Wide Sargasso Sea

Hello Monks...
Here I am going to compare Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea and Character  of Antoinette and Jane Eyre  by applying Feminism and postcolonialism.

Introduction of  Wide Sargasso Sea :

Wide Sargasso Sea, published in 1966 toward the end of Jean Rhys's writing career, was the most successful of Rhys's literary works. The novel was well received when it was first published and has never been out of print. It also continues to draw the interest of academics and literary critics today. The popularity of Wide Sargasso Sea might be based on several factors. The general reader might enjoy this novel for the captivating story of a lonely young woman who is driven to near madness by her need to be loved. Literary theorists, on the other hand, find Rhys's novel rich in the portrayal of the damaging effects of colonization on a conquered people and the debilitating consequences of sexual exploitation of women. Another group of readers, those interested in multiculturalism, might be drawn to Wide Sargasso Sea for the insider's view that Rhys provides of nineteenth-century life and culture on a Caribbean island.

Compare Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea and Character  of Antoinette and Jane Eyre  by applying Feminism and postcolonialism :

    One of the central features of postcolonial theory is that it examines the impact and continuing legacy of the European conquest, colonization and domination of non European people and cultures. It focuses on the power being used by the colonizers to dominate and control the colonized in occupied territories. Among other critical perspectives, postcolonial theory is informed by feminist theory. Feminist theory deals with women’s gender, rights, identity, oppression and their position in society.

    In Wide Sargasso Sea, published in 1966, Jean Rhys tells the story of Bertha Mason (Antoinette Cosway), Rochester’s West Indian first wife in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847). The daughter of a Welsh father and a Creole Dominican mother, Rhys sought to provide a fictional life for a character that, though of the utmost importance for the development of Brontë’s narrative, exists only peripherically, confined as she is to both madness and seclusion in the attic of Rochester’s mansion.In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys uses the Brontë novel as a pre-text for relocating and reinscribing, to use Bhabha’s terms, Antoinette/Bertha in a story of her own. The narrative is divided into three parts: the first, which covers Antoinette’s childhood and youth up to her marriage to Rochester, is told by the protagonist herself; in the second Rochester describes his arrival in the West Indies, his marriage and the disastrous relationship with Antoinette; the third and final part is again narrated by the protagonist. As Rochester himself remarks about his arranged marriage, 

“I have not bought her, she has bought me, or so she thinks” 

    Developing a fever immediately after his arrival, the illness makes it even more difficult for him to understand the local social behavior, especially that of the former slaves. The natural exuberance of the place renders him sick:

“Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. 
The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hills too near. And the woman is a stranger” (WSS 59). 

    Antoinette is still more ambivalent, both in racial and in social terms. The daughter of a white father and a Creole mother, she is part of a decaying colonial aristocracy, now threatened by a black majority of freed slaves. The power scheme in West Indian society is, thus, more complex than the opposition colonizer/colonized would allow.

• As Graham Huggan remarks, 

Antoinette’s status as a Creole “is not only a mark of personal/social instability, but also a model for the destabilization of a set of binary constructs (white/black, insider/outsider, and so forth) which provides a spurious rationalization in Wide Sargasso Sea for the selfprivileging practices of colonial power” 

    In fact, as the old plantations begin to decline, much of the English tradition on the islands is eroded, as we can see in the passage where Rochester describes Mr. Mason’s (Antoinette’s stepfather) room. There was a crude bookshelf made of three shingles strung together over the desk and I looked at the books, Byron’s poems, novels by Sir Walter Scott, Confessions of an Opium Eater, some shabby brown volumes, and on the last shelf, Life and Letters of... The rest was eaten away. (WSS 63)

    There are no simple dichotomies for Jean Rhys. In a mimicry of their own oppression,blacks now discriminate against the impoverished whites. The same, but not quite, as Bhabha would say. Even the slave trade is rendered as a multifaceted historical event, rather than a simplistic exploitation of black people by the whites. In fact, the issue of power is problematized in rather complex terms in the novel. Such conflicting subject positions are acted out in the beginning of the novel, when Antoinette’s only childhood friend, the back girl Tia, cheats her into losing the few coins she  had and steals her nice clothes, leaving Antoinette to return home in Tia’s shabby dress, their positions reversed. After a few conflicting incidents, Tia throws a rock at Antoinette, who remarks: 

“We stared at each other, blood on my face, tears on hers. It was as if I saw myself. Like in a looking glass” (WSS 38).

