Imagining the Subaltern: Mani, Nussbaum and Personal Agency

Mani's *Contentious Traditions* reveals that the debates within the British colonial government in India regarding the practice of *sati*, or widow burning, framed the issue within the context of British tolerance for local religious custom. As a consequence, government action leading up to an outright ban on the practice in 1829 concerned itself primarily with locating and accomodating a "scripturally sanctioned" and voluntary practice of ritual suicide, while outlawing practices such as coercion that were seen as contrary to, if not prohibited by, what a small group of high-caste Brahmin clerics determined constituted Hindu scripture. Given the hegemonic power ascribed to indigenous religion by the colonial authorities, as well as the legal emphasis on indentifying those circumstances in which the widow's free-will might be manipulated or overwhelmed, within official discourse "[t]he widow nowhere appears as a subject-in-action, negotiating, capitulating, accomodating, resisting. Instead, she is cast as eternal victim: either a pathetically beaten down or coerced creature or a heroic person, selflessly entering the raging flames unmindful of pain. What distinguishes the two is the question of her consent." (Mani 31). The widow is either at the mercy of her relatives and local clerics, or she is submitting to the compulsion of her faith; never is her decision concepualized as fully rationalized, and freely negotiated. One particularly interesting feature of the legal and political discussion of *sati* is the way in which, for nearly forty years, it neatly sidestepped the very difficult moral question of whether a relgious or cultural institution that requires a woman to sacrifice herself on the flames of her husband's funeral pyre, voluntarily or not, should be tolerated at all.

I would like to suggest that, within legal discourse in particular, the imagination of a subaltern--which I would identify broadly as a rhetorically constructed subjectivity that has been uniquely deprived of choice or agency with regard to a particular circumstance--such as the victimized widow in *sati* discourse, is often used to deflect legal discussions away from thorny ethical issues onto either purely legal or at least more clearly defined moral foundations. My choice of the familiar term is deliberate, because the language of legal discourse is quite often conflated with the language of advocacy, that is a language that speaks for an Other that lacks the political power or technical skill to enter into the debate him- or herself. In making this argument, I will address three areas where I believe we may observe this process in action, in the official debates surrounding the death penalty, gay and lesbian marriage, and abortion. By relating these three areas of cultural discourse on a structural level with one another as well as with the debate over *sati* as characterized by Mani, I do not mean in any way to imply a moral or social equivalence between Hindu widows, death row inmates, homosexuals and pregnant women. Rather, I want to explore how the language of agency, or lack thereof, seems to inflect similarly the discussions on each of these widely divergent social questions. In each the subaltern seems to stand in for and permit the discursive avoidance of an unspoken, and perhaps unspeakable, disruptive rhetorical subject, whose unsaid presence nonetheless continues to haunt the discourse.

Of the three subjects that I have chosen for discussion, the construction of the rhetorical subaltern in the legal and political discourse concerning the death penalty comes closest to that of the widow in the widow-burning debate. Like *sati* the state-sanctioned execution of criminals is viewed by many governments and societies as a barbaric and inhumane practice. Also, similar to *sati*, execution as a form of retribution or justice arguably receives scriptural sanction in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition that still strongly influences American governmental and social institutions. The two practices are by no means morally equivalent, yet both have been historically condemned as human rights abuses. When discussing the death penalty, the most effective legal arguments against it have centered around the figure of the wrongly convicted innocent, the victim of an imperfect and not infallible criminal justice system who, like the drugged widow forced to burn, shifts the debate to the question of flaws within the system, away from an examination of the morality of the institution itself. By focusing on the problem of what we should do about those who are convicted by mistake, we can avoid altogether the question of whether we are justified in condemning to death those who are not. And hovering behind the figures of the wrongly accused are the spectres of those who, although they may be few and far between, would rationally weigh the consequences and knowingly choose death over life imprinsonment. Some may call them sociopaths; others may call them martyrs. Even if they do not exist outside of the discourse itself, as concepts they pose such a threat that anti-death penalty advocates have fashioned a discursive vocabulary that effectively erases them. In doing so, however, they postpone a confrontation with the central issue in this debate, whether death as a criminal penalty is ever justified.

