(FICTION) - LADIES COUPE - CHARACTER ANALYSIS

                          UNIT - IV (FICTION)

- LADIES COUPE- ANITA NAIR

 AUTHOR INTRODUCTION

Anita Nair is one of the eminent women novelists in contemporary India; she has earned honors for her originality, propensity and for her societal dedication. She presents women characters in her novels with full of enormous courage. As an Indian woman and the experiences of women around her she very perfectly understood the societal-cultural problems of women.

ABOUT THE NOVEL

Ladies’ coupe provides a poignant and realistic description of continuous efforts of women for the establishment of their identity in their society. Nubile stated that “Ladies Coupe is a perfect example of contemporary women’s identities and their conflictual relationship with tradition, male dominated society, gender discrimination and class and caste constraints. It is a novel in which fiction merges with reality and where female voices are authentic” .Through the example of six women characters Anita Nair tries to demonstrate that what women should do for their liberation and how our society can become conscious about them. Akhilandeswari is a protagonist and a narrator in the novel.

CHARACTER SKETCH (MAJOR)

AKHILANDESWARI (1)

 Akhilandeswari is a protagonist and a narrator in the novel.  Akhila is born in a middle class Brahmin family; she is unmarried but at the age of 45 she becomes aggravated as “Dreaming for escape and space.

  “Dreaming for escape and space. Hungry for life and experience”

 So she decides to go on a long trip by train in search of such an unrivaled question which obsessed her throughout her life

 “Can a woman live by herself”

 This one question troubled her all life. Akhila receives a seat in ‘Ladies coupe, a compartment in a train specially reserved for the ladies passengers.  In that Coupe there are five other passengers. Akhila asks them about the condition of women in Indian society. They all enthusiastically tell their story to each other as they all are the strangers and never going to meet again. Furthermore they all are the victims of Indian male dominated society. When Akhila’s father died she was only nineteen years old and in that age, she got a job of clerk in the income tax department. Nineteen is the age group when most of the young girls are romantic about their bright perspective in future life but Akhila had to take the entire burden of her family on her shoulders without any complaint. She is the eldest and only earning member in her family even then she is supposed to take the permission of her younger brother if she wants to go out, just because of the fact that he is a man and she, a woman.

Her mother is an ideal Hindu wife therefore she imagines that her daughter should follow her philosophy and thoughts. Her mother leaves every single decision on her father as she thinks that her husband knows best.

 “We have never had to regret any decision that he has taken, even when it was on my behalf” .

 Akhila had a love affair with Hari, a north Indian young man. It was a diminutive love affair though they made physical love several times. Akhila suddenly broke this relationship.” She says,

 “Hari this is goodbye I will never see you again” .

 Because he was younger than her and she was also anxious what people and society would think if this love affair would be disclosed? Ahila desides to remain single .  In the concluding part of the novel Akhila is a changed and revolutionary woman with full of strength and she also enjoys sexual pleasure with a stranger. “Akhila is lust”

MARGRET SHANTHI (2)

Margret Shanthi is portrayed as a well educated and gold medalist in Chemistry but still dominated by her husband, Ebenzer Paulraj who is a school principal, gives first importance to her career rather than her desires. He never tries to respond to her feelings. Margret wants to do doctorate but he always compels her to become a teacher. He tells her to cut her long hair because it doesn’t suit her.  As a good wife she always obeys her husband but a deep burst of storm comes in her life when she conceives and her husband tells her to abort their first baby as revealed by her,

“He dismissed me as someone of no significance” .

  Against her own wish she aborts her baby. “Abortion is considered a revolting crime to which it is indecent even to refer” .

 When she was going to abort her baby, her husband wished her All the Best.  “For the first time, I felt angry. All the best! What did he mean by that? Was I going to write an exam or recite a poem? Was I going to run a race or perform an experiment? All the best for what? I had nothing to do but lie there while they scraped my baby off the inside of my womb” 

These words strikes in her heart like an arrow as these words are spoken to somebody when one is going to do some good work. Her husband does not find any fault in suggesting her to abort her first baby as if she would be doing a good work.

