Bharati Mukherjee’s Holder of the World provides a criticism of racial constructs by portraying the problems in a white patriarchal society and by exoticizing the Orient through her juxtaposition of a Western world against an Indian one. Assuming the narrative persona of a white woman, Mukherjee shows how three white women, these being Rebecca, Hannah, and Beigh, discover themselves by breaking through racial constructions of what it means to be a part of the Western culture.In line with this, the following discussion extrapolates on how Mukherjee utilizes Hannah Easton’s character as a means of showing the limitations set by racial constructs in understanding both the Western and Indian identities.
Mukherjee’s text reverses the trans-Atlantic movement to show how much Asia, specifically India and Indians, have to offer white American women.Easton’s story becomes a revision of Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, a tale not only of adultery but of miscegenation. In the novel, Mukherjee addresses the unspeakable subject of sexual relations between a white woman and a man of color. In line with this, Koshy argues that the novel incorporates rather than deconstructs Orientalist writings (188). As one reads the novel, it is indeed the case that Orientalist renderings of India as a land of riches and passions pervade the text.It is important to note however that these images occur simultaneously with stereotypes of a severe, duty bound and unbeautiful Puritan New England which may be understood as the Mukherjee’s way of stating that so long as white women isolate themselves from the members of other races, they can only have a limited sense of their own identities which is necessarily circumscribed by white patriarchal standards which become their only frame of reference.
As a result of this, both Hannah and Rebecca, her mother, were oppressed in Puritan New England.Married at fifteen to an elder man, Rebecca’s widowhood three years after her marriage dooms her to experience death in life which is reminiscent of orthodox Hinduism. Finding no place for her vibrant, life-loving self in the Puritan community, Rebecca who sings hymns in “a voice so strong and sweet that it softens the sternest spiritual phrases into voluptuous pleas,” defies all expectations of respectable widowhood and motherhood by riding into the wilderness with her Nipmuc lover thereby leaving her five year old daughter into the care of the Fitches (Mukherjee 27).In order to hide her escape from the Puritan society, Rebecca’s lover stains her clothes with blood to suggest that Indian killed her. Mukherjee juxtaposes these two contradictory narratives, that being the portrayal of a white woman as a victim of savages and the portrayal of a white woman as an agent who controls her life, in order to emphasize the relationship between racial stereotypes and female stereotypes. This is apparent if one considers that by portraying Hannah’s childhood as a result of her mother’s murder by an Indian, she was initially introduced into a world dominated by stereotypes of Indians as savages.
In the later part of the text however as Hannah discovers the truth behind her mother’s disappearance, she recognizes the different forms of untruth caused by the association of certain stereotypes to the individuals belonging to a specific race. The juxtaposition of these two contradictory narratives also highlights the pretext used in colonial India for limiting a woman’s agency. Sharpe argues that the protection of white women’s chastity against men of color has been historically used as a pretext for asserting colonial hegemony (72).She further claims that many white women who were said to have been abducted by natives might have actually chosen a life of freedom with them (Sharpe 72).
Mukherjee’s novel, in this sense, insists on restoring the space for white women’s agency not only through the characters of Rebecca and Hannah but also through her introduction of Rowlandson’s Narrative of Captivity. In the novel, Mukherjee utilizes Rowlandson’s narrative in connecting white women’s sexual volition which was then considered as the primary cause of their nervous ailments.She creates a connection between the stories of Rebecca, Hannah, and Hester Manning by introducing Rowlandson’s text during the time wherein Rebecca was said to have been experiencing a nervous breakdown. During Hannah’s ailment, Hester reads passages from Rowlandson’s text which ignites Hannah’s memories of her mother’s departure with her lover. Although Hester’s voice suggests that white women ought to guard themselves against aliens, her immense interest in the subject shows her desire for sexual freedom (Mukherjee 53).
She states: There were rumors, never put to rest, that not all white women abducted were enslaved or scalped or mercifully sacrificed to the heathen deities… There were sightings, sworn by respectable witnesses, of fair-haired and light-skinned women, English gentlewomen, not barmaids or serving wenches, or the pope’s own whores from the gutters of Paris, moving with bands of Indians on the outer fringes of civilization. (Mukherjee 52) Hester’s emphasis on these accounts coincides with her own desire to be taken by the Natives (Mukherjee 52).This is apparent as she asks Hannah about the truth behind Rebecca’s abduction. The immediate effect of Hester’s readings from Rowlandson’s text conjures contrary images of Rebecca’s choice and volition rather than helpless victimization which allowed Hannah to recover from her nervous breakdown.
