Interpreter of Maladies presents a fascinating view of marriage. Throughout the novel, we read of marriages plagued by frustration and dishonesty. It would seem logical to assume that this collection takes a position against marriage. Yet the only thing that seems to work out worse than marriage is being unmarried.
This can be clearly seen in the story “Sexy”, which tells the story of an affair between the unwedded Miranda and the married Dev. Early in the story, we hear about the disaster that marriage can be from her friend Laxmi, who tells the story of her cousin's husband having an affair. Then ironically, the relationship between Miranda and Dev starts. At the beginning, this works out for Miranda as she gets to be with this charming and “sexy” man. However, things start to go poorly for her, as she is significantly more interested in him than he is in her. Eventually, she breaks it off, feeling disgusted with the whole thing and regretful that it ever happened. Intriguingly, things work great for Dev, as he gets to both be with Miranda, and at the end still gets to be with his wife. So, it's basically a win-win for him and amazingly seems to indicate that it's better to be the married one in an affair.
The value of marriage is seen again in “A Real Durwan”. Boori Ma, as a result of no longer being married, is forced to work as a pseudo-durwan for the married families in the apartment. This works for a while, but in the end, she ends up being kicked out to the streets. This was a result of her roamings, which were a result of her loneliness. Clearly, the unmarried life doesn’t work out for her.
The craziest support of marriage though comes in the story of Bibi Haldar. She is afflicted with a mysterious illness, which unbeknownst to modern medicine and the majority of homeopathy practitioners, can only be cured by marriage (or almost marriage). After nearly a decade of illness, she is cured by raising a kid. While that wasn’t the marriage that was supposed to cure her, it was the result of her seeking a marriage and what appears to be the villainous actions of an unknown man. Yet, somehow this cures as she now has someone to look after. Overall, I found Interpreter of Maladies support of marriage to be unexpected and quite interesting. Although, some of the anecdotes that are pro-marriage seem to be so ridiculous that they might just be sarcastic. What do you think?
This is an interesting approach to these stories--I'd never thought in terms of a book taking "sides" on marriage in general. It seems more like marriage represents a wide range of different things, depending on the individuals involved and the meaning of marriage in the wider culture. (So the resolution in "Bibi Haldar" wouldn't make sense in the American culture depicted in "Sexy.") It's sort of like trying to figure out if a book takes sides on something like "friendship"--a friendship might go sour in a story, but that doesn't necessarily amount to a denunciation of friendship more generally.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting story to add to this list--because it reflects both the Indian and American cultural contexts--is "The Third and Final Continent," which presents an arranged marriage that looks doomed to failure but which turns out to be long-lasting and sustaining for both parties involved. But when we think back to the first story in the collection, we also have to consider the role of luck or good fortune in any such "success"--there was no reason to expect that Shoba and Shukumar's marriage would be in jeopardy, if the tragedy of the lost baby didn't intervene.
This book certainly focus on marriage as one of the primary topics. However, I do not thing that it is either for or against marriage in general. There are certainly stories such as "The Third and Final Continent" that present a positive view of marriage, and as you point out many show a less than flattering view of not being married. On the other hand, stories such as "Interpreter of Maladies" are certainly not supporting marriage. This was a very interesting idea, and not one of the overarching themes I initially thought about with this book.
ReplyDeleteI also found "interpreter of maladies'" stance on marriage very interesting. It seemed, like you pointed out, to be contradicting itself at times. Different stories seemed to be pro-marriage, or even pro-infidelity, while others were the opposite. But one thing I found really intriguing was the different perspectives of the different wives in each story. Like in "Mrs. Sen's," we see that Mrs. Sen cares for Mr. Sen but doesn't like the situation she's in because of him. But in other stories like "the Third and Final Continent" we get a wife who doesn't know her husband, but ends up very happily married at the end.
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