"The Sunshine Cat' by Kamala Das: Summary and Analysis The Persona's Feeling of Complete Disillusionment
"The Sunshine Cat' by Kamala Das: Summary and Analysis The Persona's Feeling of Complete Disillusionment
"The Sunshine Cat' by Kamala Das: Summary and Analysis The Persona's Feeling of Complete Disillusionment
Kamala Das
poetry is characterized by frankness clarity and openness. She reflects her
restlessness as a sensitive woman as moving in the male- dominated society. Her
poetry reflects the images of disease destruction, death loneliness, helplessness,
frustration and rejection. Love is a great tragedy which she has to face in her whole
life. In her poem we can see search for true love and of sexual relationship. She in
her poems confesses a number of things related to her own self.
Love, sex occupies a very important place in Kamala Das poetry and constitutes its
central motivating force. In fact, it is the search for true love which inspires her to
write and express her feelings and sufferings. Kamala Das poetry is a picture of her
own experience and observation, her own unfulfilled love and her own sexual
exploitation, frustration and disillusionment which she have to suffer after getting
married.
The Sunshine Cat' by Kamala Das: Summary and Analysis
The Personas Feeling of Complete Disillusionment
The persona in this poem describes her sexual experiences with her husband and
with other men, and expresses her feeling of complete disillusionment with all her
sexual partners. The persona is most probably Kamala Das herself; and she tells us
that, though she had originally loved her husband in the hope that he would love
her too, she no longer loves him because he proved to be a selfish man and a
coward. Her husband did not love her at all and did not even make use of her as a
sexual partner in the right manner. Her husband showed himself to be a keen and
relentless observer when, in sheer desperation, she acquired other lovers and went
to bed with them.
The Personas Failure to Win the Love of Any of Her Sexual Partners
It was her disgust with her husband which drove the poetess to have extra-marital
love affairs. But even these other men, with whom she slept, proved to be most
disappointing because of their selfish attitude towards love-making. She did her
utmost to excite some genuine feeling in those other lovers by clinging to their
bosoms on which there was a thick growth of hair; and she clung to their bosoms as
if wanting to hide her face in their hair. Those lovers were younger than she herself,
and she tried to make them forget everything expect the act of love-making. But
each of them told her that he could not love her though he could be kind
towards her. Thus even they provided her with no real satisfaction, and she could
only shed tears over her disappointment. She was not even able to enjoy any sound
sleep because of her disappointment with those lovers. She wept so profusely that
she could have built walls with her tears, walls to hold her like a prisoner.
Her Husbands Cruelty to Her
The poetesss husband was so cruel to her that he used to lock her in a room
containing books every morning and used to unlock the room only when he returned
home in the evenings. A ray of sunshine fell at the door of that room; and this ray of
sunshine was the only company she had. That ray of sunshine looked like a yellow-
coloured cat; and that was the poetesss only companion. Time passed; and, when
winter came, the suns ray lost its brightness because of the cloudy skies. The suns
ray was now reduced only to a thin line, as thin as a hair. And the poetess herself
had now become so emaciated and thin because of her chronic depression and
despondency that she felt herself to be half-dead and, therefore, no longer an object
of sexual desire on the part of any man.
The Freaks by Kamala Das
Summary:
'The Freaks', a short lyric written in the confessional manner, is written in the first
person point of view. The poem gives expression to the speaker's (the poetess)
feelings as she lies in bed with her husband, when both of them are waiting for the
commencement of their physical intimacy. Though they are waiting for their
physical union, the female partner is a bit disgusted and scared. She finds her
husband to be rather slow in moving his fingers over her body in order to enjoy the
sensation of his contact with her.
The poetess thinks that her partner is not passionate enough or not skillful enough
to be able to arouse in her a really intense desire for sexual union. She then realizes
that her marriage with this man had failed and that, even though they have lived
together for a long time, they vane not really been able to achieve any conjugal
happiness. She thinks herself unhappy and feels the 'coiling snakes of silence' or
emptiness in her heart. At the end, she calls herself a freak or abnormal person who
makes a show of being lustful in order that she may be regarded as a normal
person.
Analysis:
Kamala looks very determined to revolt against the conventional societys definition
of womanhood. Even she challenges the traditional sex roles. In many of her poems,
she brings out the emotional emptiness and sterility of married life and the intensity
of misery of the wife who surrenders to her husband who is repulsive, and with
whom she has no emotional contact at all.
The poem 'The Freaks' begins with a slow movement, representing her indifference
to sex and ends on
an impulsive note, in keeping with the compromise. She must not only surrender
herself to his love making however she hates it, she must also pretend to like it. Her
self-respect insists it; the social customs require it. This is a male dominated world.
A married woman cannot articulate her voice to the filth of her experience. She
must follow the social rules which man has made in a world. She is his subordinate,
his property, an object; she has no right to raise her voice. Kamala Das`s poetry
proves that Indian woman has irritated the typical male sense of courtesy and
modesty. Kamala Das initiates a new age for woman poets by accepting new idiom,
a new standard and new way of expression which reflects a entire denial of the
conventional form of poetic expression of the male dominant culture.
