Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Two Virgins was another diasporic novel by Kamala Markandaya that was first published in the year 1973. The novel depicts the effect of post-colonial Western culture on Indian traditional society and how if left unchecked, it may lead to the downfall of individuals. The novel tells the story of two adolescent growing siblings from the perspective of the younger sister who is not as beautiful as her elder sister. However, while the elder sister falls prey to the power of beauty, lust, greed, and irrational haunting in life for pleasure. The novel is written in first person narrative style with Saroja, the younger sister being the narrator. Kamala Martandaya used symbolism to present the contrast between the East-West enchantment and disenchantment. The novelist presented the real world from a feministic point of view with the major theme of adolescence, morality, and chastity.
Characters of Two Virgins:
Lalthia is the elder adolescent daughter of a modest family in a South Indian village who lives with her father Appa, her mother Amma, her widowed Aunt Alamelu, and her younger sister Saroja. Her two elder brothers live in the city. Lalitha is a strong headed beautiful, attractive, ambitious, and manipulative girl who knows how to use her power of beauty and is learning the ways of seduction. Saroja on the other hand, is not-so-beautiful. She is a timid and cautious girl who enjoys life's simple pleasures—harvests, rain, the countryside's beauty, local sweets, and so on. Their father Appa is an educated progressive man who believes in the equality of genders, however, is not free of hypocrisy and biases. Lalitha is his favorite daughter because she is the most beautiful baby he ever saw and he often ignores Saroja. Aunt Alamelu is his elder widowed sister who often confronts him for the way he is upbringing her daughters. Aunt Alamelu prefers the traditional approach to life and wishes the girls of the house to understand the limits and moral principles to succeed in society. Appa, on the other hand, would often encourage Lalita to pursue her dreams. Lalita and Saroja would often witness the arguments between Appa and Aunt Alamelu. Saroja is more under the influence of her aunt and she looks forward to her traditional roles as wife and mother, and her roots are firmly planted in the village and its ways. While Lalita represents the effect of Western culture on post-colonial India, Saroja represents Eastern traditional values and the virtues of country life.
Manikkam is another widowed village woman who is on the verge of destitution. She knows about the local medicinal herbs and helps Lalita with some anti-contraceptive medication that fails to serve the purpose. Mr. Gupta is a rich film producer from Chennai who visits the village to shoot a song for his film. Devraj is an assistant to Mr. Gupta. Ms. Mendoza is a British woman living in the village who runs a preaching school. She often encourages the students of her school to adapt to the Western culture and belief system. Chingelput is a successful sweet shop owner of the village who began as a destitute orphan child. Jaya is a school friend of Saroja. Amma is a dynamic character who, like Lalita is very beautiful and likes to be praised by men yet she remains within the moral limits of society and is a loyal subservient wife of Appa.
Summary of Two Virgins:
The novel begins as Saroja introduces the main characters of the story and describes common day life in the village. Lalita is the favorite girl in the village. She is a beautiful growing girl who often succeeds in achieving what she wants. Her Appa encourages her to learn the modern ways of the world and when Lalita asks him to let her join the missionary school of Ms. Mendoza where she may learn English, Dancing, and Political science, he happily agrees to admit her to the costly school. Saroja is not so beautiful younger daughter of Appa who joins the government school. While Saroja‘s Appa upholds Western ideas, modernism, and progressiveness, her Aunt Alamelu is a stickler for Hindu culture and practices all things conventional. Appa and their aunt are continuously at war, and it is through their bickering and arguments that Saroja and further enlightened about the cultural conflict, and the benefits and problems of change. Aunt Alamelu would often encourage Saroja to learn the traditional ways of the village. However, Saroja too wishes to be as attractive as Lalita, yet she understands her flaws and avoids following the same mistakes. Being the younger sister, she has the advantage of observing her elder sister and learning from her achievements and mistakes.
Being not as beautiful as Lalita, Saroja is not much interested in cosmetics and pleasantries. She would rather have fun playing with buffaloes and bullocks. She is a better rider than Lalita and she enjoys traditional village sweets from the sweetshop of Chingelput. Despite not being beautiful, she is an adolescent girl and Chingelput has a special interest in Saroja who will often present her with free sweets to taste. Lalita would often tease Saroja and claim that some are made beautiful while some others are not made so beautiful but being a plain and simple girl Saroja doesn’t feel humiliated. Though secretly, she hopes one day she would turn out beautiful, like a butterfly bursting out of a chrysalis, perhaps when she gets older.
Saroja would often compare Lalita, her friends from the missionary school, and the girls of her own school. In Saroja’s school, the girls wanted to be rounded and curvy, like the goddesses in the pictures, but in Lalitha’s, they were crazy for slimness except for breasts. Most of them didn’t have much of breasts anyway, being in the beginning stage. Saroja would often think that she is not properly growing like Lalita and Jaya, her school friend because Jaya’s breasts were advanced by comparison, rounded and thrusting, whereas Saroja’s were hardly more than swollen nipples. Saroja keenly observes the physical features of her mother, and she also compares that with that of Lalitha’s teacher Miss Mendoza. Saroja compares the cleavage of Miss Mendoza with a dent and speculates on whether Miss Mendoza has any breasts at all and she compares her mother’s cleavage with a hollow like a well in between.
