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Disorderly Women
Disorderly Women is a story of four Brahmin women in India (pre-independence) who struggle to break the barriers built around them by society.
277 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 19, 2019
Disorderly Women is a story about four women: Venku Bai, Rukmini, Kamala, and Ila, bound together by fate and by blood and marital relationships. Rukmini becomes Venku Bai's daughter-in-law. Kamala is Venku Bai's daughter, and Ila is Rukmini's daughter. But the title is quite a misnomer - there could be no more conformist women than these.
The story starts off with Rukmini as a young girl of ten, waiting to get married to her future 'God'. All the female characters are taught to look upon their husbands as gods, who can do whatever they want. Both Kamala and Rukmini get married at the age of twelve to men who are six to seven years older. They are both packed off to a new house and a new family, absolutely with no family support to help them deal with the changes. Brahminical patriarchy in its purest form is quite visible in this book. The hold it has on women from this background is quite ridiculous.
Rao draws a very detailed picture of South Indian Brahmin culture in the 30s and 40s. I could feel the net tightening around these women, especially since I know how things work in this background. The characters are very well detailed and you feel as if these are people you know wandering about the streets of Chennai, even though the book is set in Bangalore and Karnataka. For this alone, this book is worth a read.
But I do have to question the title and the message behind the focus on Kamala. Kamala's young life was ruined by marriage to a man who turned out to be abusive. But she didn't run away. She had to basically leave. She was then given the opportunity to study and work. Instead, she went moaning around the place about not having a husband and how women need husbands and she shouldn't have left her 'God', and more shit like that. Then she has a boring love affair with a married man and then tamely returns back home to spend the rest of her life in the house, doing basically nothing new and nothing that other women in the family were not doing better anyway! There was nothing "disorderly" about Kamala.
Nor was there anything disorderly about the other women depicted. Rao appears to think that merely existing is an act of rebellion. I think I had already moved far ahead of that idea when I was a kid. And frankly, many women already had done so in the 30s and 40s in India, so that's no excuse for depicting such conformist women as rebellious.
While the first half of the book was very appealing in terms of character building and descriptive scenarios, that falls apart in the second half when Kamala's love affairs take centrestage. It was boring, and I would rather have read about anyone else than a woman who was offered opportunities and failed to take them. I was also quite annoyed by Ila who went on and on about preserving the family house by not allowing her brother to sell it. Just buy him off, woman!
This is a beautifully written work and many people would enjoy it. Women's stories and struggles are always quite compelling, and it is so in Disorderly Women. But if you are looking for a feminist struggle or a tale of triumph over circumstances by women in these pages, I don't think you would find them.
The story starts off with Rukmini as a young girl of ten, waiting to get married to her future 'God'. All the female characters are taught to look upon their husbands as gods, who can do whatever they want. Both Kamala and Rukmini get married at the age of twelve to men who are six to seven years older. They are both packed off to a new house and a new family, absolutely with no family support to help them deal with the changes. Brahminical patriarchy in its purest form is quite visible in this book. The hold it has on women from this background is quite ridiculous.
Rao draws a very detailed picture of South Indian Brahmin culture in the 30s and 40s. I could feel the net tightening around these women, especially since I know how things work in this background. The characters are very well detailed and you feel as if these are people you know wandering about the streets of Chennai, even though the book is set in Bangalore and Karnataka. For this alone, this book is worth a read.
But I do have to question the title and the message behind the focus on Kamala. Kamala's young life was ruined by marriage to a man who turned out to be abusive. But she didn't run away. She had to basically leave. She was then given the opportunity to study and work. Instead, she went moaning around the place about not having a husband and how women need husbands and she shouldn't have left her 'God', and more shit like that. Then she has a boring love affair with a married man and then tamely returns back home to spend the rest of her life in the house, doing basically nothing new and nothing that other women in the family were not doing better anyway! There was nothing "disorderly" about Kamala.
Nor was there anything disorderly about the other women depicted. Rao appears to think that merely existing is an act of rebellion. I think I had already moved far ahead of that idea when I was a kid. And frankly, many women already had done so in the 30s and 40s in India, so that's no excuse for depicting such conformist women as rebellious.
While the first half of the book was very appealing in terms of character building and descriptive scenarios, that falls apart in the second half when Kamala's love affairs take centrestage. It was boring, and I would rather have read about anyone else than a woman who was offered opportunities and failed to take them. I was also quite annoyed by Ila who went on and on about preserving the family house by not allowing her brother to sell it. Just buy him off, woman!
This is a beautifully written work and many people would enjoy it. Women's stories and struggles are always quite compelling, and it is so in Disorderly Women. But if you are looking for a feminist struggle or a tale of triumph over circumstances by women in these pages, I don't think you would find them.
February 10, 2015
In comparison to the heroines of Namita Gokhle, the women protagonists of Malathi Rao would hardly qualify as a rebel. Irrespective of what the book excerpt says, most of the Kamala's actions actually seem forced by the circumstances rather than actions of someone trying to wrest control of her destiny.
The change, the rebellion here is subtle. It happens at its own unhurried pace. So much so that at one point, Kamala actually feels compelled to spell out in words that she, in fact, has been quite daring, breaking many traditions. But then all this is happening in the background of freedom movement, something which is pretty much absent from the novel (I'm not sure if the omission of freedom movement is alluding to a reality felt differently in these parts of the country. As opposed to this, a lot of Hindi literature of/about that time, embeds the women issues in the larger narrative of freedom struggle.)
Like Inheritance of Loss, the story here also anchors around a house and its old patriarch. Although city doesn't play much role in the story, it feels strange to think of a Bangalore so quiet and tranquil.
The change, the rebellion here is subtle. It happens at its own unhurried pace. So much so that at one point, Kamala actually feels compelled to spell out in words that she, in fact, has been quite daring, breaking many traditions. But then all this is happening in the background of freedom movement, something which is pretty much absent from the novel (I'm not sure if the omission of freedom movement is alluding to a reality felt differently in these parts of the country. As opposed to this, a lot of Hindi literature of/about that time, embeds the women issues in the larger narrative of freedom struggle.)
Like Inheritance of Loss, the story here also anchors around a house and its old patriarch. Although city doesn't play much role in the story, it feels strange to think of a Bangalore so quiet and tranquil.
June 8, 2018
A very well written novel about the pre-independence situation of women in India.
April 16, 2022
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February 5, 2019Can anyone help me out with a copy of this book. I am in dire need of the same for my research.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews