FOUR WOMEN AND A NOVEL OF SUBSTANCE
By
DALE LUIS MENEZES
We may have heard a lot of stories about the seafarers. These men, generally
from a Goan Catholic extraction, work for nine months of the year and spend the
next three months on leave. While the representation, it can be claimed, has so
far been centered on the trials and travails as well as the scandals of the
tarvotti, the stories of their wives have not been told as much as they should
have been. Also, it must be borne in mind that the stories of the wives of the
seafarers may have been featured in the Romi novels called romanxis; these,
however, have died a sudden death due to Machiavellian machinations and hence
been wiped off from public memory.
Having said so, I do not think that these romanxis were ever successful in
providing a strong woman’s perspective in this tarvotti narrative. In the
recent spurt of Romi Konknni novels, I claim that we have exactly this woman’s
perspective in the form of Sharon R. Fernandes e Soares’ debut novel, Handbag,
recipient of the 2012 Konknni Martir Florian Vaz Award instituted by the Thomas
Stephens Konknni Kendr. Her novel, for me, becomes very interesting as to a
large extent it reflects the reality of the wives or spouses of the seafarers:
their fears, their insecurities, their pathos and their joys. In this review, I
shall compare and assess the work of Sharon Soares with a mini-ethnographic
study that researched and reported on the lives of women living in Bombay and
Goa and whose husbands were seafarers. This study is by Helen Sampson, titled
“Left High and Dry? The Lives of Women Married to Seafarers in Goa and Mumbai”
[Ethnography 6, no. 1 (March 1, 2005): 61 – 8
5].
The novel opens with Lisa, the protagonist, narrating her own life as well as
the lives of three other women of whom we come to know through the agency of
Lisa. These three women incidentally happen to live close to each other.
Veronica is the contemporary of Lisa, with a very young daughter. Flory is an
old woman well past her prime and Helen is a single woman, who, upon her
transfer, comes to the village of Raia as a bank manager. In due course of time
these four women develop a deep friendship that not only provides company for
leisure but also becomes their support group.
Barring Helen, all the other three women are married to seafarers. Flory is
married to Bosco who is now retired and spends most of his time at the local
tavern and beats up his wife regularly. Lisa is married to Russel and Veronica
is the wife of Edmund. If we closely observe the characters of Lisa and
Veronica, we find that both these ladies despite having loving husbands and
pleasant in-laws still yearn for domesticity and the ideal family structure to
be completed. In a way these characters convey the hardships of women who have
to look after the household in the absence of their husbands. This particular
response can be seen in Sharon Soares’ novel. However, the abovementioned study
by Sampson has shown that there can be another response: that of women taking
charge of the household. This response is much more complex as such women “…had
learned to manage finances; deal with mechanics, electricians, and plumbers;
change light bulbs; pay bills; negotiate with bank ma
nagers; and generally undertake a whole range of traditionally masculine
roles. Whilst some told me that they made efforts to revert to their ‘feminine’
role in the intermittent periods when their husbands returned home on leave,
many others explained that they were unable to do so or chose not to do so.
Regardless of their response to their husband’s return, all women living
independently from their in-laws described living lives in which their social
networks and contact with the outside world had expanded as a result of
establishing single family households. Nevertheless many said that they
remained conscious of the continued pressure from their communities to conform
with traditional gender roles.”
Another issue that is tackled in this novel is of the (alleged)
promiscuity and extra-marital affairs. It was one of Lisa’s fears that her own
father who worked in Kuwait was having an extra-marital affair and this she
believed had caused her mother’s death when she (Lisa) was very young. When
such a similar situation is faced by Veronica, where she dreams that her
husband is cavorting with another woman, it is the support group that holds
Veronica together during such difficult times. There are some tense moments
before Veronica realizes that her husband is indeed faithful to her and that
when he would return home, it would be for good. Such a support group, Lisa
feels, could have stopped her mother’s death as her mother was helpless against
the onslaught of wagging tongues in her village. Sharon Soares beautifully
handles this situation in her novel as even in the study quoted above, the
women “…described being conscious of the poor image of seafaring in terms of
its popular association with promiscuity and drunkenness and felt that their
own reputations were particularly vulnerable as a result of the image of their
husbands’ occupation. In discussion of the image of seafarers, women were
particularly conscious of issues of promiscuity.”
Helen, the independent and single woman is the catalyst in awakening
the other three women. However, in this novel, what is portrayed is not a
violent and overt subversion of patriarchy but a subtle strategy where there is
collaboration and support – both from men and women – where the idealized,
traditional structure of the family becomes a much more egalitarian space. This
may not mean that patriarchal structures are done away with but within these
said structures women can negotiate for their own aspirations to be realized.
Although I feel that this novel had the scope of portraying much more
complex responses to the issues (as I have tried to indicate by juxtaposing the
novel with the study of seafarers’ wives), it cannot be denied that Sharon
Soares’ novel is of the utmost literary value. She has ably demonstrated her
prowess by the ease with which she moves from one scene to another, with
characters that are well thought of and deftly handled and how minute symbolism
gets infused in the larger narrative (such as the object and symbol of the
‘handbag’) to produce a serious yet delightful 100-plus pages of fiction.
Finally, there is a need for a talented writer like Sharon Soares to engage
with the broader realm of Romi literature as she can provide, very forcefully,
the much needed and critical woman’s perspective. After all, what is the point
of asking for justice for Romi Konknni if this Konknni is inadequately
represented by women writers and critics?
With its tight editing and a beautifully executed cover by Milan
Khanolkar, this book cannot be missed by enthusiasts of Konknni literature as
well as academics and students of anthropology and sociology who want to
further study the conditions of women whose husbands are seafarers.
Comments/feedback @ www.daleluismenezes.blogspot.com
END OF ARTICLE
Handbag by Sharon Fernandes e Soares (Panjim/Ponnji: Dalgado Konknni Akademi),
2012; pp. 120, Rs. 100/-; Phone: 91-0832-2221688 (Available at Dalgado Konknni
Akademi, Panjim)
Find my writings @ www.daleluismenezes.blogspot.com
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Push thought to extremes
-Louis Althusser
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