Shifing from an examination of how the figure of the rhetorical subaltern operates within a discourse that challenges the existence of a particular governmental or religious institution (e.g. *sati* or the death penalty), the next part of my discussion moves to a consideration of how the rhetorical subaltern figures within a discourse arguing in favor of the acceptance or expansion of an institution or practice. We can find such an instance in the current debate in this country about gay and lesbian marriage. For the most part, those who advocate in favor of allowing marriage or civil unions between same-sex partners hold firmly to the belief that homosexuality is a question of biology, as opposed to personal choice. Thus, in a certain sense, homosexuals are rhetorically figured as the victims of genetic destiny, rather than as subjects exercising personal agency. Without taking a position on the question of the biology and/or sociology of homosexuality, I think one may nevertheless observe how reliance on biology permits the advocate to argue that gay and lesbian unions should be permitted without appearing to sanction or approve of the so-called homosexual "lifestyle." Though this may be an effective rhetorical strategy in some situations, by refusing to confront the opponents of such unions on the issue of whether, if sexuality is a choice, the government should engage in a program of compulsory heterosexuality, it is a strategy that implicitly valorizes the (perhaps wholly theoretical) "choice" of heterosexuality. In this case, reliance upon the rhetorical subaltern allows proponents of same-sex marriage to avoid naming or addressing the possibility of an agentive sexuality that challenges traditional categories and resists accepted classifications. Regardless of whether or not sexuality is biologically determined, on a basic level it does involve the excercise of personal choice, and this debate necessarily involves the question of whether the government should be in the busincess of influencing our choices regarding sexual and life-partners.

Finally, I would like to focus upon a debate in which both sides rely on a rhetorically constructed subaltern figure. Opponents of abortion rights use the powerful figure of the unborn child in order to avoid talking about the figure of the pregnant woman. In pro-life discourse, the woman is erased. She becomes a mere vessel for the life of the *innocent* child; the implication being, of course, that the pregnant mother is *guilty*. She has engaged in sexual intercourse, as as a result, we get a rhetoric of pregnancy as punishment or consequence. Yet, abortion rights advocates also rely on a rhetorical subaltern, the woman who has become pregnant as a result of rape, incest, or failed birth control. This is the woman pro-choice advocates clearly feel comfortable protecting; she is the woman who allows them to avoid discussing the woman who uses abortion as birth control, or the woman who uses it as a means to select the sex of her children. Therefore, on the pro-choice side, too, we are left with the idea of pregnancy as consequence, and in a debate that is ostensibly about women's reproductive freedom, the language of subjective female agency is curiously under-developed, and occasionally completely absent.

In theorizing the idea of the rhetorical subaltern, I am hesitant to conclude that imagining the subaltern is an ineffective discursive strategy. The suspension of the death penalty in Illinois, judicial decisions striking down obstacles to same sex unions, and *Roe v. Wade* are all, at least in part, the result of successful deployment of the rhetorical subaltern. Legal theorists from Stanley Fish to Cass Sunstein have argued that the law is by its very nature a conservative institution, the stability of which depends upon its resistance to sweeping change through the use of highly formalized discursive strategies. Nonetheless, I think we can learn a great deal from examining what must remain unsaid in order for legal discourse to be effective. Because what remains unsaid, the thing that legal discourse talks around, might actually be the point, the reason we have a debate in the first place. Nussbaum's cultural universals have received a great deal of criticism, but I think perhaps, Nussbaum may simply be naming some of those issues that are really at the heart of many feminist debates, naming them and taking a stand on how we should decide them. In legal discourse, it seems to me that imagining the rhetorical subaltern is useful to the extent that it allows us to critique and reform institutions from the inside by imagining those who are victimized and silenced by them. In the end, however, the debate may finally come to a point at which we have to judge the value of the institution itself, and in that moment, imagining victims may be less productive than imagining ourselves as agents empowered to effect social change. I also think that, by looking at legal discourse critically, we can see where it falls short, and possibly identify those questions and concerns that it cannot address effectively because it does not yet have a vocabulary to contain them. Finding those moments of deflection, where legal discourse refuses to center on the issue at hand may provide some insight into what additional social concerns, beyond those explicitly stated, might be implicated in a particular legal decision or argument.

