International Journal of English

and Literature (IJEL)

ISSN (P): 2249–6912; ISSN (E): 2249–8028
Vol. 11, Issue 1, Jun 2021, 35-44
© TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.

KAMALA’S DAUNTING SUBJECTIVE “I” TO PRESENT WOMEN’S SUFFERINGS

ANUPAMA PADHI
Associate Professor, Khariar (Autonomous) College, Khariar Sambalpur University, Burla, India
ABSTRACT

Kamala Das is the pioneer champion to lead the feminist writing in the Indian women English Poets. Intrepidly with her
own identity she laid the causes of the traumatic situations of the Women in the milieu of patriarchal culture being
dominated by man. Through her poetry in English she exposes how a woman is exploited since her childhood as a
daughter, as a lover, as a wife and as a mother in the society. Surprisingly she is intrepid to present woman as a human
being having the normal physical passion in her. She champions the causes of women’s sufferings as a “loud poster” to
represent them. Seeing to the then Indian milieu, Kamala’s venture of her straightforward candid expressions surprises
all. But, in addition to it, more surprising is that she does not take any guise or hide her identity and presents the
women’s sufferings keeping her subjective “I” in her poetry as the central character. This paper explores the discussion
of her subjective “I” presentation in her poetry.

KEYWORDS: Kamala’s Daunting Subjective & Women’s Sufferings

Original Article
Received: Jan 23, 2021; Accepted: Feb 13, 2021; Published: Feb 24, 2021; Paper Id.: IJELJUN20216

INTRODUCTION

There is remarkable difference observed between the pre-independent Indian women poets in English from that of
the post’s in regards to their self expressions. In various ways, they present the inner beings of their existential
subjectivity. If observed minutely, the “lilting romanticism of Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu” and the “the new
breed of women poets” and the new generations’ poetry bear “poles apart” difference (Jha 233). The modern Indian
women poets no more celebrate the sufferings of “Sita-Savitri syndrome” (Jain xvii) of the Indian culture like that
of the “angel in the house” (Woolf) of the Victorian writers, enduring all sorts of mental oppressions in themselves.
They denounce “the other” position of women, raise voice against that which inferiorises women and centralises
men. Dauntlessly, they lay bare their feelings and desires as women uninhibiting anything within, demanding to be
designated as a human being like man. Out of so many daring Indian women English poets, Kamala Das is an
outstanding poet to champion these causes. The aim of this paper is to explore Kamala Das’s subjective
representation of her womanly “I”, while fighting for the freedom for women through her poetry. The study is based
on feminist reading of Das’s English poetry only, without trespassing to her translation works.

Kamala Das (1934-2009) is one of the greatest women poets of the post-independent India. Her bold,
uninhibited “striptease” articulation of feminine urges has attracted international attention and her poem “An
Introduction” is the only Indian poem that is evaluated to be placed in the Norton Anthology of poetry edited by
Susan Gubbar and Sandra Gilbert. Her autobiography My Story substantiates to the story of a suffering woman
Kamala in the milieu of social and cultural India. Her poetry has been translated into French, German, Swedish, and
Serb-Croat translations. She is placed as the forerunner of feminist women poets of India. She fought very boldly
against the aversion to the domination of men over women. She explores the plights of the love-less dominated life

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36 Anupama Padhi

of a daughter, a lover, a wife, and a mother, in the Indian milieu; all in one womanly subjective form of first person noun
“I”. She places dauntingly the traumatic mind of a woman under the man dominated patriarchal cultured society. She lay
bare the bereaved heart of a suppressed woman in the man-made society. She is too bold and expresses her mind
dauntlessly which includes containing the expression of a woman’s body, woman’s desire and its sexuality in her own
woman identity of “I”. Due to her open and honest feminist voice, she is ranked with the contributions of the Western
feminist voices like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.

Kamala Das introduces herself with much pride, confidence and assertiveness of her Indian brown colour,
language and national identity towards the beginning of her poem “An Introduction” as an Indian “I”:

I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,

I speak three languages, write in

Two, dream in one.

