Everything else I can pick up or discard when I choose; my culture is a movable feast . . . I made a choice about the kind of life I wanted to have. When things go belly up, Chila always blames karma, Sunita blames her failed university career, I blame no-one but myself.
— Tania, Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee When discussing the role of a child narrator in Anita and Me, Devon
Campbell-Hall suggests that a child’s point of view provides Meera Syal a platform to interrogate the dominant culture. The child protagonist presents the reader not only her navigation between British and South Asian cultures but also a fluctuation
“between childhood innocence and adult knowledge” (Campbell-Hall 291). When the focus shifts to Syal’s second novel Life, the reader will find that both the narrative voice and the social landscape alter dramatically. Through her protagonist Meena in
Anita and Me, Syal has shown how a South Asian British young girl is at first doubly
estranged in her identity formation and eventually recognizes the power of her in-betweenness to move on to a future she chooses. Meena’s in-between position indeed exemplifies Bhabha’s theory of liminal space which is a productive space for her to negotiate the differences between two cultures and to develop an identity that integrates both the parental and dominant cultures. As Campbell-Hall has praised,“Within the fluid, unstable space between childhood and adolescence, between Britishness and Indianness, Meena is able to narrate the events within her community from a defamiliarized point of view . . .” (293). Nevertheless, it is undeniable that
Meena’s characterization has its limitation to present the reader a more complex account of how South Asians, especially adult women, deal with the cultural conflicts in a grown-up world. Because she is still at a young age and can be too ingenuous to fully understand the adult world, Meena therefore may be inadequate, as a narrator, to fully represent the life experiences of South Asians in family, social interaction and marital relationship. Thus, in her second novel, Syal uses three adult women to give a different narrative perspective.
Ensconced in East London in the late 1990s, Life begins with a bustling wedding scene, implying the children of first-generation immigrants have grown up and moved into another stage of their lives. Syal maps out her three heroines in the same generation as Meena yet endows them with distinct adult characterizations. In their mid-thirties, the three adult women are now facing broader spectrum of
problems about race and gender. Discussing the “multi foci” on South Asian British women’s life experiences in Life, Dave Gunning believes that Syal “refuses this unitary vision of Asian women in Britain and stresses the heterogeneity of experiences and identities available to British Asian women” (122). Furthermore, despite the multi foci on various female characters, Syal mainly stresses the double oppression of South Asian British women. And she illustrates the female characters’ awareness of their dilemma in a doubly oppressed position and then the process of their
self-development. It is significant to note that, to continue the in-betweenness in Anita
and Me, Syal positions her three heroines between free choices and fate, facing with a
more complicated and conflicting dilemma.The fictional space in Syal’s novel facilitates a discussion about cultural conflicts and domestic tensions among South Asian British women. Further questions emerge as the plot progresses. First and foremost, what is the significance of using women as the main narrative voice? The British women of South Asian descent indeed provide
the reader a specific point of reference to inspect the awkward conditions of the second generations of immigrants in Britain. Therefore, it can be seen that, rather than using “a potentially unreliable child” (Campbell-Hall 291) in Anita and Me, Life uses three seemingly more mature women as protagonists to explore the domestic tensions between different generations and problematic relationships in sisterhood as well as in gender relations. Through multiple viewpoints of various female protagonists, Life discloses for the reader a more complex realm in which South Asian adult women are positioned. Meanwhile, it also addresses the issues of identity, race and gender faced by the women in both British society and South Asian community. These adult women are represented as straddling the fence between the British and South Asian cultures as well as swaying between individual will and familial duties. By means of different living backgrounds of South Asian women, Syal outlines not only individual awareness but also a collective formation of South Asian British womanhood. Another question is the role of the male characters within the novel. It can be seen that the focus of Syal’s writings is not exclusively confined to women; male characters, too, play an indispensable part. The male characters actually contribute significantly to the (re)formation of the women’s selfhood, even though they are oftentimes depicted as self-centered, chauvinist or violent. In fact, within the patriarchal community, male characters are not only enforcers but also the oppressed of patriarchal ideologies. On one hand, Syal shapes her male characters into patriarchal figures to criticize the perpetuation of patriarchal institution within South Asian community. On the other hand, the male characters are shown as being incapable of handling familial or marital relationships. Syal intentionally shows in context that women are able to demonstrate greater fortitude than men do when facing predicament.