Dialogue: Links to Additional ENGL 6600 Blogs

For easy convenience and navigation, here are the links to the blogs kept by my fellow students: Gabriel, Shannon, Amber, Sara, Jessica Walker, and Jessica Williams.

Coalition Building: Lorde, Mohanty, Rich and the Question of Feminist Activism

In "Feminist Encounters: Locating the Politics of Experience," Chandra Talpade Mohanty suggests that, "at least in the U.S. academy feminists no longer have to contend as they did in the 1970s with phallocentric denials of the legitimacy of gender as a category of analysis." Having read the article and contemplated Mohanty's thoughts on a "politics of location," I find myself wondering what, if any, epistemological or political value Mohanty theorizes for the category "woman," as opposed to the other categories--race, social class, ethnicity, geographic residence, sexuality, etc.--that are discussed more specifically. As George W. Bush marches toward what pundits are tentatively predicting will be another campaign victory with the strong support of millions of women, I occasionally find myself doubting whether "woman" as a political category lacks the significance it had just 20 or 30 years ago, and whether such an observation does stem from any residual phallocentrism in my own political consciousness. In addition, when reading or hearing about the factionalism that seems to hinder or even perhaps obstruct completely consensus or coalition building among women, I also often question whether it might be useful on occasion to divorce, or at the very least, distance woman-centered political activism from academic feminist theory. Mohanty quotes Bernice Johnson Reagon as observing, "You don't go into a coalition because you *like* it. The only reason you would consider trying to team up with someone who could possibly kill you, is because that's the only way you can figure you can stay alive." I am not suggesting that academic theory is not useful in a political project that works against the oppression of women. I am contemplating, however, the possibility that, at a certain point, theory needs to step aside and allow political activism to step in, that, if we are to change anything, eventually we have to set aside our differences and work towards whatever agenda we can agree upon.

Anyone watching, reading, or listening to coverage of the Republican National Convention should understand how vital such a step is in U.S. politics. A political party dominated by rising moderate pro-choice superstars, and where the Vice President publicly disagrees with the President on exactly how far the federal government should go in preserving the paradigm of heterosexual marriage, nevertheless managed to agree upon one of the most socially conservative Republican platforms in U.S. political history, one that includes a strong stance against both reproductive choice and gay and lesbian marriage. Consensus and coalition building play an even more important role in parliamentary governments that are not dominated by a two-party system. For example, politics in Germany and Israel have been plagued in recent years by the "my way or the highway" stance of right-wing nationalists. Finally, on the international stage, the UN has been weakened by internal disagreements over how to handle genocide in Africa, the global AIDS crisis, and of course, unilateralism in the war in Iraq. I think examples such as these show how getting anything done on a national or international level requires those involved to put aside what might be long-term differences in order to work towards change in the short term. I think that this is a fact that feminist movements often lose sight of, and their effectiveness (or at least the public perception of their effectiveness) as advocates for legal and political change suffers as a result.