Don't write in English, they said, English is

Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave

Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins

Every one of you? Why not let me speak in

Any language I like? (“An Introduction”)

Her introduction of Indian identity with brown colour endorses her pride feelings and not a trace of any hesitation
is revealed in her comprised words. From the very beginning of the poem “Introduction” she lets her readers know that
even if she is weak in politics, she has the capability of remembering “those in power, and can repeat them like /Days of
week, or names of months, beginning with /Nehru” (“An Introduction”).Her satirical introduction cursors at the allegation
that women are debarred of opportunity. She openly places her desire to “striptease” her womanly autobiography:

I must

most deliberately

whip up a froth of desire,

a passion to suit the desire

I must let my mind striptease

I must extrude

Autobiography (“Composition”)

The Times adores Kamala Das as “the Mother of Modern Indian Poetry” in 2009. She has led the traditional
women to be on the path of modernity from traditions through her poetry. Her voluntary willingness to work for other is
expressed as “I am million million people / talking all at once, with voices/raised in clamour” (“Someone Else’s
Clamour”). Kamala places the general women’s longing, grievances and their demands for equality and freedom claiming,
“I am every woman who seeks love”; she explains herself as “the beloved and the betrayer”; she expresses very openly her

Impact Factor (JCC): 7.2152 NAAS Rating: 3.12

Kamala’s Daunting Subjective “I” To Present Women’s Sufferings 37

“endless female hungers” having “the mutual whisper at the core of womanhood” (Naik 209). Seeing Kamala transcending
to a broader aspect of generalising herself Anisur Rahman declares: “all major works of art transcend the personal since the
artist communes with the world beyond his ego” (Rahman 234). In another poem, Kamala further introduces herself as “we
are all alike / we women/ In our wrappings of women love” (“Composition”). In her essay “Why not more than One
Husband”, she voices the same claim of freedom for women as she does in her poetry. How the society threatens to call a
girl “nympho” if she tries to lead a life of freedom is exemplified by Kamala: “Don’t play pretending games. /Don’t play at
schizophrenia or be a /Nympho” (“An Introduction”). She is again seen to be transcending beyond ego and generalising
herself as “we” in the poem. She lay her motive to be a representative of women presenting their traumatic feelings in her
writings:

I am today a creature turned inside

Out. To spread myself across wide highways

Of your thoughts, stranger like a loud poster

Was always my desire (“Loud Poster”)

Her intense desire for freedom from the restricted womanly codes is clearly revealed in her poetry when she
writes: “I wore a shirt and my / Brother’s trousers, cut my hair short and ignored / My womanliness” and exposes
ironically the society’s cultural code meant for women to “put on sarees” and “be a woman”, “an embroiderer” or to be a
cook. Her thoughts of her autobiography My Story is revoked in her poetry where she writes: “I settled down to
housekeeping and sewed the button on and darned our old garments, all through the hot afternoons. In the evening, I
brought for my husband his tea and plate of snacks. I kept myself busy with dreary housework while my spirit protested
and cried “get out of this trip’” (My Story).

To uproot the domination of man over woman, she dauntingly presents herself in her subjective noun form as the
representative of all women. She resembles Sylvia Plath, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Margaret Atwood, Sandra Gilrbert
and some other feminists who vouch to achieve equality and freedom for women. She maintains her subjectivity very
boldly, when the “categorisers” impose upon her to “fit in” and to “belong”, retorting, “Why not leave/Me alone?” She
silences them introducing her self identity declaring confidently, “I too call myself I” and silences them. Such assertion in
Indian women poetry was rarest in Indian English poetry. Her challenging attitude to conventions fascinates Pashupati Jha
and he ranks Kamala Das as “the first Indian woman poet, who has used the smallest pronoun ‘I’ with the greatest
significance” (Jha 235). Dwibedi also gets highly impressed with it and writes: “the woman persona in her asserts an
“indomitable will” and “the spirit of revenge” (To use Milton’s popular phrases), and gives a clarion-call to the weaker sex
to rise in revolt against all kinds of repression and tyranny being perpetrated on it” (Dwibedi 29). This “I am different, I am
an entity” overwhelms him. Kamala is found to be the most individualistic and independent woman poet. Kamala speaks
out in most of her poems in the form of a woman “I”, spoken by her or by her woman persona, awaring the world with the
angst and agony the women are put to under the patriarchal domination of the man-made world through a woman “I” from
a woman’s heart. She openly places her grievance against her husband’s deed of drawing a sixteen year old young boy into
her room saying: “He did not beat me. /But my sad woman-body felt so beaten” (“An Introduction”). Devindra Kohli
observing her poems says: “It ought to be added, however, that the reach and relevance of Kamala Das’s exploration of
that, is any interference towards her identity of “I” is beyond her tolerance and so she urges her complete freedom to be

