 2456-5040
The doctor bristles with impatience at Devi, because of her inability to get preg- fices her own feelings and thoughts for the sake of her husband and her family
nancy. This shows the unfortunate social predicament inflicted even in the members.
twenty first century. Devi undergoes the same humiliation that had Mayamma,
an illiterate village woman did a few decades ago. The only difference is techno- Sita is a practical woman and not moved by dreams and the noble life of goddess,
logical variations. The early people were compelled to suffer through penance; and she does not want Devi to travel in dreams too. Devi's father Mahadevan's
the modern women are humiliated through modern technology like smear, injec- sudden death from Africa made both Devi and Sita back to Madras. Being a
tion, and fertility centers. This rebellious attitude makes her to a blissful dead- woman Sita gives free room to indulge in a few minor and sign crabbiness, gets a
ness of Gopal's music, a Hindustani classical singer, her neighbour. She is scholarship for Devi to study in America, and wisely manages to get her studies
impressed by his music first and then her love towards him. She finds comfort in and backs from America. Sita has led a life of an ideal woman of India and she
the company of Gopal's music and then him. He fills the gap which is missing was not prepared for any unexpected betrayal of Devi with Gopal. Sita antici-
with Mahesh. Devi wants to humiliate Mahesh by condemning him to a life with- pates Devi comes back to her mother's home to restart her life. Sita hates any illu-
out a wife and child. Her decision to leave Mahesh and go with Gopal is based on sion and even banished Devi's phantom gods and goddesses to their rightful
her investigation into the pathetic lives of Mayamma and her mother Sita. Devi place for now. Sita leads her life with bleak will power; at the end of the novel she
does not want to condemn herself to such self-sacrificial life and wants to walk appears as strong as ever and ready for introspection. The freshly-dusted Veena
out on Mahesh. Her consciousness about the trapped life makes her to leave signifies the possibility of her now attempting to achieve what she had denied her-
Mahesh. self all these years. She does not want to struggle with the society she is
wounded.
Devi imagines herself resembling mythical heroines, a relation with goddess and
existence of the other world. She removes the images of sacrificial wives like Sita lives according to her own rules; she is not prepared for a sudden betrayal of
Parvathi and Mayamma. She wants to be rebellious like Durga or like Kali and Devi with Gopal. Sita sees her life in its entirety, she realizes that it is too lasted
she recalls Kritya whom she read in Baba's book dealing with suffering and for sudden reversals, or a fresh start outside the parameters, she had constructed,
revenge of a ferocious woman. This shows her consciousness and Devi elopes or allowed to be constructed, around her. Sita has seen in her life the inevitability
with Gopal for a life which is failed form Mahesh. But she finds her life with of cause and effect the interplay between situations and options and now Sita
Gopal is also like that of a due and he is also not at all inferior to Mahesh and both spent her rage, her acrid bitterness on the over-pruned plants Sita's entire life is
are in the same track but in different way of humiliating women. She locates her- dedicated to only one ideal to being the ideal woman. And she is willing to pay
self in her isolated corner and outsider forever on the fringes of a less ambivalent any price for it even at the end of the novel, we see her as resilient as ever and
identity. Thus Mahesh and Gopal failed to perceive her emotions and soul. Devi ready for merciless introspection.
realizes that in the male oriented society, it is difficult to survive and find reliabil-
ity for her emotions because for men, women have always been primarily an Mayamma, the old caretaker narrates her tale of tears and harrowing experiences
object of sex and pleasure. Now she becomes conscious about her state and plans as wife and daughter-in-law to Devi. She is wedded at the age of twelve to a
for another step to move her life. She does not weep or worry about the blind soci- worthless gambler.
