Theme of alienation in the Poetry of Kamala Das

Theme of alienation in the Poetry of  Kamala Das

Kamala Das' Sense of Alienation, a Theme in Her Poetry: 

Kamala Das is a feminist and, in her prime of life when she wrote most of her poems, women in India had yet to liberate themselves from male domination. Her sense of alienation is due also to the spectacle of male domination over women in this country. She feels alienated from society at large because society makes it possible for the Indian men to dominate over the Indian women. She accepts that Indian society is responsible for the pathetic condition of Indian women. The people of this orthodox society have provided fully liberty to men. Indian woman's tender feelings are suppressed under the cruel ruling of man. After marriage, she becomes merely a toy and tool in the hand of man. Man uses her only for his sexual gratification. Man ignores her sentiments and tender feelings. She is ever pining for true or real love but she is deprived of it, hence she feels herself alienated. She spends her life in a corner of house surrounded with four walls. Nobody is there to soothe her feelings. Man's hungry eyes are ever chasing her body to get sexual satisfaction. Kamala Das has always felt alienated from her husband and subsequently she has felt alienated from many other men with whom she had developed sexual relationships on account of her frustration in her married life. She remained only a puppet not only in the custody of her husband but also in the company of other men. She always desired for true love, but in this male dominated society only sexual spirit comes at first. She finds that man only displays his sexual strength without caring the feeling of true love. 

Sexual Behaviour of Her Husband, the Main Cause of Her Alienation: 

Kamala Das was completely alienated from her husband. In the poem entitled The Old Playhouse, addressing him, she says that he called his wife but had not given her the love or affection which a wife expects from her husband. He had certainly felt pleased with her response to his fondling and caressing of her bed. She says that she had come to her husband in order to learn what she was and, by learning what she was, to learn how to develop her personality and her potential. But her husband had not made it possible for her to learn anything because he was a self-centered man and because his egoism prevented him from letting her learn anything except his own nature and disposition. He certainly made love to her, and he felt pleased by her bodily response to his love making. Her husband had no notion of what love and affection for a wife were and that he thought of a wife as merely a housewife and a sexual partner. Her husband had taught her to put saccharine into his tea and to give him the vitamins at the right moments. Cowering beneath his monstrous ego, she had felt reduced to the position of a dwarf and had even lost her will and reason. Her mind had become an old playhouse no longer in use, and with all its lights put out. She felt suffocated in her husband's house. Her husband's whole house reeked of his masculine breath. She was expected to play a conventional role and her own aspirations, desires, ambition and above all, her emotional fulfilment were not taken into consideration: 

"You called me wife, 

I was taught to break saccharine into your tea and 

To offer at the right moment the vitamins. Cowering 

Beneath your monstrous ego, I ate the magic loaf and

 Became a dwarf. I lost my will and reason, to all your 

Questions I mumbled incoherent replies." 

The poetess aspired for complete freedom from a life of slavery. She condemned the life of snobbery and artificiality: 

"The strong man's technique is 

Always the same, he serves his love in lethal doses, 

For love, is Narcissus at the water's edge, haunted 

By its own lonely face and yet it must seek at last 

An end, a pure, total freedom." 

Her Craving for True Love: 

In the poem entitled The Freaks, she felt alienated without true love. Her husband's and other men's loveless sexual advances failed to stir the fine feeling of love for which she earnestly craved. She strove to find emotional fulfilment and security in love but all her strivings proved to be futile. In the absence of love they enjoyed and satisfied 'skin's hungers'. Theirs was a hopeless case. They had lived together for long but they had miserably failed in love. Their hearts were like empty cisterns, empty of the manna of love that sustains and nourishes life. The emptiness symbolises inner sterility and barrenness. 

Her Complete Disillusionment with Her Husband: 

In the poem entitled The Sunshine Cat, she tells us that, though she had originally loved her husband in the hope that he would love her too, she no longer loved him because he proved to be a selfish man and a coward. Her husband was so cruel to her that he used to lock her in a room containing books every morning and used to unlock the room only when he returned home in the evenings. A ray of sunshine fell at the door of that room, and this ray of sunshine was the only company she had. That ray of sunshine looked like a yellow-coloured cat and that was her only companion. She had become so emaciated and thin because of her chronic depression and despondency that she felt herself to be half-dead and, therefore, no longer an object of sexual desire on the part of any man.

Her Completely Disappointment and Her Effort to Win Love from Other Sexual Partners: 

In the poem entitled The Sunshine Cat, she condemns not only her husband but also the other men with whom she began to sleep after feeling completely disappointed with her husband's unemotional manner of making love to her. She tried her utmost to win the affection of those men but they had all frankly told her that they could not love her though they could be kind towards her. Thus, even they provided her with no real satisfaction, and she could only shed tears over her disappointment. She was not even able to enjoy any sound sleep because of her disappointment with those lovers. She wept so profusely that she could have built walls with her tears, walls to hold her like a prisoner. 