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38 Anupama Padhi

sustained with her even if society expects her to “fit in” or to “belong” to the conventional trends, to put on “saree” or to be
a “wife” or an “embroiderer”, she exposes her damn-care spirit “to have the freedom to be herself” (Dwibedi 9). Her rigid
and strong disposal of the feminine “I” gives a challenge to the dominating patriarchal society to leave woman’s “I”
without being perturbed. Again, in the same poem, she reinstates with much more force of her existence, her writings and
her etiquettes, when the society imposes her to abide the restrictions meant for a girl and she retorts them with her
resolution:

It is I who laugh, it is I who make love

And then feel shame, it is I who die laying

With a rattle in my throat, I am sinner,

I am saint. I am the beloved and the

Betrayed. I have no joys which are not yours, no

Aches which are not yours. I too call myself I. (“An Introduction”)

Observing such challenging attitude of the women poets like Kamala, Pashupati Jha says: “So far this profuse use
of ‘I’ was an exclusive, arrogant privilege of men; now for the first time a perspective change has come to an Indian
English poetry when a woman poet has the audacity to enter the male preserve; she has of the certainty of an identity and is
sure enough to give shape to that identity through poetic expression” (236). Jha becomes highly fascinated with her
declaration of “I too call myself I” (236). Seeing her frequent assertiveness Dwibedi too becomes highly impressed and
writes: “again and again, she focuses our attention on herself; again and again, she resorts to ‘I’, and ‘my’ and ‘mine’.
What can be a stronger proof of her ‘subjectivism’ than this?” (Dwibedi 44). There may be pitfalls in her poetic expression,
but she is the most remarkable woman poet to explore the various experiences of “I” with confessional candour of self. She
challengingly informs that the autonomy of her “I” is herself. Kamala’s open exposure of the suffering self might have
been quite shocking to the Indian academics during the mid-sixties and in their enthusiasm, they might have labelled her a
shameless showpiece, a festering sore on the conservative Nair face. Yet, it is beyond doubt that Kamala Das represents
“the most significant stage of the development phase of Indian feminine poetic sensibility.” (Dwibedi 60)

As a daughter, Kamala does not hesitate to expose her father’s gender discrimination with her own daughter
identity and asks:

I ask you now without fear

Did you want me

Did you ever want a daughter?” (“Next to Indira Gandhi”).

She also exposes how she was imposed to attend “Thursday Cookery class” and complains writing: “it wasn’t my
cup of tea” (“Next to Indira Gandhi”). Seeing her true voice articulated in the most lively way, Bruce says: “she showed
how an Indian woman poet could create a space for herself in the public world” (152). Kamala, as an intrepid daughter
exemplifies taking help of the subjective pronoun of “me” and “my” the high degree of exploitation of a daughter:

You chose my clothes for me

Impact Factor (JCC): 7.2152 NAAS Rating: 3.12

Kamala’s Daunting Subjective “I” To Present Women’s Sufferings 39

My tutors, my hobbies, my friends,

And at fifteen with my new first saree you picked me a husband” (“Next to Indira Gandhi”, OSK).

She does not forget to satirise for being exploited even during the negotiation of her marriage and openly blames
her family members as “cowards” for the exploitation of her “I” identity subsuming their decisions upon her and writes:

I was sent away, to protect a family’s

Honour, to save a few cowards, to defend some

Abstractions.

Kamala presents the humiliated and deeply hurt mind of a wife by her husband:

I asked for love, not knowing what else to ask

For he drew a youth of sixteen into the

Bedroom and closed the door. He did not beat me

But my womanly-body felt so beaten

The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me (“An Introduction”)

Women are kept as house arrest at home. As a wife when a woman’s original identity gets crushed under the mat
of her husband’s use of his service she revokes against it. In her poem, “The Old Playhouse”, Kamala brings forth her inner
grudges against her husband for manipulation of her “I” by making her used at his services of breaking saccharines into his
tea and offering him vitamins in the right time, losing all her “will and reason”, crushing her originality to a “dwarf”. She
feels “a deep sense of sorrow and remorse at surrendering herself to her man’s physical demands and annihilating her
personality” (Dwibedi 89). She grumbles to get back all the women’s “I” status thus:

You called me wife,

I was taught to break saccharines into your tea and

To offer at the right movement the vitamins,

Cowering beneath your monstrous ego

I ate the magic loaf and

Became a dwarf. I lost my will and reason, to

All your

Questions I mumbled in incoherent replies.... (“The Old Playhouse”).

