This question has bothered me for years. Why do we Indians feel compelled to separate literary writing of women from that of men to the extent of organising separate sessions or seminars on “women’s writing”? In essence when we say a woman’s writing, all we mean is that it was not written by a man. Surely what matters in defining fiction is its content, worldview and craft, not the gender of the writer.
As far as I am concerned, I can unabashedly say that I am a woman by birth and a writer by choice. Writing is my profession or chosen path of living or karma.
Members of all genders, male, female and trans write not collectively but as individuals. Why do we need to club writing by members of one particular gender and discuss it separately, as if they were producing fiction as a collective!
Do those who believe in separating women’s writing think that all women write the same way? On the same theme or in the same style or craft with the same aesthetic sensibility and worldview? Do they have the same political beliefs or understanding of the human psyche or humanism?
In other words, is the creative work of Krishna Sobti similar to that of Manika Mohini; is there no difference between the writing of Mridula Garg and Suryabala; between that of Mrinal Pandey and Chitra Mudgal or between the work of Nabaneeta Dev Sen and Bani Basu? The question is not who is better but whether they can be stamped under the same label? Of course they are all women. But the writing of Krishna Sobti is Krishna Sobti’s writing not that of a woman! The same is true of Suryabala, Bani Basu, Chitra Mudgal or Mrinal Pandey. There might be some similarities between two or more writers but that is equally true of male, female and transgender writers.
Each creative work is the creation of an individual. An individual is a small entity indeed but in creative writing, it is an independent one. Each individual has innumerable experiences in life, some of which she preserves spontaneously in her memory. Gradually, they get coloured by her imagination and her utopian or dystopian inclinations. Then in a moment of passionate sensitivity or a trance-like mental state, she begins to weave her feelings and reflections in words.
The gender, mother tongue, religion or caste of the writer are irrelevant. What matters is her worldview and the ability to transcend her personal experiences to make it universal. Photo: Unsplash
While doing that, she leaves a lot unsaid. In fact, what is left unsaid constitutes the core of the narrative; story, novel, poem or drama. When the readers fill in these blanks, it finally flowers into a creative work rather than a description of an event.
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The gender, mother tongue, religion or caste of the writer are irrelevant. What matters is her worldview and the ability to transcend her personal experiences to make it universal.
Though there might be a couple of mutually exclusive experiences bequeathed by nature to men and women, their life experiences are not entirely different. An oft quoted difference has become iconic; that a woman can give birth, a man cannot. Or a woman has menstrual periods, a man does not, a corollary in fact to childbirth.
There is another exclusive experience, seldom evoked in literature of Indian languages. To talk of it is considered obscene by the literary pundits but it makes a substantial difference to our lives. The exclusive reality is that when a man feels sexually aroused it results in a physically visible erection of the genital. Not so in a sexually aroused woman. In fact, a woman can very well fake an orgasm! So in a sensual-sexual relationship, she has the upper hand.
This generates a feeling of inferiority in men which might be one of the reasons making them resort to violence in the sexual act, even rape. Again a man can rape in the sense of penetration in the vagina, while a woman cannot. But there are other ways and means through which sexual assault, degradation or violence can and is practised by both men and women on subordinates or people deemed inferior.
There are, however, a large number of experiences which our culture has made exclusive through traditions, rituals, prejudices or simple repetition. The woman usually gets the short end of the stick in all of them. One disturbing cultural difference is that if a woman falls ill, men of the family do not feel the need to look after her. Nor does society expect them to.
Women, therefore, search for sisters or sisters-in-law or failing that, female neighbours to look after them.
When a man or a child falls ill, the burden of administering to their needs falls on the women. Even a ten-year-old girl is roped in. It’s not in a woman’s nature to play Florence Nightingale; she is forced to play this role by cultural diktat. If women did not take responsibility, men would just die! True, to some extent this cultural diktat has become part of a woman’s nature because after giving birth, she looks after the child as a matter of course, even breastfeeds it. Another thing a woman can do and a man cannot!
This cultural diktat works in all sections of the society: rich, middle class, poor or destitute. The finest literary depiction of this anomaly is found in the celebrated story, Kafan, written not by a woman but a man, Premchand, the doyen of Hindi literature. Kafan depicts this cultural propensity in its cruellest form. When ordinary men remain indifferent to serious illnesses of the women in the family, isn’t it logical for them to grow indifferent to her death in childbirth in a state of penury or destitution? Dalit critics object to the story because they think that Premchand has portrayed two Dalit men as cruel and inhuman. In fact, it is not related to caste but to gender!
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It’s not necessary for all women to have similar experiences and even when they share an experience, it is not imperative that they receive and perceive it or give expression to it in their writing in the same way. While writing, we transcend the actual experience to become one with our character. Each writer uses a different theme, craft and language to delineate it.
Flaubert had rightly said, ‘Language is a cracked kettle on which we play tunes to make bears dance and want the very stars to melt in pity!’
There is an in-built failure in creative writing in that we are forced to use the very words used everywhere else, from the slaughterhouse to the kitchen and library; from lovemaking to singing lullabies.
We use words of common usage but try to frame them in a way as if they have never been said before.We know that is not true. Everything has been said before; everything has been written before. We merely rewrite, still it sounds new because it is imbued with our own worldview, craft and conjunction of words.
To conclude, a writer is a combination of many things, mind, sensibility and memory with a niggling foreknowledge of things to come. But above all, she is alone. Fifty people can build a mural collectively but not write a novel or a story.
This business of segregating sessions on women writers happens only in India. Many countries have invited me to speak at their universities and cultural fora, but never on women’s writing. The subjects ranged from asceticism and hedonism in literature to tradition and modernity or whom do you write for. No one dared suggest that as a ‘second’ sex woman, I could speak only on other ‘second’ sex women, who had the gall to write!
I beg you, let this be the last time that you segregate women’s writing; at least the last time you ask me to speak on it.
Mridula Garg is a Hindi writer and Sahitya Akademi award winner.
This is a statement the author gave in a session on ‘women’s writing’ at the International Lit Fest of Sahitya Akademi in Shimla on June 18, 2022, on the occasion of the ‘Amrit Mahotsava’ of Independence.
Featured image: Nenad Stojkovic/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
This article was first published on The Wire.