One is thereby presented with a new image of Hannah as a female character who has been emancipated from the restraints of a Puritan society as she chose to associate herself with her mother.The effects of this emancipation were specifically apparent as she entered the age of 21. At this age, she shows “hints of noncompliance, of contrary independence” which lowered the prospects of her marriage (Mukherjee 61). It is interesting to note that Mukherjee sets this development in Hannah’s character in the context of the Salem Witch Hunt which epitomizes the hysteria of misogyny. In this part of the novel, Hannah becomes “a counselor of women who fled marriages and husbands they no longer understood” (Mukherjee 61).In conjunction, her foster parents dreaded “that she would personally intervene in some witch’s trial… or, worse, confess to having unnatural thoughts, impure impulses herself” (Mukherjee 61).
Hannah’s existence as an emancipated female in Puritan society and its effects on the society itself was specified by the narrator who claims, “It was just that Hannah is a person undreamed of in Puritan society…She is from a different time, the first person, let alone the first woman, to have had these thoughts, and this experience, to have been formed in this particular crucible” (Mukherjee 59).Mukherjee, in this context, specifies the link between the image of the weak white woman and an oppressive patriarchal society. By utilizing Rebecca’s so called abduction with Rowlandson’s claims, Mukherjee portrays white patriarchy as an oppressive system that represses the sexual inclinations of women. It is important to note however that Mukherjee’s criticism of white patriarchal society is not merely delimited to its manifestation in Puritan New England.
Hannah flees Salem after her marriage to Gabriel Legge.She chooses to flee to India. Mukherjee provides an image of India which is a direct opposite of Puritan New England. In comparison to the stark reality of England, she depicts India as a land of warmth, richness, and fertility (Mukherjee 237). Initially, one may claim that such a description of India leads to the perpetuation of Orientalist stereotypes. It is important to note however that India, in Mukherjee’s novel, serves as a metaphor of a white woman’s emancipated self.
To a certain extent, one may thereby claim that India is already a part of Hannah’s identity even before she entered the country. Such is the case since India represents the female sexuality which is banned from the Puritan New England society. Mukherjee thereby shows that India provides a white woman with a place for understanding and realizing her repressed self. Given that India is a colonized country, this shows that although the patriarchal foundations of Britain were extended to India, the place still provides a counter perspective for a female’s identity formation.
Such is the case since a part of India’s culture remains untainted by the culture of its colonizer. Mukherjee points out that one of the reasons for this lies in the British colonizers’ refusal to recognize this aspect of Indian culture. An example of this can be seen in the case of the Indian bibis. The term bibis refer to all Indian women however an additional connotation was given to the term as the British utilized it to refer to Indian British mistresses.The bibis “were…beneath notice, no more than cute little pets like monkeys or birds…, and devious temptresses, priestesses of some ancient, irresistible and overpowering sensuality” (Mukherjee 131).
The wives of the British men who take a bibi consider them to be invisible (Mukherjee 131). Hannah however refused to succumb to such a conception of a bibi as she left her husband when she found out he had an Indian mistress. Her decision to do so portrays her recognition of the colonial Indian women as well her refusal to succumb to the politics of power which enables the invisibility of bibis.It is important to note that the invincibility of bibis represents the British women’s adherence to their domesticity as their refusal to acknowledge the bibis entails their refusal to recognize their sexual selves. In her plight to ensure this recognition of the sexual identity of women, Hannah herself took the position of a bibi as she became the mistress of Raja Jadav Sigh. As the mistress of the Rajah, it was only then that Hannah was able to reconcile actualize her sexual identity.
Hannah states, The vast inequalities, as well as the injustice and superstitions of India, seemed to her unnatural and unbearable.And yet it was here in India that she felt her own passionate nature for the first time, the first hint that a world beyond duty and patience and wifely service was possible, then desirable, then irresistible. In her former life, the possibility of intense pleasure was as remote from her as the likelihood of abject suffering. (Mukherjee 237) This realization caused by her decision to occupy the position of the Raja’s mistress shows that at the end of The Holder of the World, Hannah recognizes that India has allowed her to recognize the powerful extremes within herself.Such recognition further allowed her to realize the negative effects of both racial and gender stereotypes in the construction of a person’s identity.
In the end, Hannah recognizes that she relives her mother’s life and that she relives it in a condition which allows her greater control of her identity as she exists in a location, that being India, which although affected by British patriarchy remains undefined by it.The development of Hannah’s character in Mukherjee’s The Holder of the World thereby shows that personal identity is not merely determined by racial and gender stereotypes. On the other hand, it is determined by an individual’s willingness to create a coherent whole, within himself, of the different perspectives of perceiving and understanding reality that he? she encounters in his/her lifetime.
