Women to Worship/Rule? Wives, Widows, and Witches in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
American International University-Bangladesh
ABSTRACT
In a patriarchal society, it is observed that men are reluctant to recognize women’s quality to achieve success. Women’s empowerment provides a sense of inferiority complex to the men. In Hinduism, there are several powerful goddesses who dominate the devils and nurture the noble ones simultaneously. “Durga” is one of the most overpowering goddesses of Hindu pantheon and one of the most popular among devotees. Durga; as a woman is known as the destroyer of the demon and the savoir of her husband as well as a helpless god. Woman is also represented as motherland which plays a tolerant and productive entity, allows exploitation, and provides shelter and/or all sorts of facilities to nation. With these parallel images; “powerful” as well as symbol of tolerance, productivity, and healer according to “men constructed myth”, this paper unfolds how women are manipulated to adopt hegemonic femininity. Women dream to see themselves in this “mythic role model”, and ironically, instead of being clapped as an ideal woman, they are being trapped into this vile politics of a male dominant society. The paper is a research about Indian society’s hegemonic maneuvers towards women pictured in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. It is an analytic research, and the method that has been used is fully qualitative and discursive.
KEYWORDS
Patriarchy, Hinduism, myth-construct-images, super powerful goddesses