In an interview with Adrienne Rich, speaking about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Audre Lorde suggests that creative endeavor is what keeps an oppressed group struggling for change from going over the edge. In the essay, "Poetry is Not a Luxury," Lorde provocatively argues that, "Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before." Lorde's observations highlight the perceived distinction between a creative discourse--of fiction, poetry and personal memoir--that is seen as capable of containing women's experience and the academic discourse--of observation, theory and objective analysis--that sometimes lacks this capacity. While I agree that the distinction is often a real one, I believe that these two discourses can be made to meet in the rhetoric of advocacy. Advocacy, of which political and legal discourse are two of the most obvious examples, is partisan, it is a discourse in which the speaker often must take a position on a particular question and advocate that it should be decided in a particular way. In the language of advocacy, the discourse of legal and political universals can be transformed to accommodate the realities of individual or communal experience. Advocacy is also a discourse that is designed to build consensus and coalition. It is a discourse that starts from the position that consensus does not exist and that in order to reach it, we must search for its foundations and build an argument demonstrating that it should. Although polemic fiction has been maligned by literary critics throughout its history, I am fascinated by the way in which it can turn art into a true act of political resistance and a force for change.

Perhaps my taste for fiction with an agenda explains why I am attracted to theorists such as Nussbaum, hooks, and Mohanty. In spite of their siginificant differences, they are united in the view that feminism involves activism and a reclamation of agency. Critical theory and academic feminism are valuable because they require us to understand that few truths are actually "self-evident" and political solutions are never "one-size-fits-all." Yet, although I think Nussbaum perhaps goes to far in theorizing "universals," I also believe that at some point we have to make a judgment call and decide that some ways of doing things are "wrong." Judgments should be based on more than the Western, bourgeois code of moral ethics, and solutions should be tailored to deal with the social and political realities of the culture that implements them in a way that maximizes the agency of the women and men who will be most immediately effected by political or legal change. I think that ultimately, what I take away from Lorde, Mohanty and Rich is that building an international coalition of women is a goal worth striving for. Women, as a class of cultural, legal, and historical subjects, do and have suffered from patriarchal oppression. Yet, oppression has many different forms, and perhaps activism inevitably must always take place at a local, or at most national level in order to be truly effective and responsive to the needs of those who will be most affected by change.

Identity as Commodity: Hulme, Lorde, Mani, and Narayan

From the start, the critical response or outcry concerning Hulme's receipt of the Pegasus Prize for Maori literature has influenced our discussion of *The Bone People*. From Stead's condemnation of the novel as a work by a "Pakeha which has won an award intended for a Maori," to Fee's somewhat more moderated critique of the general project of a White writer attempting to write as Other, *The Bone People* has engaged us in an inquiry into how and whether the author's race, gender, and other socio-cultural identites should influence reception of a particular work. Working within the field of cultural criticism, Narayan has suggested that even though "oppressed groups, whether women, the poor, or racial minorities, may derive an 'epistemic advantage' from having knowledge of the practices of both their own contexts and those of their oppressors," we must nevertheless be wary of "idealizing or romanticizing oppression" in a way that "blind[s] us to its real material and psychic deprivations." Expressing a similar concern for the ways in which dominant discourse may tend to stereotype, abstract, or idealize the experiences of oppressed groups, Mani describes how she has confronted a demand from Western audiences that she live up to a standard of "authentic" non-Western experience that has little or no connection to reality. Both Stead and Fee, and to a lesser extent, Narayan and Mani nonetheless seem to deliniate an authorial space that is off-limits to non-Western writers, a space within which the socio-economic or cultural identity of the author operates as a kind of intellectual currency that can be used to acquire access. Although *The Bone People* does not necessarily explore the question of whether identity as part of an oppressed group is an essential component of authority when one is speaking of certain subjects, its exploration of a related question does arguably provide some insight regarding this issue. In particular, the construction of Kerewin as a Maori, or at least a non-Western figure, requires us to examine whether cultural identity is something that, like a commodity, can be purchased.

