Bharati Mukherjee always maintained that she was an immigrant rather than an expatriate. All of the stories of ‘The Middleman and Other Stories’ are based on the central theme of the cultural transformation of characters belonging to Southeast Asia (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshi, Chinese, and so on) and how they face troubles, yet assimilate the Western culture just because according to ‘Bharati Mukherjee,’ it is a better culture. She maintains that she is an American, not an Indian, and thus, the usual subject of ridicule in her stories is Indianness. Her love and loyalty towards the Western culture earned her and the short story collection the National Book Critics Circle Award (NBCCA), an American literary award, in 1889. The book was also selected as the New York Times Book Review's notable book of the year.
Characters of ‘A Wife’s Story :
The story is written in first-person narrative style and Panna Bhatt is the narrator and protagonist of the story. She is a middle-aged married woman who lost her only son in a terrorist attack in India. She was arranged marriage and she doesn’t have a romantic relationship with her husband who remains unnamed in the story. After her son’s death, she hardly finds any reason to remain in the relationship and leaves India and her husband for two years after their son died to study on scholarship for a doctorate in special education in New York City. She was never happy in her married life and always felt that Indian society is patriarchial, oppressive, and exploitative against women. Panna Bhatt never read about Sarojini Naidu or Indira Gandhi or Viajaya Lakshmi Pandit, or Annie Besant but she remembers how her ‘illiterate’ grandmother had beaten her mother when she decided to learn French. Panna’s husband is a patriarch and like a good submissive housewife, she doesn’t even take his name ever, and thus, her husband remains unnamed in the story. He is a textile mill manager who understands the financial struggles of middle-class families in developing countries. He is tender and overprotective towards Panna and is unaware of the fact that Panna never loved him and since now she has options, she considers her life with him as imprisonment. Her husband has those peculiar ridiculous and cringeworthy traits of common Indians that Panna is gradually giving up. One of them is fidelity as she has developed an adulterous relationship with Imre Nagy, a Hungarian expatriate and her classmate. Imre Nagy too is married with his wife and two children back in Hungary. Panna’s husband notices that men in America ogle at her wife and is worried about that but he never suspects Imre Nagy as he doesn’t have even an iota of doubt on his wife. Panna is not abrasive and abusive against him and in fact, tries to offer him the best physical gratification as a parting gift. Panna goes to watch a play by David Mamet, a noted American author, and playwright with Imre, and learns a lot about herself as a new and transformed individual. Charity Chinn is the roommate of Panna who is a Chinese immigrant. She is a successful hand model. She disliked her Chinese looks so much that she went under the knife to change her Chinese eyes to Caucasian eyes. Charity is married to an American named Eric who is living in Oregon as a devotee of Rajneesh, the Indian Guru. Charity didn’t have enough money for her plastic surgery and thus, she sleeps with her plastic surgeon every third Wednesday. In addition, she also has developed a relationship with Phill, a flutist. Despite her adulterous relationship with Imre, Panna feels that she is morally superior to Chinn in a sense. On the other hand, she is envious of Chinn too for Charity’s greater extent of physical joy and sense of freedom.
Summary of A Wife’s Story:
Panna and her husband lost their only son in a terrorist attack and Panna is distraught about her loss. Her husband, however, being emotionally dormant, succeeds in overcoming the pain and continues to devote himself to his usual business and work. Suddenly, Panna too gets a chance to study on scholarship for a doctorate in special education in New York City. Panna is excited about this opportunity and she remembers how her illiterate grandmother had brutally beaten her mother when she decided to learn French in an Indian college. Panna notices the transformation of the three generations, from being illiterate to visiting a foreign land for higher education. Panna’s husband is a traditional oppressive, patriarchial man who though allows her to go abroad, doesn’t allow her to even take his name. In America, Panna starts sharing a room with a Chinese immigrant who, just like Panna, is enamored by Western culture. Her name is Charity Chinn she is married to an American man named Eric. However, Eric decided to go to Oregon to live at the Ashram of Guru Rajneesh of Indian origin.
Meanwhile, Charity Chinn, who always disliked being Chinese, decided to change her looks and took the help of a plastic surgeon to change her Chinese appearance to a more Caucasian appearance. However, she didn’t have enough money for plastic surgery, thus, she managed a deal with the plastic surgeon. Charity spends each of the Third Wednesday nights of a month with her plastic surgeon, offering his physical gratification. In addition, Charity has also developed an affair with another Caucasian named Phil, who is a flutist and also works as a home service provider, waxing floors of apartments and baking bread for people as per their requirements. Panna is not too impressed by him and considers him childish and womanly. Though she is impressed by Imre Nagy, one of her classmates who is a Hungarian expatriate. Just like Panna, he is married and has two kids with his wife. Her family is back in Hungary. Charity would often ask Panna if she should leave her spiritualist husband and commit to Eric with whom she is already having a sizzling physical relationship of which Panna is a bit envious because, unlike Charity, Panna suffered the burden of arranged marriage, forced to live with a man she didn’t know. Anyways, after living so many years with her husband, she comes to know almost everything about him and can exactly guess how he would feel or react to any particular situation.