Her Celebrating Sorrow at the Death of Her Grandmother: 

In the poem entitled My Grandmother's House, the poetess recalls the house where she once used to live with her grandmother who was quite fond of her and from whom she used to receive a lot of love. The grandmother had died and the house had then ceased to be inhabited by anybody. The poetess was in those days a little girl and did not even know how to read books which lay in the house. The death of her grandmother had robbed the little girl of her capacity to feel. It had seemed to her that the blood in her veins was no longer warm but had turned cold, as cold as the moon. She often thought of going to that house in order to look at the things inside it through the windows, but the windows were closed, so she could not be able to see anything lying inside, and could be able only to experience a feeling of utter hopelessness. She tells her husband that she felt lost in life because of the utter absence of love in her life and because she no longer received any love from anybody. Now she seeked love like a beggar from strangers and she would feel consoled Even if she got a small measure of love from somebody. 

Her Discontentment with a Lover: 

In the poem entitled The Invitation, the poetess felt tortured by her memory of her experience of love-making with a lover of hers. The lover had gone away after making love to her, and had not returned. She knew that her lover would not come back, but she could not forget her experience of love-making with that man because the experience had been a most delicious one. Further she recalls how her lover used to come to her in the intervals of his office-work in order to make love to her. He used to come to her to refresh himself after his tiring office-work, and he felt warmed in her embraces, remaining silent all the time. She realized that she wanted no other lover but the same who had been sleeping with her and who had now gone away. In bed with him, she used to feel as if she was in paradise. The bed, six feet in length and two feet in width, was heaven for them. After the departure of her lover, she was highly dejected, disappointed and discontented. She was unable to endure this separation, so she wanted to put an end to her life by jumping into the sea which seemed to be inviting her to drown herself in its waters. 

Expressing Her Disenchantment: 

In the poem entitled Glass, Kamala Das describes her frustration, verging on despair, because of her disappointing experience of sex and the sexual act. She speaks of a man who, wanting to perform the sexual act with her, had drawn her towards him rudely and hastily, treating her as 'an armful splinters'. His behaviour had hurt her and caused her much pain. She felt like broken glass. Subsequently too she received the same kind of treatment from her other lovers, with the result that she developed a dislike for all of them. She then sought only sexual gratification from men with whom she performed the sexual act, and she did not expect, or offer, any real love in the process. However, she really missed the love which she had originally aimed at in performing the sexual act, beginning with her husband. It seemed to her that only her father had given her the love for which she had always hungered.

Kamala Das' Alienation from Society: 

The Treatment of Society with Her: 

The poem entitled An Introduction gives us an account of how society had been treating her. People had gone to such an extent in their criticism of her as even to disapprove of her writing poetry in the English language. People had said that English was not her mother tongue and that she should, therefore, not use this medium for the writing of her poems. Kamala Das protested against this attitude of society towards her, saying that she would speak and write in any language she liked. She accepts that this male-dominated society is responsible to create brutality in men against the women. This society never teaches them this moral how to behave with girls and women. Society is also unable to make a flow of emotions in the hearts of men for the Women. She complains about the way of a lover had treated her while performing the sexual act. He had dragged her into the bedroom, closed the door, behaved in such a rough manner during the sexual act that she had felt as if she had badly been beaten. She held felt almost crushed by the weight of her own breasts and womb. This orthodox- society is formed only to advise the girls and the women. The people had urged her to behave like a girl, to behave like a wife, to take to embroidery, to do the cooking, and quarrel with servants. They told her to call herself Amy or Kamala or better still, Madhavikutty. They urged her not to pretend to be a split personality suffering from a psychological disorder, and not to become a nymphomaniac (or a sex-crazy woman). 

Her Poetry Replete with Protest and Pain: 

Kamala Das' protest is directed against society for allowing men to domineer over women. Male domination of women in this country is repugnant to her. It is one of the strongest aversions, just as sheer lust, divorced from all love, is one of her strongest aversions. In the poem entitled Substitute, she has written that a stage had come in her life when love became a swivel-door with one man going out and another coming into perform the sexual act with her. She had then lost count because there was always in her embrace a substitute for a substitute i.e., there was no shortage of sexual partner for her.

 Her Asking the Mission of the Women: 

In one of her poems, entitled The Conflagration, she asks the women whether they think to surrender before men and lie beneath them only mission of their lives. Although they do not get emotional love, yet they involve in sexual act. She has also mentioned the same thing many of her poems.