The second scene is Antoinette/Bertha’s final dream, in which she has visions of her past life in the West Indies. After a detailed description of the sights, sounds and smells she remembers, she tells us:

"I heard the parrot call as he did when he saw a stranger, Qui est là? Qui est là? and the man who hated me was calling too, Bertha! Bertha! The wind caught my hair and it streamed out like wings. It might bear me up, I thought, if I jumped to those hard stones. But when I looked over the edge I saw the pool at Coulibri. Tia was there. She beckoned to me and when I hesitated, she laughed. I heard her say, You frightened? And I heard the man’s voice, Bertha! Bertha! All this I saw and heard in a fraction of a second. And the sky so red. Someone screamed and I thought, Why did I scream? I called ‘Tia!’ and jumped and woke." (WSS 155)

However we may answer these questions, Rhys’s novel interrogates Jane Eyre, reading it against the grain and bringing to light the cultural conventions on which it is built. Jean Rhys reveal the historicity and the naturalized character of the dominant scripts of Western culture. Antoinette  transgress the limits imposed by conventional narrative and refuse to be contained in the roles assigned to them. Antoinette escapes madness by healing the split between self and other and destroying the colonial house in which she is imprisoned. Antoinette is too colorful, too sensuous, too free. She is a polluting threat to the social order that Rochester stands for. 

References :

• BHABHA, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
• BRONTË, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Penguin, 1999 [1847].
• HUGGAN, Graham. “A Tale of Two Parrots”. Contemporary Literature, v. 35, n. 4, p. 643-660, 1994. http://www.accessmylibrary.com. Access January 10, 2009.
• RHYS, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: Penguin, 1966.

THANK YOU 

Assignment: P-205 (Cultural Studies)

 Hello Beautiful People,

This blog is 205 (Cultural Studies) assignment writing on  assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavsinhji Bhavangar University (MKBU).

Name Bhatt Riddhiben D.

             riddhi28bhatt@gmail.com

Sem 3

Roll No. 15

PG year 2020-2022

PG Enrollment No. 3069206420200004

Paper Name 205 (Cultural Studies)

Topic Name Four goals of Cultural Studies

Submitted to Smt. S.B.Gardi Department of English

Four Goals of Cultural Studies

CONTENTS :

1. Introduction

2. What is Cultural Studies ?

3. Four Goals of Cultural Studies :

4. Why is Cultural Studies important?

5. Conclusion

6. Work Sited

Introduction :

Cultural studies is a field of theoretically, politically, and empirically engaged cultural analysis that concentrates upon the political dynamics of contemporary culture, its historical foundations, defining traits, conflicts, and contingencies.So here we see that what is meaning of Cultural Studies and four goals of Cultural Studies.

What is Cultural Studies ?

Culture is a anthropology, encompassing the range of human phenomena that cannot be directly attributed to genetic inheritance. The term culture in American anthropology had two meanings-

(I) the evolved to classify and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively.

(ii) the distinct ways that people live, differently, classified and represent their experiences and acted creatively.