All of the markers or indices of Kerewin's non-Western identity are commodities in one way or another. Her circular tower, her collection of Maori jades, her I-Ching divination tools, and even the leisure that allows her to pursue life as an eccentric fisherman/shaman/wise woman have all been bought with lottery winnings. She has rejected the one intrinsic marker of her Maori identity, her family, and they are absent through most of the narrative. Even the scene between Kerewin and her brother is not narrated directly, but is related analeptically through Joe's observation. In evaluating Hulme's characterization of Kerewin in particular, I ultimately must agree with Stead's evaluation of Hulme's writing style in general: "Her uses of Maori language and mythology strike me as willed, self-conscious, not inevitable, not entirely authentic." Kerewin's characterization is all the more striking in how it contrasts with Hulme's portrayal of Simon and Joe. In many ways, their identities have not been acquired so much as forced upon them. Joe's blackness, his Maori name, his family, his alcholism, all of the things that make him "different," are aspects of identity that he has not chosen. Similarly, Simon's "differences" are of an intrinsic or accidental nature; his deafness, whiteness, and general strangeness are given rather than deliberately acquired. Through a dichotomy in the way it constructs character, the novel, in my opinion at least, establishes two separate frameworks for evaluating character action. Joe and Simon act the way they do because that is the way they are. Kerewin, however, chooses to act. Perhaps that is why Kerewin's betrayal of Simon strikes me as even more dismaying than Joe's continual and repetitive abuse. Kerewin gives Simon over to Joe's wrath because he broke her guitar; Joe is portrayed simply as a victim of circumstance.

As problematic as I find what seems to be a simplistic and embedded essentialism in Hulme's novel, I think the way in which the narrative solves the ethical dilemma with which it ends even more troubling. Put simply, Kerewin manages to buy her way out of the mess that she gets herself into. She builds her spiral home by the sea, encouraging reconcilation with her family, and she funds the diving expedition that leads to the discovery of Simon's origins, a necessary first step before she can adopt him. Even Joe's pain is assuaged with money when he inherits. Granted, the narrative still acknowledges the existence of significant tensions among the three main characters, and between Kerewin and Joe and their extended families. However, the emphasis is, in the beginning, on the new start that Kerewin's money has bought, and, in the end, on the cozy space, again one of Kerewin's purchases, within which the various characters will resolve their difficulties. All in all, in spite of its spiralling rejection of linear narrative formality, Hulme's novel offers a conventional Western ending in which money is the solution for all of the world's problems.

Last week, I wrote about one aspect of *The Bone People* in which the book appears to take a non-Western perspective. This week, I find myself more aligned with Stead or Fee in my evaluation of what seems to me to be the novel's over-arching Western concern with a consumer-like, commodified social and cultural identity. Yet I do think that, in spite of its flaws or contradictions, the novel is valuable in how it explores the various ways in which Otherness can be constructed. At the very least, it offers a partial critique of a critical paradigm in which a White author might always be said to write from a position of privilege, a paradigm that glosses over, or does not completely account for, prejudice against the disabled, the disfigured, or those whose difference resides not in their skin but in some other equally immutable facet of their identities. To return to the question with which I began this essay, I think that a member of a historically oppressed or marginalized group often does have a greater authority to speak with regard to certain issues. However, I cannot agree with Fee that a "White writer should not write as Other." Perhaps my faith in the "free market of ideas" is naive, but I think the critical discourse that has been inspired by Hulme's efforts, and the efforts of those writers who have tried and failed miserably (I would not say that Hulme falls into this category) to write the experiences of a culture that they are not a part of, is a valuable one. Writing fiction is not the same as writing cultural critique, and I think perhaps writers of fiction should feel freer to take chances in writing fiction, while readers should take more care not to assume that a single work of fiction is an "authentic" account that can be generalized to an entire culture.

Working Through Anger: Keri Hulme's *The Bone People*

Before class on Wednesday, I was having trouble writing or thinking anything at all about Hulme's *The Bone People* other than, "This is the most reprehensible book I have ever read." Not that it is poorly written; in fact, at the same time that I was repulsed by the story Hulme tells, I was enchanted by the dreamy quality of her prose and her use of language as a visual artifact. Fortunately, this was not a book I had to deal with on my own. After Shannon's excellent presentation of secondary source material and a very enlightening class discussion, I was finally able to get beyond my initial reaction. My general opinion of the book--that it is ultimately an apologist account of a horrific story of child beating--remains unchanged. Now, however, I can at least begin to explore those aspects of the book that triggered my initial response as well as those that may suggest an alternative, more useful reading.

