Opression by Men

OPPRESSION BY MEN

In the book, The Kept Woman (Kalyani’s Story), by Kamala Das, she writes about how the police in southern states of India, are acquaintances of women trafficking. It illustrates how woman are oppressed by men of older age. The time period the book has been written is in the late 20th century, when women trafficking in southern India was a substantial issue. Das portrays the idea that male authority can lead to the oppression of woman through forced labor, this idea is shown through the use of diction and imagery: “The policeman came forward and dragged her along a verandah into another room. That was a dark little room. She discovered that it had no windows: “Remove your clothes, otherwise I will undress you myself”, said the policeman.”(Das 20) Imagery in this quote conveys a strong idea of women trafficking or how woman are led to into prostitution. Aminni, the main character here is a victim of forced human labor and is forced into it by the result of physical exploitation by the policeman. The imagery creates an affect brings the reality of the oppression of womankind and how the ‘fairer’ sex has to cope with this reality. Moreover, the imagery of the rooms gives an insight to the reader that connotatively “dark little room” represents her destiny of having a life of working to live another day without being “physically abused” by the police if she doesn’t work hard enough. In this book oppression is a motif of Kamala Das, which she repeats throughout her book. Das herself experienced sexual oppression by her husband that compelled her to write such book proving the point that despite being the weaker sex, they take advantage of woman, are oppressed by men of any age. In addition to imagery, diction that the author has used to portray the idea of forced labor, an example of diction is this quote:
“She felt as if floating in that darkness, flinging out her body like a veil, until the room was flooded with electric light”(Das 31)
These examples of diction, shows the contrast between darkness and light, the light representing the ray of hope she has and the darkness that now representing that she is dead to the world till there is the ray of hope which is equally represented by the light. Furthermore, she loses the ray of hope, when he husband says that she is risk to having a good reputation and now pondering to herself whether the her hope was drunk and useless to her. Now, Ammini’s only way of escaping from the police is suicide and is slowly becoming the inevitable. The quote above gives strong support to the idea that darkness has prevailed over good, but is it always going to be that way? Is what she can only hope for now. “Calcutta…All she could see was fat and plum officers and merchants and no women around.”(Das 34) The effect that quote gives to Ammini is reminding her with the fact that she still is in a male dominated society and that the hope is sagging day by day, furthermore that destiny can’t be taken for granted and cannot be changed. The ultimate price that a woman has to pay for being a woman is being born in the wrong gender because if wee see in the book and correlating it to Indian society all you hear of women is being raped, killed, roasted, sold, gangraped. The second price is being in the wrong crowd at the wrong time as we see in this story, even If the fault is not even her’s. I believe that women shouldn’t be oppressed by men because it gives a wrong impression of matured men and should be counted as not conforming to societies rules. Forced labor or other forms of labor should not exist in society if it gives a bad vibe of a countries society. These men might be sexual relaxation by oppression but it shows that women don’t have equal rights as men and that also shows that. The suffragette movement this was perhaps the beginning of movement for women’s emancipation in the west, contrary to popular belief held in parts of the subcontinent today women in ancient India held an exalted status and were virtually considered at par with men as a goddesses.