The Binding Vine by Shashi Deshpande summary and analysis

 

Among the recent Indian women novelists, Shashi Deshpande's contributions are most impeccable. She has emerged as one of the mainstream woman writers in India and has drawn critical attention because of her detailed, sensitive and realistic representation of the predicaments of Indian middle class woman in the domestic sphere. Her major novels include The Dark Holds No Terrors (1980), Roots and Shadows (1983), That Long Silence (1988), The Binding Vine (1992), A Matter of Time (1996), Small Remedies (2000), Moving On (2004) and In the Country of Deceit (2008). The issues and themes in her novels arise from the situation of women at the cross roads of a transitional society, changing from traditional to modern. With rare sensitivity and depth, she portrays the dilemma of the educated middle class Indian woman trapped between her own aspirations as an individual and the forces of patriarchy which confine her. G.S. Amur rightly observes: Woman’s struggles in the context of the contemporary Indian society, to find and preserve her identity as wife, mother and, most important of all, as human being is Shashi Deshpande's major concern as a writer.

Her novels, featuring female protagonists, attempt to give voice for the voiceless and express resistance. Shashi Deshpande’s female protagonists are truly in search of inner strength and her attempt to give an honest portrayal of their frustration, hopes and disappointments makes her novels remarkable in the feminist perspective. Shashi Deshpande, however, resents being called a feminist and maintains that her novels are not intended to be read as feminist texts. she says : when I sit down to write, I am just a writer – my gender ceases to matter to me.  …We are different, yes, but once again the factors which unite us are far more important than the gender differences which divide us . . . I’m a novelist, I write novels, not feminist tracts. Read my novel as a novel, not as a piece of work that intends to propagate feminism.

Shashi Deshpande’s novels, however, reveal her acute sensitivity to the issues involving women and her tremendous sympathy for women. She presents both the weaknesses and the strengths of the women. In her own words, she is portraying in her writings, “[the] ... vulnerability of women. The power of women. The deviousness of women. The helplessness of women. The courage of women.”. She seeks to expose the ideology by which a woman is trained to play a subservient role in society. Shashi Deshpande's novels eclectically employ the postmodern technique of deconstructing patriarchal culture and customs, and revealing these to be man-made constructs.

In The Binding Vine, Shashi Deshpande deals with the agnized existence of a few ladies through the narrative perspective of Urmila (called Urmi). She reveals the despair of two women – Mira, who is a victim of marital rape and Kalpana, who is brutally raped outside marriage and is now on her death – bed. Through this novel, Shashi Deshpande sensitively depicts the trauma of such married women whose bodies are violated by their husbands but who would neither protest nor dare reveal this to anyone for the sake of social and moral security. She also highlights the plight of the women who are raped outside marriage. Such unfortunate victims often prefer suffering in silence to being exposed to the humiliation involved in publicizing their tragedies. Through the voice of Urmi, Deshpande offers us a glimpse into the lives of numerous other women who are victims of one or the other form of violence, oppression or deprivation.

  The novel opens with the narrator-protagonist Urmi’s grieving over the death of her one-year old daughter, Anu. She is consoled by her mother, Inni, brother Amrut and sister-in-law, Vaana. But Urmi cannot forget her loss. Instead of fighting her pain and sorrow, she holds on to it as she believes that to let go of that pain, to let it becomes a thing of the past would be betrayal and would make her lose Anu completely.

It is in this state that Urmi meets Shakutai, the mother of a rape victim, Kalpana, who is on her death-bed. Urmi meets Shakutai on her visit to the hospital where Vaana works. Kalpana is lying unconscious and Shakutai assumes that her daughter has been injured in a car accident. But the doctor, after examining Kalpana, informs Shakutai that her daughter has been brutally raped. Shakutai is shatterd by this news and refuses to accept it. She tells Vaana hysterically, “It’s not true, you people are trying to blacken my daughter’s name”. Later, when she hears Vaana and Dr. Bhaskar talking about reporting the matter to the police, Shakutai cries out in fear, “No, no, no... don’t tell anyone. I’ll never be able to hold up my head again, who’ll marry the girl, we’re decent people, Doctor, don’t tell the police”.

Urmi accompanies the wailing Shakutai to her house on Vanna’s request and from here their association begins. Shakutai blames her own daughter for the rape. She feels that it was due to Kalpana’s boldness and lack of any fear that she met this tragedy. Shakutai tells Urmi:
She’s shamed us, we can never wipe off this blot... She was so self-willed. Cover yourself decently, I kept telling her, men are like animals. But she went her way. It’s all her fault, Urmila, all her fault... I’m not afraid of anyone, she used to say. That’s why this happened to her... women must know fear.

Urmi urges Shakutai to get the case registered as a rape so that the culprit is arrested and suitably punished, but she fails to convince Shakutai whose immediate concern is that the rape should remain a secret. Shakutai seems to be more worried about the scandal that would certainly ruin the family’s name and impair the marriage prospects of not only Kalpana but also her second daughter, Sandhya. The mother’s reaction is, undoubtedly, a reflection of the society governed by the age-old patriarchal norms. Shakutai wants her daughter to suffer in silence.