“Men tend to take abortion lightly; they regard it as one of the numerous hazards imposed on women by malignant nature” .

 After the abortion a type of disintegration comes in their marriage, as Margret wants to take revenge for her insult. For the sake of her family and the male dominating society in which she lives, she doesn’t allow herself to leave him, so she chooses another method to destroy his self respect and ego. She starts feeding him with oily food, till he curves into a stout and becomes fatty. Her revolting spirit has been shown by the novelist,

 “God didn’t make Ebenzer Paulraj a fat man. I did. I, Margret Shanthi, did it with the sole desire for revenge”

She changed Ebenzer into a fat man and now he was almost fit for nothing and slowly he became fattier as unable to shift and systematize anything.  His school was not even his under now. As the time passed Margret again conceives and gives birth to a baby girl. Marriage is not a union between two bodies but a union between two souls.

PRABHA DEVI (3)

 Prabha Devi is one who is very pretty and conscious about her beauty. She doesn’t want to conceive as she tells her husband.

 “There are many ways in which pregnancy can be avoided. Jagdeesh stiffened in shame and embarrassment. What kind of a woman was she? My parents are getting impatient. They talk of a grandchild all the time. We have been married for almost a year now,

 Margret and Prabha Devi both are facing the same problem; both are trapped under same dilemma as Margret is one who wants to conceive a child while Prabha doesn’t want to be a mother. One who is going against her own desire to abort her child and the other has to conceive just to fulfill the desire of her husband. Here the husbands have been shown indifferent  towards the feelings and desires of their wives.

Here Anita Nair presents gender bigotry in Indian society where a girl is still considered inferior to a boy. Nair has expressed the pleasure of Prabha’s mother when she gave birth to her,

 “This one daughter of hers gave her more pleasure than all her four sons put together” 

MARIKOLANTHU (4)

Marikolanthu is a low -caste woman. When she was young she was raped by Murugesan, an upper- class man and one of the relatives of her employers. A ferocious result of the rape came when she became pregnant.  She is forced to marry a rapist “a filthy animal’’ . She refused to marry him. She is a victim but everyone blames her. 

 “The girl must have led him on and now that she is pregnant she’s making up a story about rape”.

The word rape is the most awful word in women’s life. When a girl is raped she feels ashamed as she is helpless and unable to protect her own self. When Marikolanthu is raped, instead of showing sympathy, everyone blames her. Here Anita Nair tries to delineate the psychology of all the members male or female in society find fault with the woman who has been exploited as she herself is regarded responsible for her tragedy.  After that disastrous incident, Marikolanthu spends her days in a phase of complete loss of identity. After some time she gave birth to a male child, Muthu. She is unable to love her baby Muthu, an outcome of that hateful incident and of her helplessness and nothingness. One day she sold him to Murugesan. “It was time Murugesan paid for what he did to me” .He didn’t know that this boy was his own son. At this moment, Marikolanthu was flared with happiness and she has a proper sagacity of satisfaction in her mind. When Murugesan died, his body was not fully burnt so Muthu has been given the task to take care of his father’s dead body. In these circumstances she accepts her son and starts enjoying the most important part of her life ‘The Motherhood’.

“Becoming a mother in her turn, the woman in a sense takes the place of her own mother: it means complete emancipation for her” 

JANAKI (5)

Janaki is the eldest lady in all of six ladies in Coupe. She was married at the age of eighteen and her husban When Janki got married she didn’t know the real meaning of marriage and her responsibilities as a wife in a family where she is supposed to play the role of an ideal Indians housewife.

 “All through her girlhood marriage was a destination she was being groomed for”.

 From her childhood she had been taught that a husband is an equal to God and it is her duty to serve him “He is your husband and you must accept whatever he does” .She realizes that her life is not her own life as it’s wholly dedicated to her husband and to her son.  She is always snagged between home and society

 “Indian women are deeply linked to social, cultural, religious and regional features and their identity is thus multi-layered”

.Throughout her life Janki’s husband has been an outline for her and never leaves her alone.

