A few words about the Author:
Shashi Deshpande ,
an Indian English woman novelist, was born and brought up in Dharwar in
Karnataka. Being the daughter of a famous Kannada writer and a Sanskrit
scholar she developed a natural love for reading and writing. A Ph.D in
English (literature), Mrs. Deshpande, also got her degrees in Economics , Law and
Journalism. Though she started her writing quite late, she became a novelist of repute
with her novels entitled ‘The Binding Vine’, ‘Roots and Shadows’,’ The Dark
Holds No Terrors’, ‘If I Die Today’, ‘Come up and Be Dead’, ‘That Long Silence’
( for this novel she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award in 1993), ‘A Matter of Time’,
‘Small Remedies’ and ‘Moving On’ and her short story collections with the
titles ‘The Legacy’, ‘It was the Nightingale’, ‘It was Dark’ and ‘The
Miracle’. The main feature of this novelist is that all her novels have the
woman protagonist. Shashi Deshpande has mainly written about the regional
culture (Maharashtra and Karnataka) which she knew the best.
Theme of love and marriage : Theme is an important element of a novel as theme helps in developing the plot and the valuable messages are hidden in it. A standard novel is generally developed on the themes more than one and this novel of Shashi Deshpande “The Binding Vine” is not the exception of it. Several themes are explicit in this novel and these are :
(a) Theme of male domination or patriarchal power
(b) Theme of woman’s position and their voice
(c) Theme of love and marriage
(d) Theme of human relationship
(e)Theme of justice
(f) Theme of social code of conduct etc.
The theme love and marriage is perhaps more pervading throughout the
novel.
Our society is divided into three stratum- Higher
aristocratic class, Middle class and Lower class families and the matter of
love and marriage is not identical in these three different levels. In this
novel the plot, action and characters are related to the Middle class family
and the Lower class family, the Aristocratic class being absent. In these two echelons
the theme of love and marriage is manifested in different ways. Love may have
different classification like emotive
and impassioned love, sadistic love, perverted love and commercial love,
again marriage may be social or arranged marriage, love marriage and accidental
marriage. In all the different categories love
and marriage gain different shape,
meaning and dignity.
In “The Binding Vine” the theme of love and marriage may be examined and discussed with the help of the lives of the married couples like Mira-Akka and their husband, Urmi and Kishor, Inni and Urmi’s father, Vanna and Harish, Shakutai and her husband and Sulu and Prabhakar. The first four couples belong to middle class family whereas the last two are from lower class. In these two different echelons both love and marriage project different meanings and values, but in all cases love remains unfulfilled and marriage proves meaningless in the true sense of the term. Let us through some light in the inner sanctum of love and marriage of the above mentioned couples.
Mira and Akka are
mothers-in-law of the protagonist Urmi. Mira was considered fortunate enough
when she was married to ,though without taking her opinion, a young man of a
middle class family. Hers was a loving husband who showed obsessive love which
proved torture to Mira. His love was too demanding, oppressive in a sense, and
naturally Mira was afraid of her husband’s advance. True love for a wife was
never cultivated by Mira’s husband to whom love was a sort of physical
gratification achieved through the social institution popularly named Marriage. Mira had no will of
her own, no freedom to say ‘No’ that reduced her to a resented unhappy wife.
She untimely demised in time of child birth, the birth of Kishor. Akka Was
educated and a teacher but she reached at 22, the past marriageable age of that
time, and so she came as second wife, not as a bride but as a mother, mother of
Kishor, to take care of this little child. It was definitely a marriage, but
Akka was unfulfilled as she got neither
love nor freedom from her husband. The conjugal life of Mira and Akka prove
that the better half is exploited and wronged in the name of love and marriage.
The story of
Urmi and Kishor is different as they are
apparently a good couple. Urmi, unlike Mira and Akka, enjoyed unlimited freedom for which Kishor never
questioned. Kishor was caring and tender to her but he was very quiet by nature
which Urmi disliked. In her words : “Kishor will never remove his armour, there
is something in him I will never reach.” Urmi had to accept Kishor; the marriage was normal, the love between them
was not pretentious, yet there was an undercurrent of an inscrutable feeling in
them. For the coldness of Kishor Urmi was attracted to the closeness of Dr.
Bhaskar bur she never proved to be unfaithful to her husband.
The traditional and age old concept of marriage in our society is that the wife would be submissive and the husband is a dominating figure. The wife will always remains passive in taking any decision, passive recipient of husband’s love and active worker in in-law’s house. The perfect examples of it are Inni, Urmi”s mother and Vanna. Both Vanna and Inni do never assert themselves. They are, as if, dragging love to make the marriage meaningful. Sense of equality, sense of dignity for womenfolk were totally absent in the life of Vanna and Inni which Urmi disliked most. These pictures of love and marriage of middle class families are reflected in ‘ The Binding Vines.’
In the lower stratum of society , in Shakutai and Sulu’s family, love and marriage have a different connotation. Shakutai’s husband left her with three children and lived with another woman. Sulu’s husband Prabhakar only lives with Sulu but his mind is full of bad and pernicious intention . He is attracted to his sister-in-law’s daughter Kalpana and wants to marry her, to fulfil his lust, not to show love. The term Love has lost its finer sense and original meaning in the lower class people as love and lust are synonymous to them. Marriage to them is a social process by which the male members get the licence of procreation and the female members gain a person as security. Both love and marriage may be crumbled up by the male members of the lower echelon of society.
The scrutiny of the lives of the married couples in‘ The Binding Vines.’ makes it clear that love is an illusion, it is like a mirage; it is very near to be caught but not easy to catch. Love may be established through marriage but no marriage, either it arranged marriage or love marriage, can guarantee it. Whatever it may be, so long this world be peopled, love and marriage would be heard, would be seen and would be enjoyed in every stratum of society in their own shape, style and meaning.
Ref: IGNOU Study Material.
