Links in the Chain () is a collection of essays by Indian writer Mahadevi Varma (1907–1987) on women's inequality in India. The essays were written between 1931 and 1937 for the literary journal Chand, and were later published together as a volume in 1942. Neera Kuckreja Sohoni, in the intro to her English translation, states that they "touch on common, but crucial and in most respect contemporary themes: the effects of war on women, the dilemma of the home and the beyond…the challenge of modernity…the restraints that shackle women forcing some into making life a commercial venture through prostitution, and lastly the art of meaningful living."Varma, Mahadevi. Links in the Chain, translated by Neera Kuckreja Sohoni, Katha, 2003. Print.
Mahadevi Varma, being a pioneer of a new literary movement in Hindi literature, known as Chhayavad, documents the plight of the oppressed and marginalized Indian woman, the dehumanization and subjugation of her existential identity by patriarchal forces, and her resultant counter-reaction of disrobing her womanhood. It does not only restrict its content to cogitation over the unageing plight of women itself but also provides certain solutions to the conundrums that the essayist puts forward.
Critics have compared Links in the Chain favourably to Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex.
Overview
1. "Links in Our Chain" (1931)
"Links in Our Chain", basically, arrives in two halves, and deliberates the fallen status of Indian women in society, and brings to light their deep-seated ignorance towards the antithesis of the apathy inflicted upon them, at the same time.
Employing an analogy of an unsurpassable, delicate "object" - that becomes subject to both veneration and inconsideration- to draw a parallel with a modern Indian woman's sequestered life, and branding "a woman's mental development" to be "swifter than a man's", Varma asserts that women of ancient times had possessed "a deep philosophical view of life", and were garlanded as a man's "sahdharmacharini, the sharer of his dharma, and sahbhagini, sharer of his fortunes." Women, like those who belonged to the Aryan civilization; or, like "Maitreyi"(wife to "Yaagyavalkya"; breathed meaning into the "well-known invocation, "Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya, mrityoh ma amritam gamaya"- lead me from darkness to light, from mortality to immortality"), "Yashodhara"(who preferred to await her husband, "Buddha", "in her own sanctum, instead of rushing to embrace his feet like the dust"), or "Sita", likewise (who was courageous enough to boldly question her husband's "illustrious lineage") resented from being mere shadows of their respective male counterparts, but yearned to be their head-strong companions- "to be remembered for their independent personality and their strong sense of duty."
However, women of the present times, to Varma, are either "oblivious of the fact that they are members of the vast human society and possess an independent self, the blossoming or decline of which can cause society to excel or decline" or are intoxicated with a desire "to gain disparity with men, by viewing the world singularly from the man's optic and mimicking his attributes and vices." And, as a result, collapse to achieve the liberation that they are worthy of, and remain veiled under a thousand cloaks of tradition and meaningless conventions. The sensitive episode of the talented, poor Judith (from Virginia Woolf's 1929 extended essay, A Room of One's Own), nestling a dream in her heart, being engulfed by the ruthless London streets easily fits in this context.
And, at the same time, Indian women remain blind to a self-evident fact that behind every success that a man boasts of, a woman- reckoning her loss in the establishment of a man's unageing reputation- stands, just like cogitation over The Corps of Discovery Expedition (05/1804 - 09/1806) remains incomplete without an invocation of the name of young Sacagawea.
Highlighting a woman's "ignorance related to citizenship" and "countless judicial and legal rights", Varma inscribes the loss of a woman's "individual identity", and the resultant loss of her "ability to reason"; her rising inclination towards a blind imitation of man and his actions [this mimetic trait could also be traced in literary writings by women in the West that span between the years 1840 to 1880, as Elaine Showalter frames it in her 1979 essay, "Towards a Feminist Poetics"]; her reluctance to "gentleness and sentimentality"; her hollow definitions of sacrifice; and the synonymy between the natures of the male and the female as stimulation to walk towards regression.
The Indian woman easily accepts subjugation and oppression in the name of family honour and family image and tends to defy what the Vedic sage, "Manu" had to declare, "Yatraitastu na pujyante sarvastrataphala kriya" ("where she is not revered, all effort is in vain"), and remains unacquainted with what Tehmina Durrani deliberated in her 1994 autobiography, My Feudal Lord:
"Silence condones injustice, breeds subservience, and fosters a malignant hypocrisy."Durrani, Tehmina. My Feudal Lord. London:Corgi Books, 1995. Print.
To Varma, unlike the enlightened women of "both East and West", who have snapped "those fetters that men… had used to enslave them in a brutal display of their ownership" to arrive as his equal, Indian women remain ignorant of the legal rights that could set them free from the incarcerated walls of a home. Even those who belonged to the genteel hierarchy had no time to soar high as enlightened souls and cogitate over women's rights, deeming books and a dagger of the reason their ultimate means to absolve themselves. According to the essayist, altruism demands a renouncement of all "comforts and luxuries"; a sacrifice of security as Simone de Beauvoir asserts in her 1949 philosophical French treatise, The Second Sex.
