Gender, Culture and Representation in Ambai’s In a Forest, A Deer: A Postmodern Analysis
Abstract
- S. Lakshmi (1944 -), popularly known by her pseudonym ‘Ambai’, is one of the finest Tamil fiction writers today and recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award (2021). She re-contextualizes and re-defines feminism – in the Indian context – in her seminal work In a Forest, A Deer (2006), hereafter IAFAD, translated into English by Lakshmi Holmström. Winner of the Hutch Crossword Translation Award 2006, this anthology is an enduring assertion of Ambai’s beliefs that women need to: know, that is, to be in touch with a stable or grounded ‘self’; to allow fluidity and change; to be free from bondage; and to let go of identities that are forced upon them, one way or another. For Ambai, feminism is not just about ‘women’ but also about recognizing how modern discourses of gender produce human beings as exclusively ‘male/ masculine’ or ‘female/ feminine’. The primary inquiries that are explored in this analysis of her short stories are: How does the author interrogate the experience of being ‘female’? What distinctions can be drawn between a ‘feminist’ perspective and the concept of ‘femininity’? In what ways does the art of storytelling mirror the societal gender constructs prevalent in middle-class Indian culture? We will shift the focus from a mere linguistic or textual examination to a broader exploration of ideological and cultural contexts, utilizing gender as a gateway and scrutinizing the existing inequalities, ideological paradigms, power relations, and the changing contours of female subjectivity/agency. We analyze these themes by drawing on a range of postmodern critical theories, examining gender/body politics, notions of self, agency, and their associated complexities. Thus, by highlighting the enduring legacy of male hegemony and patriarchal constructions of womanhood, and the embodied female experiences, this article subverts the male-female power equations in IAFAD, wherein Ambai demonstrates continuing concern with the predicament of women, as well as her evolution towards a feminism that attempts to question female space, identity, and freedom.