Two sisters is a debut novel by Mary Hogan. It narrates a story that centers on Muriel who always felt as an outsider in her own family. Her parents only want to have two children but, somehow, she is born as the third child in the family. However, Muriel learns to overcome the doubts and insecurities that exist in her family. The punishment was authored by Rabindranath Tagore. The setting is in India, and the story revolves around two hardworking brothers who both had wives. Giribala is a short story by an Indian prolific writer by the name Mahasweta Devi. In her works, she attempts to expose the injustices and oppressions that women in India, especially the rural areas, undergo while offering them solutions on how they can free themselves from these bondages. In the three works, women are treated as less important individuals than their male counterparts as they are given lesser roles such as home keeping and bearing children.
In the Punishment, it can be deduced that women are treated as second class human beings; as if they do not matter. The two brothers leave behind their wives at home as they go to work in the farm. The two brothers spend the entire day working in the farm without even taking a lunch break. The women are expected to stay at home and prepare lunch for the men. Tagore (964) puts it thus: “when the brother Dukhiram Rui and Chidam Rui went out in the morning with their heavy farm-knives, to work the field, their wives would quarrel and shout.” This is very discriminatory as the men are given a purpose of working in the fields and are given names, whereas the women are reduced to shouting and quarrelling. The women are treated as though they do not really matter.
Women are oppressed by their husbands meaning they are seen as inferior to their husbands. In the Punishment, women are depicted as being tired of being oppressed and bossed around by their husbands. This was the common trend among women in India in the recent past. When Dukhiram asks his wife for food after coming back from the farm, his wife, Radha, tired of being commanded around, shouts at him. The husband kills her because of that.
The boy child is more valued in the family setup that the girl child. Muriel, on being born a third child, is not liked much in her family and she has to overcome huge challenges as a young woman growing up. From being traditionally expected to stay at home and take care of children, women have risen to occupy senior positions at workplaces. Muriel grows up to find an admirable job in New York City. She demonstrates that women, too, can occupy positions in big organizations and live independently without requiring to be married off and being dependent on their husbands. It is clearly evident that women are their own enemies. Muriel’s mother does not like her but instead she prefers Pia (Hogan 76).
Women are treated as the property of men. The role of women as depicted in Giribala is that of having no voice of their own. Giribala is married off by her father to a man named Aullchand when she is barely fourteen years old. She is forced to work as a maid servant in her own house so that she can be given food by her husband. She cannot walk out of her marital home. “A girl’s by fate discarded, lost if she’s dead, lost if she’s wed” (Devi 278). They clearly have no voice of their own.
Women are expected to suffer in silence as it is viewed as the right thing to do by the society. Women, once married, are expected to persevere in their marriages and never walk out of their homes. Within a span of five years, Giribala already has given birth to five children; a boy and two girls. The girls are sold off to prostitution by their father when they are merely ten years old. This shows that women have no control over their bodies. It’s the male who are the ultimate decision makers. Unable to beat the fact that her two daughters are prostitutes, she decides to quit her marriage. The society condemns her for taking that decision. The society sees no fault in Aullchand decisions and instead an accusing finger is pointed at Giribala (Devi 275).
Clearly, women are given the role of homemakers and are treated as the property of men. The three literary works attempt to highlight the plight of women in the various societies. It is only through highlighting these oppressions and injustices directed at women that the society can be made to abolish them.
Works Cited
Tagore, Rabindranath. “Punishment” Ed. Martin Puchner. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. 964–70. Print.
Devi, Mahasweta. "Giribala." Bardhan, Kalpana. Of Women, Outcastes, Peasants, and Rebels: A Selection of Bengali Short Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. 272-289. Print.
Hogan, Mary. Two Sisters. HarperCollins Publishers, 2014. Print.
