In a culture where others constantly attempt to define individuals, how does one determine their identity for themselves?
Ammayya -
Ammayya, Sripathi and Putti's widowed elderly mother, is one of the very most interesting and eccentric characters in the novel, even though she is never fully explored.
From a young age, Ammayya has lived in discontentment, married to a man a decade older than she in her early teenaged years. From then on, she suffered quietly, terrified and violated, painfully unready to be a mother both in body and mind. She was soon subjected to the awareness that her husband had taken a mistress, shoving the knowledge that she wasn't enough for him right down her throat. As she finally gave birth to Sripathi, she cautiously watched, unable to love, but finally able to hope. "Love was an extravagance that she could ill afford. If she spent it on the boy, she would have none left for herself, none to use as an ointment on the wounds that Nirasimha inflicted on her." (p.87, Rau Badami). She finally has something to look forward to in her life; although she has not made anything of herself, if her son succeeds, if he is great and powerful, that would make her great and powerful too, right? In this culture where she was born and raised, Ammayya's perseverance and big dreams are out of place in the hands of a woman. Hence, she is forced to put here dreams on the shoulders of her son, and becomes extremely bitter when he lets them shatter.
Ammayya's distance and coldness is a question of survival. She has been so deeply scarred by her husband that the rage and energy that she has accumulated over all these years has swelled. At some point, Ammayya has started to transfer this built-up energy into her orthodoxy and her need for possession, first of objects and then of her children. Over the years, these outlets have become eminently important to her, as they has been part of the few things she has built for herself that she can rely on. She is uncertain as to who she is as a person, overcome by the expectations of society and confused by others' definition of her. This possessive need shows her grasping at the seams, searching for something to define herself with. However, Ammayya will not let her dignity be taken from her. She refuses to show any weakness in her character, in her family's situation. So she created this hard, unlikeable shell that is almost completely impenetrable - almost. As she lays on her death bed, Putti's engagement to Gopala is shown to have pierced her to her core. All her sacrifice, her marriage, putting up with her husband, saving every scrap all with living within the constraints of her culture and traditions, and now, her daughter willingly and happily wishes to marry into a family of "low-class crooks". This betrayal is more than bitter and old Ammayya can bear, and finally she passes. As identity is truly who you are at your very core, with the wisdom of experience without the baggage, Ammayya's true self is only seen as she is freed from her nearly sixty years of responsibility, sacrifice and fear: "Somebody had brushed her eyelids shut and she looked unusually gentle. It seemed to Sripathi that he had last seen such an expression on her face at his upanayana ceremony, when he was a boy of ten, just before his father's mistress had arrived." (p. 350, Rau Badami).
Materialism is an identity crisis.
Bryant H. McGill
Ammayya, Sripathi and Putti's widowed elderly mother, is one of the very most interesting and eccentric characters in the novel, even though she is never fully explored.
From a young age, Ammayya has lived in discontentment, married to a man a decade older than she in her early teenaged years. From then on, she suffered quietly, terrified and violated, painfully unready to be a mother both in body and mind. She was soon subjected to the awareness that her husband had taken a mistress, shoving the knowledge that she wasn't enough for him right down her throat. As she finally gave birth to Sripathi, she cautiously watched, unable to love, but finally able to hope. "Love was an extravagance that she could ill afford. If she spent it on the boy, she would have none left for herself, none to use as an ointment on the wounds that Nirasimha inflicted on her." (p.87, Rau Badami). She finally has something to look forward to in her life; although she has not made anything of herself, if her son succeeds, if he is great and powerful, that would make her great and powerful too, right? In this culture where she was born and raised, Ammayya's perseverance and big dreams are out of place in the hands of a woman. Hence, she is forced to put here dreams on the shoulders of her son, and becomes extremely bitter when he lets them shatter.
Ammayya's distance and coldness is a question of survival. She has been so deeply scarred by her husband that the rage and energy that she has accumulated over all these years has swelled. At some point, Ammayya has started to transfer this built-up energy into her orthodoxy and her need for possession, first of objects and then of her children. Over the years, these outlets have become eminently important to her, as they has been part of the few things she has built for herself that she can rely on. She is uncertain as to who she is as a person, overcome by the expectations of society and confused by others' definition of her. This possessive need shows her grasping at the seams, searching for something to define herself with. However, Ammayya will not let her dignity be taken from her. She refuses to show any weakness in her character, in her family's situation. So she created this hard, unlikeable shell that is almost completely impenetrable - almost. As she lays on her death bed, Putti's engagement to Gopala is shown to have pierced her to her core. All her sacrifice, her marriage, putting up with her husband, saving every scrap all with living within the constraints of her culture and traditions, and now, her daughter willingly and happily wishes to marry into a family of "low-class crooks". This betrayal is more than bitter and old Ammayya can bear, and finally she passes. As identity is truly who you are at your very core, with the wisdom of experience without the baggage, Ammayya's true self is only seen as she is freed from her nearly sixty years of responsibility, sacrifice and fear: "Somebody had brushed her eyelids shut and she looked unusually gentle. It seemed to Sripathi that he had last seen such an expression on her face at his upanayana ceremony, when he was a boy of ten, just before his father's mistress had arrived." (p. 350, Rau Badami).
Materialism is an identity crisis.
Bryant H. McGill