While going through all these adolescent observations of changes, Saroja grows further timid and shy in front of elders but she shares her feelings freely and frankly with Jaya. Lalita on the other hand is self-centered, confident, and frank. She is learning English, Political Science, and Arts in Mr. Mendoza’s school finds Lalita exceptionally talented, and teaches her maypole dancing. Mr. Mendoza introduces the girls of her school to Christian beliefs and the Western lifestyle. This further encourages and emboldens Lalita whose first concern is to explore the liberty of her feminine self. She would often flirt with young guys in the village while teasing them. The "modernism" that Lalitha imbibes at Miss Mendoza's school is only cheap sophistication which has a tinsel quality about it in the shabby social life in a village. Combined with this is her physical attractiveness which is spread with the tepid gloss of raw sexiness.
Lalita is often intrigued by Manikkam, a village woman who lives alone and would often indulge with other married men. She often uses anticonception medications because of which she remains oblivious to things going around her. However, she appears comfortable and happy within her small world.
One day, Mr. Gupta, a successful film producer arrives at the village to shoot for his documentary on village life. He needs a young girl to perform a dance for his film. Ms. Mendoza recommends Lalita for the dance performance and Mr. Gupta readily accepts because he finds Lalita very attractive. However, Lalita is not too happy about this project because being an expert in maypole dance and other Western styles, she wishes to perform a raunchy modern dance for the film. However, being a documentary on village life, Mr. Gupta instructs her to perform a simple traditional village dance. Anyhow, Lalita performs in the film and she becomes instantly famous in the whole village and surrounding area. Lalita already had her ambitions to join the film industry and use her beauty to gain fame. She requests Mr. Gupta to help her out who promises to call her for his next project.
However, many months pass by and Lalita doesn’t hear anything from Mr. Gupta. One day, she decides to leave the village and go to the city to find work in the film industry. She steals some money from her father and runs away from home and goes to the city in search of carte blanche and in pursuit of stardom, but is spoiled in the hands of a filmmaker, Mr. Gupta. Gupta betrays her after impregnating her. When Mr. Gupta, a typical film world personality, had had his fill of Lalitha's sexual charm and has got her with child he sends her back to her village with not so much as a fine sari to her back. Lalitha is quite happy at having enjoyed the glitter and luxuries of city life as Mr. Gupta's mistress. But the family is terribly humiliated and disgraced. Lalitha's father takes her to the city to confront Mr. Gupta for his misdeed. Saroja also accompanies them. Mr. Gupta tells Lalitha's father that she had literally "flung herself at him” and makes it clear that she was a 'wanton'. Anyhow, Mr. Gupta agrees to pay for the abortion and medication for Lalita. While the father is haggling with Mr. Gupta for money for their return journey, Devraj, Gupta's assistant flirts with Saroja and wants to exploit her sexually as Gupta did exploit Lalitha. Saroja is hungry for sexual pleasure as Lalitha has been. Both the sisters have derived this sexiness from their mother but she has, however, greater control over herself and repulses Devraj; particularly because she is afraid that she will come to grief like her sister.
Lalitha’s parents fully support her yet, she is not ready to come back to the village and face the people and the reproaches of society. She decides to leave her family forever and carve her own path alone. Her life completely changes; she chooses to live in her own way because she had catapulted herself outside the orbit of her community. She realizes that even in this modern world, women have no equal rights when compare to that of what men. Her underlying dream of turning into an on-screen character and sparkling as a film star demonstrates a worthless endeavor, bringing about her losing her virtue, She in this manner turns into the objective of her own wrong, mis-set needs. Meanwhile, Saroja wonders why Lalita was forced to abort. She questions why does society have to be the beastly tamer? Why can‘t it let the children of sin — who, the conventionalist, call ‗fruits of unbridled lust‘ — survive? Why can‘t society stop meddling and probing into the lives of others, of innocent children and their unwed mothers? Would the world be less happy, if it had to accommodate them? Perhaps, yes. This is why, they need to be eliminated because there‘s no room for the ‗children of sin‘. If only society was less harsh and more forgiving! Lalita leaves a note on her hospital bed before leaving which says that she is going never to return and that her father must not look for her because it will be fruitless. Despite that, Appa and Amma try their best to find out about Lalita but soon their limited resources start depleting. At last, they decide to return back to the village with Saroja. At the village, Saroja again indulges in her deeds of charm. She goes to Chingleput’s shop who offers her special sweets that he made for Saroja. Although Saroja tastes the sweets, her "tongue was tinctured with the bitterness of aloes" and she starts sobbing. Chingleput decides to make use of the moment and encloses her in his arms. His male organ becomes hard, nuzzling against Saroja’s body. He tells her not to be afraid and that since he was a man he cannot help it. Saroja was not afraid, because "she knew too much, she had gone through too much to be afraid of anything" Saroja graciously manages the situation and comes back to her home, unscathed.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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