 Culture is central to the way we view, experience and engage with all aspects of our lives and the world around us. Even our definitions are shaped by the historical, political, social and cultural contexts in which we live. Culture is the mode of generating meanings and ideas. This mode of negotiation under which meanings are generated by power relations. Culture is a social phenomena which tends to regularate the mindset and behaviour of people which is set on ancient rules and regularities and experiences. Culture is the identity of particular society and it is the mirror of the society. Culture in a simple way can be said as a particular way of life. Tradition, customs, rules and regulations, norms, artifacts (signs), religions, communities, material things, journey of 'Man' from caves to present day civilization are also culture. opposite of nature is culture. Nature is outside and the moment Man enters, it becomes culture. Whatever which is not nature is culture. All the activities that are done between people on the piece of land and with the other people, culture is the entire range of activities that all the people of the society do. Culture deals with identity. For example, Mahatma Gandhi is the icon of India.

Culural “ Signifying Praises”   a chief concern is to specifying the franicing of the social, economic and political forces and power structure that are said to produce the diverse from Culural phenomena and to endow them with their social “ Meaning” their “ Truth”. The modes of the discourse in which there are discussed and their values and states.   

Nature is something which is outside the control of human beings and culture is the introduction of what humans do and think. Culture is the great help out of our present difficulties; Culture beings the pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which has been thought and said in the world: and through his knowledge, turning of stream of fresh and free thoughts upon our stock notions and habits, which we follow but mechanically. When the things are done by elite group, it is called Culture and when the same things are done by minority group, it s called sub-culture. Elite culture controls meanings because it controls the terms of the debate. Non-elite views on life and art are rejected as 'Tasteless', 'useless' or 'even stupid' by the elite. Culture is one of the two or three terms to define. It is an umbrella term. Literature is one of its discipline. It cannot be understood by one discipline. We are multi-disciplinary. Every discipline studies culture but in a different way.  

Culture   ---->       Cultural Criticism      ----->       Cultural Studies

What are examples of culture?

The following are illustrative examples of traditional culture.

• Norms. Norms are informal, unwritten rules that govern social behaviors.

• Languages.

• Festivals.

• Rituals & Ceremony.

• Holidays.

• Pastimes.

• Food.

• Architecture.

Four Goals of Cultural Studies :

1 ) Cultural studies transcended the confines of particular discipline such as literary criticism.

2) Cultural studies are politically engaged.

3) Cultural studies deny the separation of “high” and “low” or elite and popular culture.

4)  Cultural studies analyze not only the cultural work, but the means of production

1) Cultural studies transcends the confines of particular disciple such as literary criticism or history :

Cultural studies involves scrutinizing the cultural phenomenon of a text- for example, Italian Opera, a Latino telenovela, the architectural styles of prisons, body piercing- and drawing conclusions about the changes in textual phenomena over time.Cultural studies transcend the confine of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history. “practiced in such journal as critical inquiry , representations, and boundary 2 , cultural studies involves scrutinizing the cultural phenomenon of a text – for example Italian opera, a Latino telenovela, the architectural styles of prisons, body piercing and drawing conclusion about the change in textual phenomena over time.

 Cultural studies are not necessarily about literature in the traditional sense or even about “art”. In their introduction to cultural studies , editors Lawrence grossberg,cary nelson , and Paula trencher emphasize that the intellectual promise of cultural studies lies in the attempts to “ cut across diverse social and political interests and address many of the struggles within the current scene.”

Cultural studies is not necessarily about literature in the traditional sense or even about "art". Intellectual works are not limited by their own "borders" as single texts, historical problems or even disciplines, and the critic's own personal connections to what is being analysed may also be described. Henry Giroux and others write in their Dalhousie Review manifesto that cultural studies practitioner are "resisting intellectuals", who see what they do as "an emancipatory project" because it erodes the traditional disciplinary divisions in most institutions of higher education. But this kind of criticism, like feminism, is an engaged rather than a detached activity.