This incident is just an example of the reality of women’s position in society. A woman in a patriarchal set-up, has no place to go. In Indian social set-up, the parents of a girl do not act boldly and firmly out of fear of society. Instead of bringing the guilty ones to law for punishment, they prefer to suppress the matter because they know all too well the hypocrisies of society. No wonder then, that Shakutai says, “But sometimes, I think the only thing that can help Kalpana now is death”.

The rapist is ultimately discovered to be Kalpana’s uncle, Prabhakar, who had always lusted after Kalpana. Prabhakar is the husband of Shakutai’s younger sister, Sulu. Overcome by an unbearable feeling of despair and guilt, a shattered Sulu immolates (suicide by burning) herself. A grief-stricken Shakutai, who had always adored her sister Sulu, is left behind. In fact, In writing about rape, Deshpande has not attempted anything new but the way she has portrayed this sordid drama is very realistic.

In The Binding Vine, Shashi Deshpande makes a bold attempt to portray the agony of a wife who is the victim of marital rape – a subject dealt with in The Dark Holds No Terrors where the protagonist, Saru, is assaulted at night by her husband who lets out his frustration on his wife as she becomes a successful doctor while he remains an underpaid lecturer. In The Binding Vine, Shashi Deshpande portrays a man’s obsession with his wife and her intense dislike of physical intimacy with him.

Urmi was highly sensitive to the suffering and despair of her long-dead mother-in-law, Mira. She makes a desperate attempt to explore the mind of the young Mira by delving deep into the poems composed by her. Meera’s deepest feelings are expressed in her poems written in the vernacular, Kannada. Urmi carefully translates these poems into English. A careful study of her poems enables Urmi to decipher the essence of the thoughts that Mira had attempted to put down on paper. Her writings reveal her untold suffering due to the forced sexual activity subjected on her by her husband. She could only tolerate in silence the violation of her body. Her humiliation and trauma is expressed, however, in her poems.

Mira’s suffering epitomizes the plight of countless other women who silently undergo similar traumatic experiences in their married lives. The violation of one’s body, even if sanctified by marriage, can be as humiliating and traumatic an experience as rape.

Though the novel The Binding Vine chiefly revolves around the individual tragedies of Urmi, Mira, Kalpana and Shakutai, Shashi Deshpande, subtly hints at the suffering of numerous other women in a sexist society. In a traditional society women are groomed and educated for dependence, for wifehood and for motherhood.

  Mira’s mother, whom she refers to in her diary is another example of a self-sacrificing, suffering woman. Totally absorbed in her role of an ideal wife and mother, she never thought of her individual self. Giving an account of her mother in her diary, Mira writes :
I remember the day the astrologer came home. He read all our horoscopes, told us our futures... Only my mother’s horoscope was not read. ‘Don’t you want to know your future?’ I asked her... she was serious when she said this – ‘What’s there in my life apart from all of you? ... If I know all of you are well and happy, I’m happy too’.

 Mira wonders at her mother’s total indifference to her own life and asserts that she can never be like her mother, “I’ll never think my life, myself nothing, never”. Mira has genuine interest in writing poetry but she is discouraged. Venu tells her, “Why do you need to write poetry? It is enough for a young woman like you to give birth to children. That is your poetry. Leave the other poetry to us men.”. Thus in a male-dominated society, a woman is discouraged to have any identity of her own. Her identity is expected to be merged with and grow from her role as wife and mother.

Through the character of Shakutai, Shashi Deshpande highlights the oppression of women in the lower levels of the society. Shakutai's husband is a lazy, worthless fellow who does not stick on to any job. After the birth of three children, one after the other, Shakutai takes it upon herself to work and support her family. Despite all the sacrifices that she makes for her husband and family, Shakutai is deserted by her husband who leaves her for another woman. While talking to Urmi of her husband, Shakutai says, “That’s been the greatest misfortune of my life, Urmila, marrying that man.”. It is indeed ironical that after putting up with such a worthless husband and struggling alone to bring up her children, Shakutai lives in the fear of being held solely responsible for anything wrong that happens in the family as in the case of Kalpana’s rape. Talking about people's reaction to it, Shakutai bitterly tells Urmi, “What can you expect", they say, "of a girl whose mother has left her husband? Imagine! He left me for another woman, left me with these children to bring up.”

Urmi, the narrator-protagonist, experiences a void in her life due to her husband’s withdrawn attitude and his frequent and prolong absences from home in connection with his job with the Navy. During the long absences of her husband, there are moments when Urmi is overcome by a desire for physical gratification. In her friendship with Dr. Bhaskar, who displays a definite liking for her, Urmi gets ample opportunity for the satisfaction of this urge.

Though independent to some extent. Shashi Deshpande’s women characters are firmly bound by the shackles of tradition and seek fulfilment only within the orbit of family and tradition. Urmi, however, appears to be the most rebellious of Deshpande’s female protagonists. Being acutely aware of the injustices and inequalities prevailing in the society against women, she makes an effort to set things right. She strongly fights on behalf of the rape victim Kalpana and resolves to translate and publish her long-dead mother-in-law Mira's Kannada poems. She also admonishes Vaana, who is a meek and submissive wife, and encourages her to be more assertive. The novel celebrates women’s coming together with other women as friends and companions and sharers of life rather than as rivals for approval by men. The Binding Vine presents a female world in which women come together in a feeling of fellowship.