The thing that disturbs me most about *The Bone People* is how the story seems to blame Simon for the abuse he suffers, while taking great pains to portray Joe as a likeable fellow, and a victim of abuse in his own right. In searching for answers about why I am reading the book this way, I believe that I may have stumbled upon the keys to a more productive, even if still problematic, reading. For me, Hulme's use of Simon as a focalizer for the action in Chapter 8 makes him appear as the agent of his own destruction. He goes to Binny Daniel's house and Kerewin's Tower even though Joe has expressly declared both locations as off-limits. Then, in his encounter with Kerewin, he refuses to return her talisman, the knife, and proceeds to attack her physically. Thwarted in his efforts to injure her person, he settles for destroying her cherished guitar. At the point that Simon leaves the Tower, a possibility remains that his disobedient and disorderly conduct might remain unknown to Joe, but instead of going home, he stays out, destroying the shop windows, slowly and deliberately, just begging to get caught. Had the chapter been focused through another character, Joe or Kerewin, the reader would have had to hear about at least part of Simon's behavior second-hand, because only Simon is present in the scenes where he makes his first visit to Daniel's house and engages in his spree of vandalism. By using Simon as the focalizer for the third-person, external narration, Hulme has emphasized both the linear progression of the behavior that leads to Simon's punishment, as well as Simon's deliberate escalation of his disobedience. Having already learned how Simon forced the confrontation between Joe and Kerewin at the beach, a scene that--to use Barthe's terminology, I would label an index--one has the sense that we are supposed to see him as the master of the situation in Chapter 8 as well. Although, in the end, Kerewin viciously renounces Simon, giving Joe permission to go ahead with the beating, I could not help but feel that she simply fails a test that Simon himself has set for her.

I think that, in Hulme's narrative, Simon unquestionably shares some of the culpability for a crime that has in fact been perpetrated against him by numerous people who simply should have known better. This is the aspect of the story that offended me the most and led to my strongly negative, initial reaction. Making Simon the agent of his own victimization begins to make narrative sense, however, if one begins to think--as we did in class on Wednesday--of *The Bone People* in terms of Christian iconography. As a figure for Christ, Simon would necessarily be the agent of his own sacrifice, understanding that this is the inevitable final step in creating the Trinity with which the book begins: "They were nothing more than people, by themselves. Even paired, any pairing, they would have been nothing more than people by themselves. . . . Together, all together, they are the instruments of change" (4). As Kerewin finally recognizes in Chapter 7, "O God no, Himi's in the way" (291). It is in the act of Simon's sacrifice that Joe, the avenging Old Testament-style God figure, is united with Kerewin, a figure for the more forgiving God of the New Testament. Simon, their sacrificed son, is the bridge between the old world and the new: "But all together, they have become the heart and muscles and mind of something perilous and new, something strange and growing and great" (4).

By re-examining the book in this light, I slowly began to make sense of other facets of the story that had been bothering me. For example, I found Hulme's characterization of Kerewin to be particularly problematic. During my initial read, Kerewin struck me as an extraordinarily selfish construct, and I questioned whether Hulme had offered sufficient motivation for Kerewin's betrayal of Simon. As a figure for the Christian deity, though, Kerewin begins to make sense. She is androgynous, solitary, enencumbered by familial relations, and she prefers vague benevolence to active involvement. Similarly, Joe's character, as a portrayal of the avenging New Testament father-god, is also strangely apt. Joe is more gendered than Kerewin, but he remains relatively asexual. He sets clear boundaries, and severely punishes their transgression. He wants to be kind and loving, but he inevitably ends up seriously over-reacting and then regretting his vengeful actions after the fact.

