Thursday, December 3, 2009
Attachment Disorders in The Crooked Line
While I was reading The Crooked Line, I was really surprised to see how many Freudian and modern psychological disorders Shaman manifested. It made me wonder how learned Chughtai was in the subject and if she intended to be so precise about her portrayal of these, if indeed portray them at all. Shaman clearly has some form of "ambivalent attachment" to her family; she both wants their praise and wants nothing to do with them, simultaneously. She also, by having been weaned too early, it seems, develops insecure attachments (where she screams and cries when these people with which she is attached leave for any stretch of time), first with Unna, then with her sister Manjhu. Attachments also play an important role later in the novel, particularly at school, in which she has passionate friendships that tend to end abruptly, either by familial devices or by the simple geography of moving.
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There is a sociological theory called, believe it or not, attachment theory. In this theory it is believed that those who have good relationships of attachment with their parents at a young age are much more likely to have positive, social, and successful relationships with others later in life. I had not thought of this before, but perhaps this is exactly why Shaman does not seem to have good relationships with anyone, especially anyone close to her age. It makes her yearning for a relationship with a father, her friends father remember, even that much more interesting! Did she maybe just want to have a father because for so long everyone in her family hated her?
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