ety and now she is capable to take another decision without spending time as in
her early life with Mahesh. Mayamma is totally ill-treated by her husband and her mother-in-law and her hus-
band never considers her a human being. But she does not revolt against humilia-
Devi leaves Gopal while he was in a deep sleep covering the mirror with the pea- tion or injustice offered by the society of her own, she also accepts the things as it
cock's neck coloured sari to cover the images that reflect the surroundings. It sym- is without any proclamination like a traditional Indian woman who sacrifices
bolizes her wish not to carry forward her past memories into future as she plans to everything for her family. A woman must be restrict herself to a woman's place
start a new life afresh with her mother. She feels courageous and confident and and respects herself in this role. The main tragedy is; if patriarchy considers a
determines to leave from confinement to a state of self-identity. She gains the woman inferior; the female psyche is not different from this. She considers her-
strength to assert herself and survive on her own with her mother. She coura- self inadequate in herself and thinks that a woman must seek her identity and
geously leaves Gopal to her mother's house to begin new life. The music of her self-fulfillment through masculine aspiration. A woman should remain passive,
mother's Veena welcomes her to the house to begin her battle all over once again content pleasing to her man.
anew. Devi represents the present-day intellectual woman, confronts loneliness
and alienation. Her decision making authority shows her consciousness.Though Mayamma after ten long years of penance is blessed with a son born on Diwali.
she lacks the will to choose and her early decisions are wavering, we note the After eight years of his birth her husband leaves her without a word worn into
maturity in her character. Initially, she is easily influenced by collective role middle age with dissipated excess, disappeared, taking with him all the money in
expectations; she quits the U.S. and leaves behind Dan because of a sense of filial the house. Her mother-in-law says that Mayamma is responsible for her son's dis-
piety, marries Mahesh as a good daughter should attempt to be a full-time wife appearance. Mayamma never once questions the violence, raises a voice or a fin-
and house maker as an Indian pativrata should. Gradually she shows her resolve ger or tries to run away from this living of hell. In spite of no happiness with her
in walking out with Mahesh and Gopal even greater determination in walking husband and son, she is able to be a bed-rock to her family. While her husband
out on Gopal. calls her a shameless hussy and kicked her after a night of whoring in the rain her
mother-in-law fed her yesterday's rice she is admiring her new sari. In order to
Devi relates her with all the stories she can remember and all the stories and les- propitiate the gods so as to beget a son Mayamma tolerates all kinds of cruelty
sons have one moral for Devi and that in how to be a good woman. Dan, her boy- from her family and lives without raising a word and which shows the sacrificing
friend in America, her husband Mahesh, and her extra-marital affair with Gopal, nature of typical women of India and proves the attitude of traditional women.
all men in her life prove to be a failure and cannot fulfill her emotional needs.
Githa Hariharan does not raise her voice against the society where she fails. The In India the traditional women are socialized into believing in their own empow-
secret fear of rejection and obsession for security is enough to prevent her from erment through chastity and fidelity; through sacrifice they see themselves as
acting on her own. Yet Devi learns about her cravings, her desires, her urges and achieving both sublimation and strength. They have created strength out of their
pursuits both hidden as well as revealed. To be really a revolutionary, one must inferiority and weakness through a rich and imaginative mythology women are
step out of the outdated pattern of the society. She accepts the fact that a strong, narcoticized into accepting the ideology that genuine power lies in women's abil-
dominate desire never brings peace, but only builds an imprisoning wall around ity to sacrifice, in gaining spiritual strength by denying them access to power or
itself. She spends some time in conflict and alienation like a prisoner within the the means to it.