Although the mythology seems to map well onto Hulme's narrative, I do not think *The Bone People* could as a result be placed into the category of Christian allegory. Allegory familiarizes myth through the use of ordinary symbols that stand for extraordinary things. To make an allegory is to allege that the story one tells is somehow universal or inevitable, part of the natural order of things. What Hulme has done defamiliarizes the story of the Passion; in her narrative the reader can see it as a story of the brutal sacrifice of a son by his father. The myth has been recast, made Other, in Hulme's treatment. For this reason, I think it is possible to argue that Hulme has achieved success in writing from the position of a non-Western other, even if that success is somewhat limited because *The Bone People* merely interrogates the supposed universality of the Western mythological tradition without offering a truly alternative perspective.

Guest Accommodations: Gita Mehta's *A River Sutra*

For me, the image of the guest house on the banks of the Narmada River, with its British accidents and Indian substance, resonates as an apt metaphor for many aspects of Mehta's rich and vivid novel. The house's prim, Victorian exterior both hides and contains the brightly colored, expansive Indian interior. Religious pilgrims and self-important bureaucrats have taken shelter under the bungalow's roof, yet no one, not even the narrator who acts as its caretaker, has turned it into a home. Even on the most general level, as an Anglophone account of Indian experience, the novel shares important attributes with the site where it begins and ends. English in appearance, but Indian in substance, the narrative is a resting place for stories that all seem to begin and end in places beyond it. Similarly, the tale of the primary narrator, a featureless and (I believe) nameless bureaucrat, becomes over the course of the novel an accidental sanctuary for the experiences of others, without ever housing more than the barest details of the life of the narrator himself. Consequently, even within his own narrative, the primary narrator operates not as a character so much as a site or location where the stories of the other characters come to rest or unfold.

And, just as the guest house has to be prepared before visitors arrive, the site of the narrator must be made ready for the stories that come to reside within him. As a novel written by a woman, *River* is curiously devoid of accounts of women's experience or portraits of femininity when it begins. Until the Courtesan appears in Chapter 10, all of the embedded narratives are accounts of men's lives. The female characters are more like flat caricatures, the nagging wife, the selfless elder sister, the faceless object of male desire. Further, during the first part of the novel, feminine experience is not merely unknown, it is unknowable, mysterious and hidden in darkness like the source of the Narmada. The turning point comes during the Executive's Story, the tale of a man haunted or possessed by female desire, when Mehta begins to explore how female experience can be accommodated in what has been established as a "man's world." Until the narrator--a man who never went to the open-air market until after his wife died--can accept at least the possibility that life may not be divisible into male and female spheres of action, he is deaf and blind to the stories of the women around him. The Courtesan's Story, which follows the narrator's moment of enlightenment, is itself a tale of a world still divided between men and women, where men are ignorant of the specialized knowledge of the courtesan, and the women take great pains to keep their secrets. The last two stories, however, of the Musician and the Minstrel, both depict a world in which knowledge is shared between men and women. By the end of the novel, the primary narrative, which on its face appears to be the story of a man in retreat from female desire and longing, has been transformed into a tale of the creative strategies that women use to insert themselves into a cultural history that is still largely controlled and dominated by men.

In reading the novel, I had a strong sense that Mehta seems to be downplaying male/female essentialism in favor of a more balanced understanding that acknowledges significant differences in male and female experience while exploring what happens when men and women work cooperatively to create a narrative in which both can take part. It is a book filled with male mother figures and bad, unhealthy mother-daughter relationships, images that undermine essentialist idealism about the inherently nurturing female nature. Although the Indian landscape is both explicitly and implicitly gendered as feminine, it is a landscape that includes the modern city as well as the idyllic pastoral countryside, avoiding the temptation to establish a dichotomy between female/nature v. male/culture. Even the narrator and his mostly male staff perform a curiously domestic role in maintaining the guest house for visitors. Like the guest house, the India Mehta depicts is something of an amalgam, of religions, classes, genders and cultures, and one does not get the sense, at least I did not, that this is necessarily an evil circumstance.