Tara and Bim attempt to reconcile their childhood dreams with their adult lives and work to resolve the lingering guilt of past family conflicts. Their struggles with autonomy and independence are echoed in the backdrop of the newly-partitioned nation.
Tara
Tara, the youngest of the family until Baba was born, is often left out from Bim and Raja’s games. She is silent in school, preferring the comfort of home and Aunt Mira’s ministrations.
Raja and Bim, declaring they will grow up to be a hero and heroine, laugh at Tara when she says she will grow up to be a mother. Yet Tara, “the quiet, retiring one whose childhood is marked by passivity, fear, and isolation is, paradoxically, the one who chooses to escape” (Parekh 277).
Tara does grow up to be a mother, but also a modern woman. Tara chooses to marry in order to escape the confines of her house and family, “[saving] herself from all that their Old Delhi house represents: decay, decadence, insanity, illness, and stasis” (Parekh 277).
Tara appears to be a modern woman, traveled and cultivated, far removed from her childhood timidity and passivity. Yet this independence has been taught to her, arguably even forced on her, by her husband Bakul. Perhaps Tara is not truly autonomous, if her independence involves obeying her husband’s wishes.
Bim
Bim, Tara’s older sister, was throughout their childhood the more assertive and strong-willed sister. Yet she never moves out of their childhood house, and as an adult is responsible for taking care of Baba, essentially becoming a mother figure to him.
She teaches at a college and manages to earn a living, but also is part of the domestic sphere she attempted to escape. As a teenager, she emphatically declares her refusal to marry: “‘I can think of hundreds of things to do instead. I won’t marry. […] I shall work – I shall do things,’ she went on. ‘I shall earn my own living – and look after Mira-masi and Baba and – be independent. There’ll be so many things to do’” (140-141).
This introduces the paradox and tension inherent in Bim’s longing for independence, present even before she is grown up; she longs to work and “do things”, but also affirms her sense of responsibility to her deteriorating aunt and mentally challenged younger brother.
As a teenager, Bim, like Tara, is aware of a compelling need to escape from the confines of their home. She drives herself to excel at school, sensing that this will provide her with opportunity.
Yet although Bim ends up as an educated and qualified college professor, she does not use this as a means to escape Old Delhi. And while she rejects the notion of marriage, she is still ensnared by the sphere of domesticity through her responsibility of nursing Aunt Mira and Baba.
By the end of the novel Bim resembles Aunt Mira, the spinster aunt devoted to the Das children. On the other hand, however, she is also educated and professionally competent. Like Tara, Bim is complex and paradoxical; she is not fully traditional or modern, not entirely domestic nor entirely professional.
National Implications of Female Autonomy
Although The Clear Light of Day focuses on the Das family, their struggles and fragmentation are echoed in the larger narrative of the newly-partitioned nation. Tara and Bim both grapple with this tension of past and present and struggle to redefine themselves and move beyond the confining stasis of their house and childhoods.
This endeavor is reflected in the national struggle of women to attain a new political and social role in postcolonial India. Bishnupriya Ghosh argues that Desai’s “analysis of gender and politics thus extends into a critique of Indian nationalism, which excluded gender issues from its political rhetorics of liberation and rejuvenation” (Ghosh 3).
Tara and Bim both struggle for autonomy, achieving it in various degrees; Tara marries to escape Old Delhi and attain more personal independence, while Bim’s education and self-sufficiency grant her a certain level of freedom.
But Tara is admittedly dependent on her husband, and Bim is responsible for Baba. Desai depicts the helplessness with which Tara and Bim are both familiar as a stifling, oppressive experience.
Independence and escape are two driving forces throughout the novel. Through carefully crafted illustrations of the complex desires, struggles, and sacrifices of Tara and Bim, Desai’s writing quietly demands a new level of autonomy and empowerment for postcolonial Indian women, and a reinterpretation of typical domestic roles.
Autonomy and Independence
Initially Tara and Bim may appear to be complete opposites: Tara is young and modern, while Bim is older, responsible for taking care of their younger brother, and still remaining in their childhood house. Yet the sisters are more complex, ultimately resisting binary definition.
Both Tara and Bim have made sacrifices in their paths towards escape and independence, which they must face when they revisit their childhoods. Tara married to escape Old Delhi, but is now subordinate to and dependent on her husband; Bim refused to sacrifice her responsibility to her younger brother, and so she gave up an element of independence she might have otherwise attained.
This complex struggle with autonomy and independence occurs against the backdrop of the newly-partitioned nation. Desai’s writing subtly criticizes the experience of powerlessness, and the novel ultimately extends to demand a new role for women in postcolonial India, moving beyond traditional domestic roles to a new level of political and social empowerment.
Works Cited
Desai, Anita. Clear Light of Day. Mariner Books: 2000.
ISBN: 0618074511
Ghosh, Bishnupriya. “Clear Light of Day.” Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series
(1995): 1-5.
Parekh, Pushpa Naidu. "Redefining the Postcolonial Female Self." Between the Lines:
South Asians and Postcoloniality. Ed. Deepika Bahri and Mary Vasudeva.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. 270-283.
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