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36 R.K. NARAYAN’S THE GUIDE - The Self Bolting Out -- While Savitri has enduran

36 R.K. NARAYAN’S THE GUIDE - The Self Bolting Out -- While Savitri has endurance, sacrifice and strong maternal instincts as the hallmarks of her personality, Rosie can best be described in terms of pure passion, carnal pleasure and a zest for all that is lively. In The Dark Room (1938), as in The Guide (1958), life meanders through different passages culminating in the identical experience of home coming, albeit at different times and settings. Both Savitri and Rosie decide to return to their origin where they felt they actually belonged, though for entirely different reasons and under the pressure of different circumstances. In the case of Savitri, it is largely the maternal instinct accompanied with her incompetence to fend for herself a respectable job as she lacks the educational qualification essential for it that compels her to return to her husband’s house. Nevertheless, it is not Savitri, the wife, who returns to Ramani, her husband; It is Savitri, the mother, who comes back to her children. Rosie, however, presents, a slightly different aspect of the feminine in view of and in specific relationship to time and environment as reflected in the emergence of a new consciousness and sensibility in the post independence Indian society. It was a time when certain theories about an ideal social state were being put into practice. The upliftment of women was one of them. Rosie in relation to this change in social attitude towards women is the representative of a new class of women who had the opportunity to be released from the conventional confinement to join colleges and universities in order to acquire a formal education. Rosie is a Master’s degree holder, an acquisition which does not fail to impress even Raju’s mother. The main reason for her return, however, is her disenchantment with the mechanical routine of her dance schedule and also with her disillusionment with Raju whose motives are questionable. Moreover, she realises that Raju was in no way different from Marco, who, she feels, is at least her lawfully wedded husband whereas she is in no way connected to Raju. After an intense crisis of conscience, she feels herself truly bound to and obliged by Marco. Like Shanti in Mr. Sampath (1949), she feels a disgust for her present life. She tells Raju that she was tired of her circus existence. She returns from Malgudi to live her life henceforth as a reputed artist and a sincere, remorseful wife in anonymity. Her return symbolises return to the world of reality, however, harsh or hostile it may be. Like all the Narayan protagonists, Rosie in The Guide discovers that the world from which she wanted to escape in her quest for self fulfilment is the only world which can offer real happiness to her. Like Chandran in The Bachelor of Arts (1937), Shanti in Mr. Sampath and Savitri in 37 The Dark Room, she learns to accept life as it is. She realises that there can be no way out of one’s fated condition. Hence, hers can be called a journey from assertion to acceptance. It is equally tempting to draw a comparison among the female protagonists of the three novels of R.K. Narayan undertaken for study here i.e. Savitri of The Dark Room, Rosie of The Guide and Daisy of The Painter of Signs (1976). The character of Rosie is far from being simplistic in the way in which the characters of Savitri and Daisy are, from the point of view of specified female responses to their respective predicaments. Rosie is a complex character whom Narayan has projected with varied shades of character traits. Going through the pages of the novel, Rosie arouses in the readers wide range of responses whereas Savitri of The Dark Room and Daisy of The Painter of Signs seem, to a certain extent, constructed to a formula by the author, thus rendering their actions an air of predictability but nothing can be predicted about Rosie, thanks to her multi-dimensional personality and her way of thinking. This makes her character very authentic and also human. In other words Narayan deliberately projects her as not having typical features. Savitri is a ‘typical’ Indian wife and a devoted mother. Her behaviour and thought processes are directly influenced by traditions and ancient conventions which form an integral part of her psyche. It is through her adherence to traditions that she seeks familial bliss with Ramani and her children. Paradoxically enough, she finds these conventions oppressing and intriguing enough to unnerve her, yet she knows it fairly well that she can’t either discard them or dissociate herself from them. She is submissive, docile, uncomplaining and sacrificing because of her stern faith in the ancient traditions and rituals. Daisy, in The Painter of Signs, on the other hand, is again a creation of Narayan to project the model of women who would be prospering after Women’s lib movement and such other hue and cry raised for the betterment of womankind all over the world. She has been given an entirely unorthodox cast of mind. She has in her an unparalleled missionary zeal, tremendous confidence and an independence of spirit. Logic is her main strength. She has a dominating disposition. From the beginning to the end of the novel, all her actions are radical. All these features give her character a distinct aura of lucidity and transparency. The reader is not shocked by her moods or mode of behaviour. But the predicament of Rosie in The Guide is fraught with complexities of varied kinds affecting and then determining her reactions to various circumstances. Rosie can best be described as ‘instinct’. All her behaviour is instinctive right from the beginning when she makes an entry into the story. A little bit either of a Savitri or of a Daisy in her could have saved 38 her from the tragic consequences of her situation. Had she had the potential for sacrifice like Savitri or had she exercised her rationality like Daisy, she could have saved her marriage from crumbling. Rosie’s predicament in the prevalent social set up is a critical one. On the one hand, her education has enhanced in her the awareness of her own individuality and on the other hand, it pits her against a society which is still very orthodox and has certain well- defined attitudes towards women. On the top of all this she belongs to a class which has traditionally been looked down upon as a low community which does not deserve equal status with the higher caste despite everything else. In Rosie's own words: I belong to a family traditionally dedicated to the temple as dancers; my mother, my grandmother and before her, her mother ... you know how our caste is viewed?... We are viewed as public women.1 But despite the fact that she has been born into the despised caste of dancers, one can dearly see a strong urge for self-fulfilment and a constant effort to seek her individuality. It is her innate desire to reaffirm her faith in herself. Against her social background and being a child deprived of father, Rosie endeavours to assert her individuality in her ambition to perfect her art of dance. She inherited this liking for dance from her family. As a young girl, she used to dance in temples. The tradition runs in her veins. Her greatest ambition is to become a famous dancer, a dancer in a totally different sense, not in the sense her mother was a dancer. She wants to be a dancer on the grounds of aesthetics and the pursuit of art. But in order to remove the stigma on her caste she marries a gentleman scholar much higher in status, wealth, position and intellect. For unexplained reasons his real name is not mentioned in the novel. He is referred to as Marco because of his appearance. Rosie steps out of her family tradition to gain the reputed position of a wife. For this she decides to sacrifice her passion for dance. Moreover, she hopes that the status of a respectable wife will make her join the mainstream and enable her to channelise her individuality and self- assertion. But being a child deprived either of father or grandfather, she is oblivious of the inherent responsibilities that marriage demands especially from women in our Indian social set-up. Her peculiar cynicism for the perfection of dance as an art form, though temporarily dismissed, reasserts itself when, Rosie, much to her dismay, finds that 39 Marco is far from being what she strove to find in a husband. Contrary to her expectations, Marco is a man of unusually dry and dull demeanour, whereas Rosie wanted a live and caring husband. Failing to find self-fulfilment through marriage with Marco, all her attention is drawn towards dance which she feels is the only way to realise herself as an individual. Dance is obviously her first love. It is quite true that Marco is not at all an ideal husband but Rosie uploads/Societe et culture/ 07-chapter-3-1-pdf.pdf