Kamala thinks that the position of a woman in the form of marriage works like a slave being subjugated by the
family members and Kamala Das’s exposition of “caricature of the role of wife and consequent reduction of personality”
by the man reminds Anisur Rahman’s resemblance of “domestic oppression” (Rahman 15) with Sylvia Plath. She is again
found juxtaposing her feminist view point in a standpoint of her womanly “I” by showing how a woman/a wife / a mother
is used by man as an object:

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40 Anupama Padhi

My man, my sons,

Forming the axis While

I, wife and mother

Insignificant as a fly

Climbed the glass

Panes of their eyes (“A Widow’s Lament”)

The subordinated and pretending life of a woman is presented by Kamala: “I must pretend, /I must act the role /
Of happy woman” (“The Suicide”) and leads her to declare, “If love is not to be had, /I want to be dead”. The woman
persona’s dialogic conversation with the sea too continues with woman form of “I” expression in the poem “The Suicide”
revealing her inner anguish of a dominated life and her urge to be merged at the lap of the sea forever. In the poem “The
Stone Age” from The Old Playhouse, Kamala dauntingly offers the readers to ask her disliking towards her husband saying
in her subjective pronoun of “me”: “ask me, everybody, ask me”, reinforcing that a woman’s choice too counts value and
her existence should be felt by everyone. The poem “The Prisoner” reveals the secret plan that the woman persona chalks
out to escape from the prisoner like bondage of the husband and flee away from the prison: “I study the trappings”.

Kamala as a wife attacks the societal code, where a wife is treated as an object: “Here in my husband’s house,/ I
am trained Circus dog / Jumping my routine hoops each /Day” (Collected Poems1.56-60). Kamala feeling offended at the
annihilation of a woman’s “self” being treated mechanically by the husband with no love and affection for her, again uses
her sarcasm and, identifies woman as a “granite dove”:

You turn me into a bird of stone,

a granite dove,

you build round me a shabby drawing room

and strike my face absentmindedly while you

read (“The Stone Age”)

In another poem, Kamala ironically satirises the exploitation of man over woman very openly in the woman
subjective “I”: “Yet there were advantages, I admit/he was free to exploit and I was free / to be exploited” (“Larger Than
Life Was He”, FOTSKHTS).

Kamala as a woman lover too bears a bereaved heart receiving no love from her beloved. When in search of love
she approaches others she discovers all of them as “swivel-door” and her feelings get expressed thus:

After that love became a swivel-door,

When one went out, another came in.

Then I lost count, for always in my arms

Was a substitute for a substitute. (“Substitute”)

So, she calls her love as “an empty gift, a gilded/empty container, good for show, nothing / else” (“Captive”).And

Impact Factor (JCC): 7.2152 NAAS Rating: 3.12

Kamala’s Daunting Subjective “I” To Present Women’s Sufferings 41

finally being failed in achieving love from her lovers she declares herself as a “captive”: “.....For years I have run from one
/gossamer lane to another, I am / now my own captive” (“Captive”).

Kamala Das dauntingly flaunts her humanly physical desire in her own subjective “I”, when to speak out the
hunger of the stomach in the then time was still considered a taboo. Kamala does not need any disguised identity while
expressing the carnal desire of a woman just as feminist such as Cixous urges that the desire of woman should be spoken
out. Without inhibiting her own identity of “I”, she reveals her salacious desire openly:

Of late I have begun to feel a hunger

To take in with greed, like a forest fire that

Consumes.....” (“The Forest Fire”).

Her confession of her desire emanates from her with the help of an adjective: “It was my desire that made him
male /And beautiful,...”. The candid expression of desire in the female poets like Kamala Das compels Rashmi Bajaj to
write, “sex is a natural desire and an irresistible biological need” (Bajaj 48). Kamala is one of those Indian women poets
who do not try “to hide their shame and suffering behind some mask or persona” (Jha 233). She openly confesses her
spiritual feelings for Krishna too to be melting as her passion: “Everything in me / Is melting, even the hardness at the core
/ O Krishna, I am melting, melting, melting” (“Radha”).Her subjective confession of her carnal desire surprises the readers
further more in degree when she writes: “As I remember, I want no other. /On the bed with him, the boundaries of /
Paradise had shrunk to a mere / Six by two” (“The Invitation”). Seeing her boldness of frankness Devindra Kohli rightly
says, “her poetry is in final analysis an acknowledgement and a celebration of the beauty and courage of being a woman.”
(Kohli 89)