walls of her own mind, and she decides to go back to her mother with whom she
can live a better and respectable life. Finally, her happy and cheerful journey To her generation of Indian women, life meant merely accepting one's fate with-
from Banglore to Madras and her confident steps towards her mother indicate out as much as murmur and it symbolizes the innate strength of the woman who
her new positive approach towards life and consciousness. is able to come back to normalcy even after shocking troubles. Mayamma is a typ-
ical Indian woman who accepts her fate, cursed it but never questioned it and
Another major woman is Sita, the mother of Devi, a cool, confident and middle lived her life exactly as was expected of her. She bears the brunt of cruelty that
aged woman has earlier embraced her fate silently. Her life represents a model the society has ordained for a woman as a daughter, a wife, a daughter-in-law, a
between the two extreme generations of Mayamma and Devi. The father-in-law deserted woman, and a mother. She represents the generation of Indian women
discourages Sita even for her choice of playing Veena when she is free. Sita who feel life is merely accepting and adjusting to one's destiny without com-
immediately hung over the Veena for a minute in her pride and anger, and plaint by following the Karma Sutra. Women of her generation are meek, sub-
reached for the strings of her precious Veena and pulled them out of the wooden missive, and bound to the traditions of family and the institution of marriage. She
base. She never touches the Veena again and chooses to become a dutiful wife makes no choice in her own life yet lives through other women like Sita and later
and daughter-in-law as her father-in-law says. This role is intended to women for even Devi. Though she is conscious about the injustice she does not like to raise a
centuries as social conventions that of a wife and daughter-in-law. She accepts voice against the world.
the life as it is forced to her without any question. She sacrifices her desire, long-
ing, and feelings everything to her family. The need for a woman to create a role The Thousand Faces Night webs the struggle of three women of successive gen-
for herself and to approximate to a definition of that image is depicted in the pic- erations for their survival in their relationship with men and society. The novel
ture of a woman of Sita's family. She knows how a woman makes a career of reveals more than a thousand faces of women who are still struggling for their sur-
housekeeping and makes herself integral to the mechanics of daily existence. vival in the dark with despair and displeasure in the patriarchal society. As she
Sita has only one straight path to tread-wifehood and later motherhood. Sita probes deeper and deeper into the inner landscape of her women, she encounters
becomes a good housekeeper and helps her husband in all directions and sacri- terrible onslaughts heaped upon them. They have been subjected to awe and rick-

24 International Educational Applied Scientific Research Journal (IEASRJ)

 Original Research Paper Volume : 2 ¦ Issue : 12 ¦ Dec 2017 ¦ e-ISSN : 2456-5040
ety, distorted, dehumanized, injured and bleeding lots altogether. Amidst such
absurdity, sickness, revulsion, and bedlam when the world becomes insuffer-
able, they are nearly on their path of self-immolation, obliteration as a mark of
protest or revolt. Thus the novel projects the three main characters, Devi, Sita,
and Mayamma, who walked a tightrope and thrash about for some balance for
some means of survival they could inclination for themselves.

REFERENCES:
1. Garg, Tripti (2007), “Narrative Technique in Githa Hariharan's The Thousand Faces of
Night.” The Atlantic Literary Review, p. 60-69.
2. Gupta, Monika. (2006) “Myth and Religion in Githa Hariharan's The Thousand Faces
of Night.” Pegasus 5. Jan-Dec.
3. Paranjape, Makarand(1993). “A Cathartic Exercise.” Rev. of The Thousand Faces of
Night. The Book Review, P.17.4.
4. Sharma, Vera. Rev,(1995), “The Thousand Faces of Night”, The Indian P.E.N. Vol.56,
No.1-3, Jan-Mar.
5. Viswanath, Prema (1993), “Interview with Githa Hariharan”, Indian Express Sunday
Magazine, 12 September,.
6. Chaudhuri, Maitrayee. (ed.) (2004), “Feminism in India: Issues in Contemporary
Indian Feminism”, Kali for Women, New Delhi,.
7. Jain, Pratibh and Sharma, Sangeeta (ed.) (1995), “Women in Freedom Struggle: Invisi-
ble Images” in Women Images, Rawat Publication, Jaipur.
8. Kanwar Dinesh Singh (2004). Feminism and Postfeminism: The Context of Modern
Indian Women Poets Writing in English. Solan: Sarup & Sons.

International Educational Applied Scientific Research Journal (IEASRJ) 25