By Mitra Phukan
One can ask: is the question itself, “Why do women write?” valid?
Why, indeed, do women write? It is arduous, the process, like all worthwhile activities are. To turn out a poem, a story, or an essay, to think it through, and then actually give it shape, is a long course of action.
And yet, sometimes against all odds, people write. Men and women both. At the most basic level, people write because they must. It is a form of expression for them, just as music, painting, cooking or gardening can be, for others. There is a strong urge to creativity in us all, and it takes different forms. A symphony, a piece of embroidery, and everything in between, are all outcomes of this urge to create something beautiful, something that will give joy to oneself, and to others also. It can be as ephemeral as the kolam at the entrance to one’s home, or as permanent as a cathedral in Europe.
But historically, writing has not been seen to be “women’s work”. For the longest time in many societies in our country, women’s writings were trivialised, patronised, or simply ignored. For writing in our country was viewed as a lofty intellectual pursuit, and only men were deemed to be learned enough to be able to undertake it. How could one “allow” women to enter this august company of writers?
And so, to properly understand why women write, we must wrap our heads around its binary: why don’t women write?
Historically, women who write have been conflicted about it. Some wrote under male pseudonyms. Even today, J K Rowling is a gender-ambiguous name. It must be recognised that those of us who write in this country, especially if we are women, and even more so if we are writing in English, do so from a position of privilege. And women’s writings are not necessarily feminist per se. As the Jyanpeeth Awardee Dr Indira Goswami said, she considered herself a humanist. And indeed, to be relevant, the writing, whether by a man or a woman, has to be speaking the truth about the human condition, not about one gender only.
Yet there are many more published male authors in all languages than there are women. Why?
Literacy in our country is low. And when resources are stretched, it is the girl child who is pulled out of school, she is the one who is denied education. Without literacy, how can the girl think of writing?
There is also the fact that a male writer has the support of the household, and almost always a designated space where he can write. In many households, women have to snatch time and space between chores. So many women either write after the household is asleep, or before it awakes. As Virginia Woolf said, a woman must have a room of one’s own in order to express herself through writing. Not just a physical space, though for every creative pursuit, a designated area is definitely important. It is also space for her to think. It is time that she must have to shape the work. This “room of one’s own” is easily available to men. Not so, however, for women, who often write on bits of paper which they squirrel away into forgotten corners.
The drudgery of everyday housework kills creativity. A man can hold a full-time job and still sit down to write. A cup of tea appears at his elbow, the children are prevented from entering his “sacred creative space”. Whereas his equally talented wife, who has a poem or a short story bubbling inside her, has to look after domestic chores, the clamouring children and see to the dinner. If, after everything is done, she does manage to steal away and write a few lines, it shows determination and great perseverance. But this struggle is also a prime reason why women do not write.
Women’s Writing is now being introduced as a subject in many leading universities around the world. It is a new area of study, that takes cognizance of the fact that women writing in the midst of patriarchy is, at the very least, an unusual thing to do. Women’s writings are recognised to be a distinct category because gender shapes experiences, and experiences shape the imagination, and ultimately the writer.
A woman’s experiences are different, in our society as in many others, formed by such things as biology, social requirements and restrictions, and also expectations. Within a patriarchal setup, these experiences are often considered not to be worth the lofty name of being “writings”, proper. She may blog, she may have many followers even, but unless it generates some income, also, she will not be taken seriously.
And if women do write, it is in spite of these hurdles. No wonder her creativity is stilled. Perhaps it finds expression in the stories she tells her grandchildren later. Women are considered to be vehicles of “folk tales”, of such creations as lullabies and other stories told through the medium of both word and melody. These are highly creative efforts, often they sparkle, but they are, by their very nature, ephemeral. But then, in our society, the oral tradition is not given as much respect as the written word is, today. Historically, the permanency of the written word has long been denied to women, their songs and stories dying with them, at best only a memory growing increasingly faint in the minds of another generation.
In a world where “serious” writing has been, overwhelmingly, the domain of men, women write to tell the alternate story. We write to give voice to the subaltern woman, and it can be said that even a queen, because she is a woman, can be subaltern. Our epics are replete with this kind of treatment of women.
There is Draupadi, denied heaven because she loved Arjun the most. Well, was that such a fault? And yet she had to be a wife to five men. How did she feel about it? The epic doesn’t say. But now there is Pratibha Ray’s 1984 novel “Yajnaseni”, which has Draupadi as the central character. And that is why women write: to present another, equally valid point of view.
The act of writing itself could be construed to be a protest. The writings of poet Meena Kandaswamy burn bright with this recapitulating of her experiences as a Dalit woman. For many women, the reason for writing, besides self expression, is also a way of achieving catharsis, of ridding themselves of their demons by telling the story of the traumas of their lives.
For any creativity to take place, the creator has to use the material that has shaped her sensibility. Experience of life, so important for any artiste to create something valid and true, is different, even now, for men and women. This is why Baby Haldar’s book in Bangla, “Aalo Andhari”, translated as “A Life Less Ordinary”, is so significant. Her documentation of her life and her need to write about it has enriched many readers. The world needs to listen to this story, which includes her having three children in quick succession, as a teen, and then fleeing with them to make a life for herself as a domestic worker.
And of course there is another side to the whole thing, too. There are writers who refuse to be classified as “women writers”. They shrink from this label, saying that there should be no gender distinction when it comes to writing.
It may seem, sometimes, that today there are a huge number of women writers working. It’s true that there are more than they used to be. And yet a list of the writers in any mainstream publishing company’s list shows that it is overwhelmingly weighted in favour of men. The reason why there are feminist publishers working these days is because “mainstream” publishers would often not pay much attention to what was seen as “women’s experiences”.
This applies too to the literary awards that are given. Mostly, they are to men, with a sprinkling of women whose work cannot be ignored. One cannot really say it is a deliberate misogyny at play here. It is perhaps social conditioning, and hopefully we shall see the end of it soon.
(The author is a
Guwahati-based novelist,
short story writer, translator and columnist)
Illustration: Pinterest