One day, she accompanies Imre Nagy to watch a standing performance by David Mamet. At the show, David Mamet observes her and seems to pick her up for blatantly ridiculing Indian women and Indian culture. He makes fun of Indian traditions, Indian frugality, Indian accent, Indian looks, and so on. Panna, still an Indian by birth, feels a little hurt and decides to write a letter to David Mamet in protest. However, she finds that Imre Nagy totally enjoyed the show. Imre feels that there is nothing wrong with stereotyping and being racist. Panna realizes that the Indian traits that David Mamet made fun of, are actually truly ridiculous and most of them are too visible in her own husband that she often doesn’t like. She feels more ‘un-Indian’ and decides not to feel bad about it. After all, she is a submissive woman and her current male companion, Imre Nagy isn’t feeling bad about Indians being lampooned and satirized. Panna is astonished and excited when she sees that though she was openly ridiculed and satirized by David Mamet during the show for being Indian, Imre isn’t disturbed by it, rather he asks her not to take the show so seriously. He then flirts with her and openly expresses his affection by kissing her, as if giving a consolation prize for being ridiculed. Panna is happy about getting the prize and she forgets all her revolting protest against David Mamet. She enjoys watching Imre dancing on the street and thinks, no one can live so freely in India. Obviously, she never attended an Indian marriage or Holi festivities and she doesn’t know anything about how Indians love to celebrate every occasion and how dance and music are a part of Indian life. Panna thinks of the predictable Indian men, the engineers, lawyers, shopkeepers, or businessmen like her husband who can never dance like Imre in the streets. She is completely taken over by the superiority of Imre over Indian men. Imre tells her that he is considering bringing his wife and children to the U.S. and settling there with his family. Panna doesn’t know how to react to it. She is having an affair with Imre but unlike Imre, she cannot think of requesting her husband to settle with her in the U.S.
She learns that the mill managed by her husband is suffering labor unrest. He calls her on the phone and expresses his love and how much he is missing her. She feels a sexual urgency in his voice and fakes her own love for him and says that she too is missing her. In such hard times when her husband’s mill is facing labor troubles, she cannot think of him visiting her in New York, especially when she knows how cheap and frugal he is. Yet, she comes to know that her husband has decided to visit her as he is worried about how she is living alone in a foreign land and if she needs any help. Panna is a submissive wife of a patriarchial exploitative husband. She doesn’t like Indian dresses but is forced to wear a saree as she goes to the airport to greet him. She wears her most expensive Indian jewels and her mangal sutra, the necklace that she got at her wedding. Luckily, Charity had left the city for two weeks and thus, Panna and her husband have the apartment to themselves, affording them more privacy than they ever had in India. Panna’s husband spends several days in New York during which he meets all her friends and classmates including Imre Nagy. She finds that her husband too likes Imre and just as she thought, her husband is unable to guess about her affair with Imre. He doesn’t have an iota of doubt over her fidelity towards him, though it hardly exists. Panna feels loved by her husband but she notices that he is more interested in the abundance of consumer goods in America such as hair rinses and diet powders and with its street vendors and store sales. She also notices the differences between her husband’s preferences and Imre’s choices of entertainment. Imre wants to see an avant-garde French film, her husband the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. Panna’s mother rebelliously learned French and she too knows French well thus she feels Imre has better taste in entertainment, ignoring the fact that her husband hardly knows any French and he is not even fluent in English.
Another issue that she notices is her husband’s money-making mentality. He had spent too much money to convert his rupees into dollars in black and thus, he wishes to buy some electronic items and other goods at cheap prices that he may take back to India to compensate for his loss. Panna doesn’t like his business-minded Bania attitude. On the 10th day of his visit, Panna’s husband plans for a site-seeing tour and arranges the cheapest touring company that will allow them to visit most of the sites in New York at the least possible price. Panna realizes that her husband is again showing all those traits that David Mamet made fun of. Since her husband is not fluent in English, he sends Panna to buy the tickets. When she goes, the ticket seller takes extra interest in her and gets flirtatious. Her husband notices that and when she returns, he complains that while he asked her to wear a saree, she chose Western clothes and that is why the ticket checker mistreated her as he believed she is a Puerto Rican. Panna feels that her husband is blaming her for bad behavior though it was not her fault. They visit the Statue of Liberty but find that it is closed on that particular day for some maintenance work. On their ferry to World Trade Center, her husband requests her to take his picture with the WTO building in the background. However, she fails to handle the camera properly. She is approached by a bearded man who offers to help. He, too, is an immigrant, a photographer, and while snapping the picture, he offers to buy her a beer, which she politely refuses. How could she accept the beer, she was with her Indian oppressive husband.
Her husband who never doubted her relationship with Imre, questions her what the bearded man was asking, to which she hides that he was asking to buy a beer for her. Her husband isn’t happy after the outing as he feels that his wife is too exposed to other men. He requests her to come back to India and insists that he came there just to take her back. Panna is astonished by this and a bit enraged. She plainly says that she cannot go back before completing her course. Her husband gets frustrated and in his anger and oppressive fit, he throws a food plate.
Later that night, he gets a phone call. He is in no good mood so he hands over his phone to Panna, saying that he cannot understand the accent of Americans. When Panna attends the phone, she learns that it was from her husband’s boss. Her husband’s mill is facing much difficult time and his boss had called him back. Her husband decides to go back to India the very next morning and Panna fakes her worries and love for him again. He forgets how she rejected his request to come back to India and pulls her in his arms. As he starts to undress her, feeling how American she has become, he too decides to be a little American and says, wait for two minutes. rushes to the bathroom to administer the "American rites: deodorants, fragrances." She decides that she should make up for her absence and the labor trouble half a world away; she wants to pretend to him that nothing between them has changed. Panna waits for him while looking at herself in the mirror, naked, shameless, and liberated. She wonders if she will ever return to India as a good Hindu wife, or if she will continue to enjoy this freedom as an expatriate?
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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