Elucidating the lives of "women who work in mills and factories" as evidencing a chaotic dilemma of belongingness, Mahadevi Varma strongly believes that such enlightened women could possibly obliterate social evils- like Sati practice- that survive as ugly blots over the Indian society and incarcerate women on social and political grounds.
According to Varma, Indian women have always bravely battled varying acrid tribulations. And, a path to a dignified, liberal life could only be written through resilience and devotion.
Varma strongly upheld this stance that a woman, who could incessantly sustain the heat of burning camphor placed over her soft palms at the call of adversity, was never any "less powerful than man", and that her feminine strength could easily eclipse the marginalization that society garlands her with, and make the "iron fetters" melt like wax in the blaze of her dignity.
2. "War and Woman" (1933)
"War and Woman" forms a major part of the present collection, proposing a blatant transmogrification that women encountered in all these years because of wars.
Drawing a bridge between the stone and the modern age to highlight a "concrete reality", Varma questions man's selfishness and his increasing inclination towards wars and gore violence, and the trepidation psyche of women while the male lot happily participated in wars. She, further, asserts that this barbarity of man has been doctored by women and that the process of transformation from boorishness to tenderness has been feasible only by virtue of women's "innate common sense". It was the foundation of a sentimental institution called "home" at the hands of women that digressed the ugly medieval trajectory towards genteel civilization, emotionally binding man with his family and their expectations.
However, with a sudden upheaval of greed and cold materialism, a woman's constant pieces of advice challenged the superiority and intellectuality of man in domestic and social life, provoking an assertion about women's fragile anatomy being the sole reason for her abhorrence towards wars.
In response to which, women soared high, and deemed weapons their ornaments, and war a tool to seek revenge from the 'supreme creator', to undermine the stereotypical opinions of the male lot, which, however, resulted in man's ultimate triumph- their needs were cultivated; their "army of women" was established and was ready to behead the infants of others.
3. "The Curse of Womanhood" (1933)
"The Curse of Womanhood" tends to bring to light a woman's eroding "individuality, liveliness and aspirations" by a landslide of "sacrifice, forbearance and self-abnegation"; and the extinguishing of the candle of equality in the name of her "frailty".
Beginning with a poignant presentation of the transfixed status of Indian women whose "ascent" and "descent" arrives as incapable of changing the course of her fettered life- deeming the old saying true, "Na sawan sukhe, Na bhado hare"-the essayist inscribes the uncontrollable agony, spiritual asphyxiation, and the dismantling of feminine strength, by the male lot, and that have compelled women, since time immemorial, to ignore their human self and wear a cloak of divinity- only to assume "a divine image".
Varma deeply explores the rising conundrums and hardships that women incessantly face- from being governed under the ruthless rituals and traditions of widowhood (as in the case of Jyoti from Bharati Mukherjee's 1989 novel, Jasmine) to live as a "neglected human being", devoid of compassion, within the four cemented walls of her husband's territory; from being uplifted as "a statue, devoid of all pulsation, vibrancy and human failings" to being made to endure the pain of "abduction"- and powerfully refers to the nerve-racking episodes of Sita's 'Agni-Pariksha’ and the beheading of Renuka by the axe of "Parashuram" at the command of his father, Jamadagni, to elucidate the plight of women, and cogitate over womanhood as a curse.
This social imprisonment of women, and their undeterred subjugation from walking on the path to freedom, has its seed in the shastra: "Stri na swaantantryam arhati".
Ironically deliberating about the current status of Indian women, the essayist asserts that her emancipation is feasible only by a "few enlightened women and the male society". To Varma, only until man would stop thinking of a woman as his subordinate, stimulating the establishment of a more sympathetic outlook, a progressive society could not be brought to life. To the essayist, "a nation-wide movement", working in favour of women, is required to come down to common streets that "will arouse everyone and encourage them to strive in the desired direction" and eradicate all "cruelties that are a blot on the human race".
4. "The Modern Woman: A Look at her Status" (1934)
"The Modern Woman", basically, arrives as one such piece, in two sections, that voices women's "dissatisfaction at her [own] status", who seems anxious about self-identification, and highlights the "apparent differences between woman and man" to be a veracious cause of her miserable predicament.
Questioning the game of "give and take" played between the two biological constructs, the essay traces a dichotomy between the woman of India and that of the West (in whom, an image of a "progressive, self-centred woman" could be best visualized), where the economic independence of the latter is appreciated- an idea that stimulates the central thought of the essay; an idea reverberated by almost every feminist thinker, including Virginia Woolf (in A Room of One's Own) and John Stuart Mill (in "The Subjection of Women").
In an attempt to seek permanent solutions to her depravity, the Indian woman "finally rebelled", and deemed the western woman "her guiding spirit", assuming the form of "another man", as the essayist addresses her in "War and Woman".