Mahashweta Devi’s Mother of 1084: Disrupting the Normative Hegemonic Institution of the Family (original) (raw)

This is the idea of the paper. It incorporates a slightly Marxist feminist perspective that basically works on the premise that we are all agents in the production cycle like cogs in a wheel and we have different roles to play to keep the production cycle going and all institutions and arrangements in society that we see are determined by economics. Men and women through their different roles in the cycle of production create a society which in turn shapes them. Marriage is a contract which has economic reasons and the family acquires the status of a hegemonic institution because it is instrumental in facilitating production and in furthering the interest and the material wellbeing of the state. The man works for the state, the woman works for the man and she also reproduces so in other words she brings in more workers or caretakers which will contribute to this cycle of production. I have taken up Mahashweta Devi’s MO1084 and I am looking at how she is trying to disrupt the family as a hegemonic institution and critiquing its functioning just as a mere tool of the state which undermines individual growth and well-being of a person. So we have grieving mother Sujata who has lost her son to the Naxalite movement and she is the only one who is mourning his death. But not publicly. Because they belong to a particular social class, the Bengali bhadralok or the bourgeoisie their actions and reactions and even the dynamics within the family are determined and governed by their class consciousness. So the Brati the dead Naxalite son who has brought bad name to the family is reduced to a number 1084 and disowned in many ways by the family. They don’t discuss him, they obliterate him from their thoughts and they go on as if nothing has happened. Because that’s whats best for the family and the family name and the family business. Except Sujata. She is torn between conforming to middle class standards and mourning over her dead son. And if she is seen to be grieving she allows herself to be labelled as strange, not dutiful enough to her husband and his reputation. So devi gives us a glimpse of this family where no true bonds exist either between the couples, all the married couples share a very perfunctory arbitrary relationship. They are just married to each other because it is socially correct to remain married. There is no bond between the children and the mother because they are in different camps playing the game of capitalist patriarchy. SO through this model of a dysfunctional family devi exposes the decay and the damage which submission to the state machinery can cause to a family and how the family in turn because of its puppetlike existence can be detrimental to the well-being of the individual, how it can lead to estrangement and frigidity and ostracism and marginalisation and finally death. And the paper of course attempts a very close reading of the text to substantiate and consolidate this argument.