The
character of Rosie in R.K Narayan’s The Guide
The character of Rosie in R.K Narayan’s ‘The
Guide’ is no less enchanting than the character and career of its
picaresque hero Raju. The character of Rosie undergoes the strangest
transformations in her socio-temporal status, in her companionship and
distancing from Raju. If Raju undergoes a radical change from a virtually
unknown railway vendor to a popular tourist guide, to a criminal charged of
forgery and finally to a spiritual martyr, so does Rosie. From a nameless
oppressed housewife, Rosie undertakes a journey to the heights of artistic
fame, defies moral laws of the society, suffers sudden crisis first through her
estrangement from her husband Marco and then from her lover Raju, from which
she emerges a regenerated and revitalized woman deserving of admiration.
At the very outset Rosie is the embodiment of the
post-independent educated Indian woman trapped in the compromising situation of
her past and her present. She has an unpalatable background as hailing from the
family of ‘Devadasis’ and Rosie herself has no illusions about her position in
the society: “We are viewed as public women… we are not considered respectable;
we are not considered civilized.” Although she has risen above her background
to a certain extent by having an M.A in Economics, it is partly her awareness
of the stigma attached to her background that compels her to take the first
offer of marriage that comes her way. The consequence of the marriage is the
traditional status accorded to Indian women after marriage. She lacks the
freedom to practice her intrinsic love and talent in dancing. Her husband’s
disapproval of her art is an insurmountable impediment to make her dreams come
true.
It is from this captive existence that she finds a
means to escape by Raju, a man who falls in love with her but tries to
manipulate her. The innocent person that she is, Rosie is carried away by
Raju’s praise of her beauty and her dance. She is gradually ensnared into an
extramarital relationship, culminating in a break-up with her husband Marco
when he realizes her infidelity. But this proves to be a boon in disguise for
the realization of her dreams. Raju supports her dedication to her art and
makes a successful attempt to uphold Rosie to the pinnacle of glory as a
successful dancer.
The serpent woman has sloughed off her tangled skin
twice in her struggle for existence. The first is when she gave up her
“Devadasi’ background to apparently rise to a respectable social status, and
later when she breaks free from her marital servitude to achieve fame as “the
greatest dancer of the century”. She becomes Nalini, an appropriate symbol, of
her rising from a clod of mud to the pristine lotus. Yet she gradually realizes
that she has not attained true freedom but becomes a mere puppet to be
manipulated by Raju. Even if she had been able to coax Raju in fostering her
art, Raju now manipulates her to become a commercial performer who must perform
to satisfy his lust for money. The third and final sloughing of skin occurs
when Raju’s forgery leads to a regeneration. She faces the world alone, pays
back the debts and emerges the truly free woman.
Rosie has been criticized for her infidelity to the
two men in her life, a serpent woman who envenoms the lives of her menfolk. Yet
it is only her efforts to break free from her fettered existence in a
patriarchal world. Her husband Marco is undeniably selfish and indeed a
hypocrite, who leads a satisfied life himself but represses and castigates her
and further even doesn’t provide the carnal consummation which is the
‘sine-qua-non’ in a marital relationship. She neither finds fulfillment as a
wife nor any prospect to her art from Marco. In such a situation it may not be
a sin for Rosie to enter into a liaison with Raju. As for Raju, he only wanted
to make monetary profits from Rosie’s dancing, and the sensitive Rosie is
compelled to voice her unhappiness: “I felt like one of those parrots in a cage
taken around the village fairs.” Raju not only keeps her in darkness about her
own jewelry in order to conceal Marco’s generosity but also forges her
signature. Indeed, the fact that she sells her existing jewelry to provide
money for Raju’s case, proves her angelic role.
Thus while Raju is only a pretender and manipulator
who is victimized by his own machinations, Rosie rises above all manipulations
and soars high like a phoenix in lone splendor. She is not the satanic snake of
Christian theology, but the snake of Hindu mythology, if snake is to be the
dominant metaphor for her, who’s “ascent through the successive chakra in the
kundalini creates a fresh manifestation of life.”
No comments:
Post a Comment