Monday, November 2, 2009
In Chughai’s The Crooked Line the main character, Shaman, pretty much just goes with the flow of life. She does not appear to ever really try and make things better in her own personal life. Shaman does do what she can to help the school she was headmistress of become a little better at least for a short while, but it did not do anything to benefit her personally. She took the job as the headmistress because of the hard times of the economy, and it seemed like it was all there was left to do. So it makes me wonder if there was not an opening as a headmistress, what else would she have ended up doing for work?
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This is a question that I ask in my paper for this class. If Shaman cannot be viable in the education system because it is so sucky, and she cannot keep her husband because of their culture difference, what is she to do? Who would take a girl like her? Especially a girl who cannot and knows not how to even do something as simple as love, oh wait, that is every girl... hmm
ReplyDeleteThis goes back to the idea brought up earlier by Snehal...that Shaman is not an anomaly but really represents the problems faced by all Muslim women within a faulty system. I feel like Ruswa's answer to your question , Mary, is that Shaman would be perfectly suited for the life of a courtesan. Chugthai, to some extent, thinks this too. Remember the period of her life when she kept four...five men? But Chugthai is living and writing in a world of fading Muslim culture where the life of a courtesan is no longer a viable option. In a way, I understand Shaman's story to be as schizophrenic as it is because she and everyone else are so unclear about where the barriers to her identity do and don't exist. What can and can't she be in the changing culture under the British Raj?
ReplyDeleteI think that the very fact she chooses to work can be seen as a way for her to rebel against the system she's been born into. She manages to make a way for herself, despite these limited options that you've pointed out, instead of returning to her family to have them decide her fate for her. I definitely agree that her stint as a headmistress didn't really do much for her as a whole, but it allowed her to be autonomous in a society where women were usual reliant on others.
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