Kamala Das is honest and at times full of anger when she projects and attacks on
male domination. She is a poet of the modern Indian woman, giving expression to it
more openly than any other Indian woman poet.
The motivating force of her notion is love that is frustrating experience. All her
efforts to establish meaningful relations with other show to be fruitless. In Freaks,
poet depicts the disappointment, senselessness and the torment of a woman who
longs for true love but it is denied by her husband who is insensible to her
psychological desires. She is revolted by cruelty of her companion. She feels
trapped by her male ego. Therefore she refused to play the traditional role as a wife.
It is natural that her poems represent a rebellion against male dominated social
system .It shows that in a male dominated world she has courage to emphasis her
feminine sensibility and to revolt against the system. She is proud of her femininity
and does not fail to claim it.
She is conscious of a primary need for true love, psychological need and a desire for
liberty within the family system. In this sense, she is truly liberated woman and a
representative of modern woman who identify her right to sexual fulfillment and
psychological security.
2) "The Freaks," by Kamala Das, is a poem about a couple (presumably a man and a
woman) who cannot arouse much sexual desire for each other, and perhaps not for
anyone.
The man has his hand on the woman's knee, which, the narrator says, should cause
them "to race towards love." Instead, their minds "only wander, tripping/Idly over
puddles of/Desire."
She wonders:
Can this man with
Nimble finger-tips unleash
Nothing more alive than the
Skin's lazy hungers?
The persona in the poem recalls her experience of the sexual act with a lover. (The
persona is most probably the poetess herself). On a certain day, she felt as if a
mans fist was alternately tightening itself and then loosening its muscles. It
seemed to her that the man were forming some firm resolve and then becoming
somewhat uncertain. In other words, the poetess was feeling tortured by her
memory of her experience of love-making with a lover of hers. The lover had gone
away after making love to her, and had not returned. The woman (who, as we have
already indicated, could be the poetess herself) knew that her lover would not come
back, but she could not forget her experience of love-making with that man because
the experience had been a most delicious one. The bitter-sweet of the memory of
her sexual experience continued to haunt her.
The Seas Suggestion to the Woman to Jump into its Waters and Perish
there.
Standing on the seashore, the woman got the feeling that the sea was inviting her
to jump into its waters in order to perish there and thus put an end to her life. The
sea seemed to say to her that she would lose nothing except her miserable life
while it would certainly gain something by swallowing her body and thus adding to
its conquests. The woman, however, told the sea to mind its own business and to go
its own way, leaving her to go her way.
The Womans Effort to Dismiss Her Memories from Her Mind
The woman then recalled how her lover used to come to her in the intervals of his
office-work in order to make love to her. He used to come to her to refresh himself
after his tiring office-work, and he felt warmed in her embraces, remaining silent all
the time. The woman then tried to dismiss this memory from her mind by telling
herself that her lover had gone for good, and that it would be foolish on her part to
entertain any hope that he would return.
The Seas Repetition of its Invitation to the Woman
The sea seemed to repeat its invitation to the woman to enter its waters in order to
put an end to her life. But the woman replied that she wanted to be left alone, and
not to be pestered by the sea. Her thoughts again turned to her lover; and she
realized that she wanted no other lover but the same who had been sleeping with
her and who had now gone away. In bed with him, she used to feel as if she was in
paradise. The bed, six feet in length and two feet in width, was heaven for them;
and, it was only when they left the bed-room and walked together in the open that
they exposed themselves to the much wider space outside where the city was
situated.
The Seas Invitation, Made to Appear More Attractive
The sea spoke to the woman again, urging her to end her life in its waters. The sea
told her that, if she waited for her death to come naturally to her, she would have to
be cremated; and her dead body would then be placed on a funeral pyre to be
consumed by the fire. The sea said that, if she jumped into its waters, she would
meet a cool death, and that she would be able to stretch her limbs on the cool sand
at its bottom and would be able to rest her head on the flowers growing there.
The Woman, Unable to Shed Her Memories of Her Lover
The woman, turning away from the sea, thought again of her experience of love-
making with that lover of hers. Throughout the summer they had been meeting in
the afternoons to make love to each other, and, at the end of the sexual act, their
bodies would lie listlessly on the bed, with their minds rendered incapable of
thinking by the heat of the sun.
The Womans Rejection of the Seas Invitation
The sea spoke once more, urging the woman to put an end to her memories of her
past love-making and the heartache which those memories were causing her. The
sea went on to say that it had waited for a long time for the right person, who would
also be a bright person, like her, to come and enter its blue waters. But this time the
woman replied to the sea that she was still young, and that she still needed that
lover of hers to reconstruct her life and then to destroy it. In other words, she had a
vague hope that her lover might come back to her even though he might again
forsake her. So she told the sea to leave her to herself.
The Womans Final Decision
Then, once more turning away from the sea, the woman said that the sea could wait
and that she was not yet prepared to drown herself in it. And next she spoke in her
imagination to her absent lover and told him that the sea-waves were rushing
violently towards the seashore, wanting to drown her. She had been resisting the
seas invitation but she could not go on resisting it forever. Thus, the womans
monologue ends with her intention soon to give a practical shape to her desire to
commit suicide.