2) Cultural studies is politically engaged:

Cultural critics see themselves as "oppositional", not only within their own disciplines  but to many of the power structures of the society at large. They question inequalities within power structures and seek to discover models for restructuring relationships among dominant and "minority" or "subaltern" discourses. Because meaning and individual subjectivity are culturally constructed, thus they can be reconstructed. Such a notion, taken to a philosophical extreme, denies the autonomy of the individual, whether an actual person or a character in literature, a rebuttal of the traditional humanistic "Great Man" or "Great Book" theory, and a relocation of aesthetics and culture from the ideal realms of test and sensibility into the arena of a whole society's everyday life as it is constructed.

3) Cultural studies denies the separation of “High” and “ Low “or elite and popular culture:

                           “Cultural studies deny the separation of high and low or elite and popular culture.”    I might hear someone remark at the symphony or art museum: “I came here to get a little culture”.

       Being a “cultured” person used to mean being acquainted with “highbrow” art and intellectual pursuits. But isn’t culture also to be found with a pair of tickets to a rock concert?

       Cultural critic’s today work to transfer the term culture today work to transfer the term culture to include mass culture, whether popular, folk, or urban.  The Following theorists Jean Baudrillard and Andreas huyssen of the cultural critics argue that after world war ii the distinctions among high , low and mass culture collapsed , and they cite other theorists such as Pierre Boundiry and Dick Hedbige on how “good taste” only reflects prevailing social, economic and political power bases. For example , the images of india that were circulated during the colonical rule of the british raj by writes like by Rudyard kipling seem innocent , but reveal an entrenched imperialist argument for white superiority and worldwide domination of other races, especially Asians. But race along was not the issue for the British raj, money was also a deciding factor But drawing also upon the ideas of french historian michel de certeau, cultural critics examine.Rather than determining which are the "best" works produced, cultural critics describe what is produced and how various productions relate to one another. They aim to reveal the political, economic reasons why a certain cultural product is more valued at certain times than others. "The Birth of Captain Jack Sparrow: An Analysis" and " Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)"  are some famous works and movies.

4) Cultural studies analyses not only the cultural work, but also means of production : 

Marxist critics have long recognized the importance of such para literary questions as these: who supports a given artist? A well known analysis of literary production is Janice Radway's Study of the American romance novel and its readers, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, which demonstrates the textual effects of the publishing industry's decisions about books that will minimize its financial risks. Reading in America, edited by Cathy N. Davidson, which includes essay on literacy and gender in Colonial New England; urban magazine audiences in Eighteenth Century New York city; the impact upon reading of technical innovations as cheaper eyeglasses, electric lights, and trains; the Book-of -the-Month Club; and how writers and texts go through fluctuations of popularity and canonicity. These studies help us recognise that literature does not occur in a space separate from other concerns of our lives.

Cultural studies thus joins subjectivity that is, culture in relation to individual lives- with engagement, a direct approach to attacking social ills. Though cultural studies practitioners deny "humanism" or "the humanities" as universal categories, they strive for what they might call "social reason" which often (closely) resembles the goals and values of humanistic and democratic ideals.Cultural studies analyzes not only the cultural work but also the means of production

Why is Cultural Studies important?

The Cultural Studies major helps you understand the complexity of everyday life and the way that habits, texts, objects and beliefs are socially patterned and laden with values and meaning. It will provide you with a range of tools to analyse how cultural practices and meanings are produced, circulated and exchanged.

Conclusion :

Cultural studies has evolved through the confluence of various disciplines—anthropology, media studies, communication studies, Literary Studies, education, geography, philosophy, sociology, politics, and others.Cultural Studies criticizes the traditional view of the passive consumer, particularly by underlining the different ways people read, receive and interpret cultural texts, or appropriate other kinds of cultural products, or otherwise participate in the production and circulation of meanings.A key concern for cultural studies practitioners is the examination of the forces within and through which socially organized people conduct and participate in the construction of their everyday lives.

Work Cited :

• Edgar, Andrew, and Peter Sedgwick. 2005. Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

• Kershner, R. Brandon. “CONTEXTS OF CULTURAL STUDIES.” European Joyce Studies, vol. 15, Brill, 2003, pp. 9–20, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44871140.