But at the same time, she condemns the forceful imposition of man’s sexual desire over woman in her open “I”
form and writes: “.......I dream of obscene hands / Striding up my limbs and the morgues where the night-lights /Glow on
faces shuttered by the soul’s exit” (“Gino”). Her open condemnation is again revealed again in the poem “Substitute”,
where after knowing that her lover’s love is merely physical sans love she cries to “end it”: “It is physical thing, he said
suddenly, / End it, I cried, and let us be free.” (The Descendents.7). She is found bold enough again in another poem to
condemn man’s love-less passion for woman in her own “me” form: “These men who call me /Beautiful, not seeing /Me
with eyes but with hands”. Kamala Das openly condemns man’s attitude as polluted as he uses the woman’s body as a toy
to satiate his passionate pleasure and putting herself on the anvil she objects:

This body that I wear without joy, this body

Burdened with lenience, slender toy, owned

By man of substance, shall perhaps wither, battling with

My darling’s impersonal lust. (“Gino”)

But, the secret plan she chalks out to get rid of the love-less married life is also disclosed by her: “I shall someday
leave, leave the cocoon /You build around me with the morning tea,” (“I Shall Some Day”). In another poem, Kamala
satirises the use of woman by man writing, “I was just a high bred kitten / Rolling for fun in the gutter....” (Collected
Poems. 99).Same grievance is lay by Kamala again: “....You let me toss my youth like coins /Into various hands.” (“The

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42 Anupama Padhi

Descendants”)

Kamala claims freedom and equality for women through the expression of woman’s body. She lets the world
know through her poetry that woman’s body is not a tool to be concealed. It should be exposed as that of man’s. In
parenthetical “I”, in another poem she expresses the woman’s body uninhibitedly: “...ask me why his hand sways like a
hooded snake/ Before it clasps my pubis. Ask me why like/ A great tree, felled, he slumps against my breasts” (“The Stone
Age”). Seeing such uninhibited frankness of the body, Naik says, “At one point Das seems to surpass even herself, carrying
her frankness to almost frightening limits” (Naik 45-46). The poem, “The Looking Glass” of Kamala works as the mirror
of womanhood at its best baring a woman utmost realistically, uninhibited. She lays woman’s body expressed as naturally
as any other things and justifies Cixous’s exhortation to speak out the body and Kamala makes the “woman body be heard’
and she says that a successful feminist criticism must write woman’s body, must adopt sex-specific rhythms and desires”
(Humm 96). Kamala like Cixous, exhorts women to be honest and express one’s wants as a woman and very frankly
writes: “stand nude before the glass with him/ So that he sees himself the stronger one/ and believes it so”. Kamala
prioritises a woman body candidly: “...and, you so much more/softer, younger, lovelier....Admit your/Admiration”. She
further exhorts women:

.................... Gift him all,

Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of

Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts,

The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your

Endless female hungers. (The Looking Glass)

Irigaray too endorses that women body should be spoken up. Kamala celebrates full womanhood of “long hair”,
“musk of sweat between the breasts”, “the warm shock of menstrual blood”, and to speak out candidly, the “endless female
hungers”. M. K. Naik says: “The most obvious feature of Kamala Das’ poetry is the uninhibited frankness with which she
talks about sexuality referring to “the musk of sweat between the breasts”, “the warm shock of menstrual blood”. And even
“my pubis”.” (208)

It reminds The Laugh of the Medusa (pub.1976), the very famous book of Helene Cixous which had come some
years’ later than the poetry of Kamala. Cixous exhorts there, “censor your body and you censor breath and speech at the
same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard” (880).The Indian Kamala had already stepped into a bold step of
expounding the women’s body and its desire as a claim to fetch an independent recognition of their own and unravelling
“her bodily territories which have been kept under seal” (Medusa 880). Kamala celebrates the woman body that “makes
you woman”, and justifies Cixous’ sayings:

A woman without body, dumb, blind, cannot possibly be a good fighter. She is reduced to being the servant of the
militant male, his shadow. We must kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing. Inscribe the breath
of the whole woman. (Medusa.880)

Kamala Das proves herself the true champion of the later part of 20th century representing women’s sufferings in
the milieu of a man dominated society through her English poetry. What the political campaigns cannot achieve is achieved
by Kamala Das, proving the important role literature bears in the society. She becomes successful in opening the traumatic

Impact Factor (JCC): 7.2152 NAAS Rating: 3.12

Kamala’s Daunting Subjective “I” To Present Women’s Sufferings 43

phases of a woman from the stage of daughterhood to motherhood. Kamala cites out various cases to lay the women’s
problems very boldly with her own real identity of “I” or “Me” or “Mine” like presentation, when even in the 21st century
writers do not dare to fight for women openly and take guised pseudonyms. When feminism had not yet fledged properly
in the western regions, in the 1960s, in India Kamala Das had already sprawled her literary endeavour for women’s
freedom.

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