“I am a woman who has always been looked after. First there was my father and my brothers; then my husband. When my husband is gone, there will be my son. Waiting to take off from where his father left” .

The entire life of an Indian woman is fully dedicated to her husband and to her family. d was of twenty –seven. It was an arranged marriage.

SHEELA (6)

Sheela is the youngest girl in the compartment.  She is only fourteen years old and hardly recognizes the meaning of masculinity and femininity. But Sheela has to face the sourness of the femininity as her friend Hasina’s father tries to seduce her.  He swabs her upper lips with his forefinger. “Thereafter, Sheela mopped her face with a hanky each time she entered Hasina’s home” .Sexual exploitation of a girl child displays the dark side of masculinity. These incidents are humiliating and insulting for women. Most of the time girls feel themselves unable to share these shameful experiences with their family members or others. Sheela decides never to go to Hasina’s house. Sheela loves her Grandmother Achamma so intensely that she always thinks about her Grandmother’s death. Her grandmother was one who at the age of sixty nine was self confident and courageous. She was considered as a model for Indian women, a manifestation of femininity. Every night before going to sleep, she speckled her face and neck with calamine lotion. She thinks, “If she were to die in her sleep, she would do so looking her best. Her children, of course, dismissed it as a sign of age and its concurrent eccentricity.” Sheela called her as Ammumma. When she dies, Sheela speedily eradicates the thin stands from her chin and brushed almost all weak hair on her head. She rubbed one of her aunt’s foundation into her face and decorated her with heavy jewellery. 

KARPAGAM (7)

Karpagam is a widow and a childhood friend of Akhila. She has courage to wear the kumkum and colorful clothes. Akhila was surprised when she knew this and asked her about her family reaction on this.

“I don’t care what my family or anyone thinks. I am who I am. And I have as much right as anyone else to live as I choose. Tell me, didn’t we as young girls wear colorful clothes and jewellery and a bottu? It isn’t a privilege that marriage sanctions. The way I look at it, it is natural for a woman to be feminine. It has nothing to do whether she is married or not or whether her husband is alive or dead”.

Akhila is fascinated and says “Karpagam, are you real or are you some goddess who has come here to lead me out of this” .Through her work she conveys that women want to make themselves free from the restraints of tradition. She wants to live a free life in male dominating society.

CHARACTER IN THE NOVEL

1.     Katherine Webber – An Anglo- Indian girl , a colleague of Akhila

2.     Hari - Akhila’s affair

3.     Ebenz Paulraj – principal and Husband of Margaret shanthi

4.     Jagdeesh – Prabha Devi’s husband

5.     Murugesan – upper – class man raped Marikolanthu

6.     Muthu – Marikolanthu’s son

7.     Hasina – Sheela’s friend

8.     Achamma – Sheela’s grandmother . Sheela calls her as Ammumma.

9.      Padma – Akhila’s sister

10.   Narayan and Narasimman – Akhila’s brothers

11.  Niloufer –Akhila’s Colleague

12.    Pattabhi Iyer – Akhila’s Father

13.   Koshy—Superior to Akhila’s father

14.  Karpagam – a widow and a childhood friend of Akhila

15.  Siddharth—Janaki’s son

16.    Jaya – Siddharth’s wife and Sarasa Mami’s wife

17.    Prabhakar—Janaki’s husband

18.    Akhilandeswari or Akhila – protagonist

19.    Margaret Shanthi – a chemistry teacher

20.    Prabha Devi—An accomplished house wife

21.  Janaki—Wife of Prabhakar

22.   Sheela—A fourteen year old girl

23.   Marikolanthu—The daughter of a poor farmer, who works in the Chettiar Kottai. She is an unwed mother.

24.   Shanmugam – Marikolanthu’s father , a poor farmer

25.   Sridhar – the second son of Chettiar

26.   Sujata Akka – The wife of Sridhar
   

BY -   S. YUVALAKSHMI