• Nayar, Pramod K. An Introduction to Cultural Studies. 2008.

Thank You 

Assignment: P-204 (Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies)

Hello Beautiful People,

This blog is 204 (Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies) assignment writing on  assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavsinhji Bhavangar University (MKBU).

Name Bhatt Riddhiben D.
             riddhi28bhatt@gmail.com
Sem 3
Roll No. 15
PG year 2020-2022
PG Enrollment No. 3069206420200004
Paper Name 204 (Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies)
Topic Name DERRIDA AND DECONSTRUCTION
Submitted to Smt. S.B.Gardi Department of English

DERRIDA AND DECONSTRUCTION

CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION

2. Brief sketch of Derrida

3. WHAT  IS DECONSTRUCTION?

4. What do we understand about 'Deconstruction'?

5. What is the use of deconstruction?

6. EXAMPLE

7. Conclusion

8. Work cited 

INTRODUCTION :

"If this work seems so threatening, 

this is because it isn't simply eccentric or strange,

but competent, rigorously argued, and carrying conviction."

- Jacques Derrida

When we read Derrida and Deconstruction some questions are in our mind that Who is Derrida ? What is Deconstruction ? Why is Deconstruction very important to understand literature ?.So now we talk about all these questions and easily understand and solve answers.Lets start…

Brief Sketch of Derrida :

Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique, deconstructive criticism aims to show that any text inevitably undermines its own claims to have a determinate meaning, and licences the reader to produce his own meanings out of it by an activity of semantic 'freeplay' 

(Derrida, 1978, in Lodge, 1988, p. 108).

Derrida is seen as a 'pioneer' in the field of deconstruction, and his work Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences is marked as the beginning of 'poststructuralism' as a movement. According to Derrida we can never transcend language/culture, and any word/concept contains not only a positive but also its opposite. Western thinking, Derrida says, has been founded upon the 'logic' of binary oppositions, such as mind/body, rational/emotional, freedom/determinism, man/woman , nature/culture and one term is always given a more privileged position than its opposite, in a way typical of ideologies.

This view has been brought into psychology by Billig, and in his view of the nature of ideology one is 'persuaded' by the rhetorical force of 'common-sense' and 'lived' ideology such that the privileging of one side of the dichotomy is seen as 'natural' and 'the way things are'. Yet there is no inherent 'logic' to this 'either/or' dualism, says Derrida, because neither part of the binary opposition can exist without the other since both are interdependent and related:

to give anything an identity, to say what it is, is necessarily also to say what it is not. In this sense, presence contains absence. That is, to say that a quality is present depends upon implying what is absent. 

(Burr, 1995, p. 107).

WHAT  IS DECONSTRUCTION? :

*According to M.H.Abraham’s ‘A Glossary of Literary Terms’...

        “Deconstruction”, a applied in the criticism of literature,designes a theory and practice of reading that questions and claims to “subvert” or “undermine” the assumption that the system of language is based on grounds that are adequate to establish the boundaries, the coherence or unity,and the determinate meaning of literary text.Typically, a deconstructive reading sets out to show that conflicting forces within the text itself serve to dissipate the seeming definiteness of its structure and meanings into an indefinite array of incompatible and undecidable possibilities.

*According to Britannica…

        Deconstruction, a form of philosophical and literary analysis, derived mainly from work begun in the 1960s by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, that questions the fundamental conceptual distinctions, or “oppositions,” in Western philosophy through a close examination of the language and logic of philosophical and literary texts.

Derrida’s theory of deconstruction is never about breaking the foundation but it’s all about inquiring into the foundation.  Thus, back-bone of deconstruction is, 

“How we see is, what we see.”

        Deconstruction is a reaction against Structuralism. Structuralists strongly believed that everything has some kind of similar structure which is fixed and absolute. But the Post-Structuralist neglected the idea of Structuralism and said There is nothing like Constant everything is changing.Deconstruction is the core idea of Jacques Derrida’s philosophy. And Derrida’s philosophical theory on Deconstruction is also the main part in this realm. The word “deconstruction” is always tied with the name Derrida.

