The Thousand Faces Of Night, By Gita Hariharan
The Thousand Faces of Night was structured around the sexual and marital experience of Devi, Sita, and Mayamma. The strategy adopted by Gita Hariharan was to highlight Devi’s experience by interspersing it with events related to Sita’s and Mayamma’s personal life. These alternative points of view explored the position of woman entrapped in typical male power structures. It portrayed women as vulnerable individuals craving for love and understanding, while all the time being victims of their own gender.
Gita Hariharan’s novel successfully juxtaposed and intermingled the lives of a foreign returned young girl Devi, her artistically inclined mother Sita, an old caretaker Mayamma, to present a picture of the multifaceted Indian woman. The Thousand …show more content…
Fed on the stories of virtuous wives who were instrumental in making their husbands walk on the spiritual path, Devi tried to pull out all the stubborn weeds out of her garden. Failing to pierce the grey, impenetrable walls that Mahesh built around himself, she symbolically decided to grow “a garden of weeds” (58) instead, so that she too might survive like the weeds against all …show more content…
But the futility of the attempt was represented by her inability to understand his music. Eventually, after having rejected existing myths and role models, Devi created a different destiny for herself as she sought to find a renewed meaning to her relationship with her mother. In the end as the strains of music drew the waiting mother and the returning daughter’s bond, each would be able to give herself a specific definition of womanhood. Devi rejected the idea of being a reflection of the male. However, instead of sinking into a despairing isolation, she resolved to rewrite another bond, the female-female one. On the novel this bond derived its power from the women’s previous sense of isolation, from their illtreatment by men, and from their discovery through suffering of the saving grace of shared experience. For Devi, there was a hope and a sense of rejuvenation as the past was erased and the present became an experience to build a future. Devi’s final assertion of her autonomy was thus the celebration of the power of the divine Devi as well as that of the entire community of
Gita Hariharan’s novel successfully juxtaposed and intermingled the lives of a foreign returned young girl Devi, her artistically inclined mother Sita, an old caretaker Mayamma, to present a picture of the multifaceted Indian woman. The Thousand …show more content…
Fed on the stories of virtuous wives who were instrumental in making their husbands walk on the spiritual path, Devi tried to pull out all the stubborn weeds out of her garden. Failing to pierce the grey, impenetrable walls that Mahesh built around himself, she symbolically decided to grow “a garden of weeds” (58) instead, so that she too might survive like the weeds against all …show more content…
But the futility of the attempt was represented by her inability to understand his music. Eventually, after having rejected existing myths and role models, Devi created a different destiny for herself as she sought to find a renewed meaning to her relationship with her mother. In the end as the strains of music drew the waiting mother and the returning daughter’s bond, each would be able to give herself a specific definition of womanhood. Devi rejected the idea of being a reflection of the male. However, instead of sinking into a despairing isolation, she resolved to rewrite another bond, the female-female one. On the novel this bond derived its power from the women’s previous sense of isolation, from their illtreatment by men, and from their discovery through suffering of the saving grace of shared experience. For Devi, there was a hope and a sense of rejuvenation as the past was erased and the present became an experience to build a future. Devi’s final assertion of her autonomy was thus the celebration of the power of the divine Devi as well as that of the entire community of