As I have previously mentioned in class, The Home and the World legitimately pissed me off. Now, I feel like such a girly girl admitting this, but I actually do enjoy a good romance every now and again, and I don’t even mind the whole love triangle thing every once in a while. What annoyed the crap out of me in this instance was how stupid Bimila was being. Now I know I can’t even begin to understand Purdah, or the immense shock of freedom, but my goodness, if this was how every woman acted when they got a chance at a life out of the home, it is no wonder they kept them locked up. I don’t care how alluring the unknown is, if you are happily married you have no business acting like a slut in your husband’s home, I’m sorry. I’m sure some of my annoyance was with the way the novel was translated, and I missed some of the nuances of the story I might otherwise have gotten, but still. In the same way, if educating women turned out so disastrously for Nikhil, it’s no wonder they don’t educate their women. Also, as far as Sandip goes, he is a vile creature in my opinion. Whereas Bimila can beg innocence and ignorance for her actions, Sandip knew exactly what he was doing. They might not have had a bro code in Bangladesh back then, but NOWHERE and in NO time is it socially acceptable to go into your friend’s home and try to steal his wife. That is downright low anywhere. I understand that this book had a much deeper meaning than any of what I am saying now, but I have trouble getting past that fact due to how annoyed I was while reading it, to be honest.
Oh dear! Not that one cannot dislike a character from a novel that one is reading, but it is very important that the opinion is presented in a considered and thoughtful way. Otherwise your opinion seems to stem from not having understood the complexities of the text; it also takes away from your credibility as a reader.
ReplyDeleteThis class is in part about learning to do that. So will will talk about this in class. But I'd like you to work some more on Bimala as a literary character and write another post (or edit this one). You don't have to love her, but you do have to understand the character that Tagore has sketched out for you. You have to work harder to gain access to something that does not fit within the framework of things you already know and understand. That includes more than cultural differences; that includes examining some moral standards that you use to understand the world. The world (as this class in World Lit. will present)is way more ambiguous, difficult, and challenging to understand than our individual ways to make sense of it. The least we can do is suspend judgment and try to understand things for what they are.