Value of Suffering in Markandayas Nectar in a Sieve Essay -- Nectar S

Value of Suffering in Markandayas Nectar in a Sieve Kamala Markandayas Nectar in a Sieve portrays its positive cleaning woman characters as rarified sufferers and nurturers. The cause of her suffering springs mainly from poverty and indispensable catastrophe. The women are from the rural sections of society. They are the daughters of the soil and have inherited old-hat(p) traditions which they do not question. Their courage lies in meek or at times cheerful way sic of facing poverty or calamity Meena Shirdwadkar, Image of Woman in the Indo-Anglian Novel (New Delhi Sterling, 1979), 49. Rukmani, the main character, and her daughter ira display suffering hroughout the novel. Rukmani works hard and is devoted to her gentle husband. She endures comfort after blow from life poverty, famine, the divorce of her barren daughter, the deaths of her sons, her daughters prostitution, and finally her husbands death. When she controls te emotional cener of her life, her relationship with h er husband, threatened by the discovery that he fathered some other womans sons, she neither strikes out at him nor crumbles Disbelief first disillusionment anger, reproach, pain. To find out, after so many years, in such a barbaric way. ... He had known her not once that twice he had gone back to give her a second son. And between, how many times, I thought, bleak of spirit, while her husband in his impotence and I in my innocence did nothing. . . .At last I made an effort and roused myself... It is as you assure a long time ago, I said wearily. That she is evil and in good order I know myself. Let it rest. She accepts the blow and moves on in life. In addition, when her son Raja is murdered, even her thoughts do not express rebellion. She moves from nu... ...osites of Kunthi. Their justice originates in their acceptance of suffering, whereas Kunthis evil originates in her refusal to sacrifice herself for others. As ideal images, Markandayas heroines correlate with Shirwadka rs conception of how early Indo-Anglian novels portray women as Sita-like characters. By fulfilling pagan values, however, Rukmani and Ira find in their way of lifenot only suffering but also a sureness and inner peace. Shirwadkar claims that women in later novels drop off even the satisfaction of this fulfillment, because they find themselves trapped between the traditional and recent requirements for women. Earlier images of calm, enduring women change to new ones, of frustrated women caught between the Sita-Savitri variety and the modern, Westernised woman. Works CitedMarkandaya, Kamala. Nectar In A Sieve. New York Signet Fiction, 1995.