What do we understand about 'Deconstruction'? 

Deconstruction is an approach to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. ... Deconstruction argues that language, especially in ideal concepts such as truth and justice, is irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible to determine.

If we can think about Deconstruction it means a new way of thinking. We can not particular emphasis on any words because we can get so many meanings from reading any text as a way of Deconstructive reading. So the meaning of Deconstructive reading is that of finding something new which is very Different to define.

Problematic language :

Example: Duster as car or classroom’s Duster

Example: play as  game or As a drama

Example: teacher as woman or as a sir

Example: bat as cricket or as a Insect

What is the use of deconstruction?

So what is the use of deconstruction and how Derrida is important to us.So because of deconstruction examines the internal logic of any given text or discourse it has helped many authors to analyse the contradictions inherent in all schools of thought; and, as such, it has proved revolutionary in political analysis, particularly ideology critiques.

The Principles Of Derrida's Deconstruction :

(I) Differance , trace, and the play of linguistic signifiers

(ii) Derrida’s deconstruction of speech over writing

(iii) What Deconstruction is not/ the limits of deconstruction

(iv) Deconstruction and aporetic thinking

(v) Ethical-political responsibilities of Deconstruction

(vi) Deconstruction and Hermeneutics

Deconstruction and its application :

(1) Free play of Meanings

(2) Decentering the center

(3) DifferAnce

(4) Metaphysics of Presence

(5) Binary oppositions

(1) Free play of Meanings :

Derrida is using the concept "freeplay" in two different ways in this essay. You'll note that in the beginning paragraphs, Derrida asserts that an "event" in the history of the concept of structure has occurred. Simply put, one way of using "freeplay" constitutes its use before this "event," and the other way constitutes the question of its use after it.

The first use of "freeplay" is freeplay in the context of centered structure. There's another idea I'll have to define. Let's take Shakespeare's play "Hamlet" as our example. Most of us read this play in high school and are subject to all sorts of traditional or accepted interpretations its meaning; and of course, it would be absurd to suggest that "Hamlet" is a play about a giraffe and his long, perilous journey through the plains of Africa. It would be less of a stretch (but probably still not acceptable, at least not without a lot of legwork) to suggest that it's a play about the belief in the supremacy of monarchistic rule.

Derrida has another word for it: play. This second notion of freeplay exists both within and outside of the notion of center. It (the spirit of substitution of center-for-center) conditions a center and makes it possible. Just like the existence of a center made the first, limited freeplay possible, so too here the existence of a broader and more fundamental freeplay that is both absent and present makes possible the existence, repetition and replacement of centers. Derrida's second form of freeplay is one that opens up the chance to create new meanings, new centers themselves; it is not limited by the borders of a center of meaning, but makes the creation of those borders (and new ones) possible.

(2) Decentering the center :

Derrida deconstructs the metaphysics of presence. That is to say that according to Derrida there is no presence or truth apart from language. He seeks to prove that the structurality of the structure does not indicate a presence above its free play of signs. This presence was earlier supposed to be the centre of the structure which was paradoxically thought to be within, and outside this structure, it was truth and within, it was intelligibility.ut Derrida contends that, ‘the centre could not be thought in the form of a being-presence’, and that in any given text, there is only a free play of an infinite number of sign substitutions. A word is explained by another word which is only a word not an existence.

There is no a-textual origin of a text. The author’s plan of a book is a text. His realization of the same book is another text. Its summary is third text. A text kindles a text and there is no truth beyond the text that the text seeks to represent or explain. There is no reality other than textuality. The textuality is the free play of signifiers. There is no signified that is not itself a signifier.

In the words of John Sturrock, Derrida seeks to undermine “a prevailing and generally unconscious ‘idealism’, which asserts that language does not create meanings but reveals them, thereby implying that meanings, pre-exists their expression”. This for Derrida is nonsense. For him here can be no meaning which is not formulated, we cannot reach outside language.

EXAMPLE :

 We can find examples of Deconstruction in many films, texts, advertisements etc. Here I want to give one example from a one Guajarati play whose title is 'Ba E Mari Boundary'.

Title : Baa Ae Mari Boundary

Genre : Gujarati Comedy & Satirical Play

Cast: Padmarani,Sanas Vyas

Director: Vipul Mehta

Synopsis:

    BAA E MARI BOUNDARY is a social satirical comedy with its main protagonist being Bharti Bhatia, an old and a lonely woman whose status in her disturbed and strained family is nothing more than that of a piece of furniture. The treatment meted out to her is either full of humiliation or that of indifference.

It is feminist Guajarati play  in which the director wants to show the power of Indian woman. In this play all the actions and dialogues are suitable in a particular situation . In the starting scene the director shows the weakness of Bharati Bhatia (Padmarani), who serves 24 hour for family but in return nothing she gets. She was scolded all the time by her husband, her daughter, and her son, also her daughter in law . No one in her family shows respect towards her. And somehow she also accepts all her plight and never rebels against it. She never thought that she could raise her voice in front of her husband. Then there is the entry of Bharati’s grandson.So when her grandson arrives to India from America and persuade her to try modelling for commercials.To everyone shocks,Bhrati turns into a supermodel and an overnight celebrity.The rest of the play is about how Bharati uses her new found confidence and celebrity status to re consolidate her position in the family and to bring her family closer.

“Deconstruction is also nothing but the inquiry of concealing truth.”

Now let’s try to put these arguments valid with the support of Derrida’s theory of deconstruction.

So this play,to show the power of women, then why does it require a male character as a support to raise her position in family, in society?.Still there is some gap which must be filled. If a woman is strong enough, then she will never need any type of support from men. She can fight for her status in society, she can change herself and raise her voice against violence. But it does not happen in the play. Bharati’s grandson and her childhood friend helped her to become a celebrity.Only after the arrival of her grandson, her situation improved. Otherwise she blindly accepts her fate without arguing. The moral of this play cannot be justified because, still we can see the power of patriarchy in this play.Whatever mistakes her husband did in this play, she (Bharati Bhatia) forgets very quickly and again started obeying her husband. So visibly we can see the happy ending, but invisibly there is something lacking. Firstly her husband orders her in a bitter or cruel way, and lastly in a sugar coated way. The theme of obeying is always there. In the last scene also Bharati goes to London for shooting and her husband also goes with her. And they both said that ‘Haaji Haaji karta karta rakhsu ekmek ne raaj.

Conclusion :

Let us conclude with M.H.Abram’s observation in ‘How to do things with texts?’: - “Derrida emphasizes that to deconstruct is not to destroy; that his task is to “dismantle the metaphysical and rhetorical structures” operative in a text “not in order to reject or discard them, but to reconstitute them in another way”; - that he puts into question the “search for the signified not annul it, but to understand it within a system to which such a reading is blind.”

Work Cited :

• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Jacques Derrida". Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 Oct. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Derrida. Accessed 22 October 2021.

• Fuchs, Stephan, and Steven Ward. “What Is Deconstruction, and Where and When Does It Take Place? Making Facts in Science, Building Cases in Law.” American Sociological Review, vol. 59, no. 4, [American Sociological Association, Sage Publications, Inc.], 1994, pp. 481–500, https://doi.org/10.2307/2095926.

• Hans, James S. “Derrida and Freeplay.” MLN, vol. 94, no. 4, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, pp. 809–26, https://doi.org/10.2307/2906302.

• NUYEN, A. T. “Derrida’s Deconstruction: Wholeness and Différance.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 3, no. 1, Penn State University Press, 1989, pp. 26–38, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25669901.

THANK YOU