In addition to representing multi-dimensional life experiences of South Asian women to challenge social stereotypes, Syal proves that women are able to
“collectively dismissed traditional notions of womanhood and asserted a strong and confident image in their creativity” (Hussain 54). So, reading about how the three heroines deal with issues of migration, shifting identities, cultural hybriditites, as well as fluid and fractured relationships at home and in marriage, we are presented with an epitome of South Asian women’s collective experiences in Britain. Also, we can see how Syal deploys not only female characters but also male ones to undermine social expectations of how South Asian British women or men should behave. In this chapter the aim is firstly to examine how South Asian British womanhood takes shape as Syal’s three heroines go through transformations in their lives that lead to their realization of identity, ethnicity and sexuality. It is followed by an analysis seeking to unravel the significance of male characters within Syal’s novel to see how they are served as a contrast to the dignity and fortitude of female protagonists.
Evidently, South Asians in Britain try hard to assimilate into the white society and at the same time maintain South Asian tradition and values at home. Nevertheless, during the process of acculturation and adaptation, encounters with racial
discrimination and prejudices are inevitable. A seemingly irreconcilable conflict therefore arises from the collision between how South Asians identify themselves and how white Britons perceive them. And it is notable that, compared to the men in South Asian community, South Asian women are relatively in a more complicated condition. They have to confront the additional issue of gender. When discussing the self-development of ethnic women in “Rethinking the Bildungsroman,” Pin-chia Feng argues that while ethnic men are trapped in Du Bois’s “double consciousness,” ethnic women de facto “suffer from triple, even multiple, consciousness, as they stand further outside the margin of the marginal groups, being non-white and female” (16;
italics in original). As Feng has stated, ethnic women are faced with gender and racial inequalities because of their position between the dominant society and ethnic
community.22 In the white community, being non-whites, South Asian women need to learn how to get along with their in-betweenness. Getting back to the ethnic groups, they have to reconcile their roles as mothers, daughters and wives within South Asian patriarchy. Regulations and patriarchal ideologies in South Asian cultural practices in fact subjugate women to various duties; for example, their submissiveness to the arranged marriage or to familial demands. Whilst the second-generation South Asian women are far more confident in expressing their ethnicity and are more willing to question the submissiveness than the preceding generation of women, they are still greatly influenced and oppressed by cultural expectations. Confined to cultural restrictions and their filial duties, hardly any of South Asian women can completely escape from the destined life course. However, according to Yasmin Hussain,
westernized South Asian women seek to break away from those restrictions and duties because of their British upbringing (30). Encouraged by the notions of independence and self-reliance in the British education, South Asian women now are more inclined to probe into their own identities and to carve out their unique South Asian British womanhood. Thus, the younger generation of South Asian women try to explore a more fluid and flexible way for them to survive within the patriarchal societies.
Because of their self-awareness, there emerges the so-called “New Woman” in the South Asian community (Hussain 16). As Hussain points out,
[The New Woman] has become the embodiment of escape, from restrictions within the home and questions of marriage and instead resurrects a belief in education allowing women to lead financially independent and fulfilling lives. Furthermore, this New Woman acquires and establishes for herself a
22 In The Female Bildungsroman by Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong Kingston: A Postmodern Reading, Pin-chia Feng presents a picture of female Bildungsroman for ethnic women of marginal groups. In fact, to question some scholars’ narrow focus and traditional definition on Bildungsroman, Feng re-views the significance of Bildungsroman by juxtaposing the four texts by Morrison and Kingston. Her emphasis on ethnic women’s “danc[e] in the minefield of gender and racial inequality”
(16) precisely echoes the double oppression of South Asian British women I would like to talk about.
distinct identity in the traditionally male-dominated society in which she lives. (54)
Apparently, the developments as well as the transition of South Asian women are what Syal wants to depict in Life. In the novel Syal attempts to deal with not only the cultural conflicts among South Asian communities but also the process of how South Asian women shed the baggage of patriarchy to determine their own future and develop their own individuality.
Unlike the previous discussion about the identity formation of South Asian British youth in Anita and Me, in Life Syal proceeds to amplify the dilemmas that many South Asian women have faced in life, in family, and even in sexual
relationship. In fact, in the screenplay Bhaji on the Beach, which probably can be reckoned as a prototype of Life, Syal has already demonstrated her concern about race, gender and patriarchy.23 In the screenplay, she stresses intergenerational differences and ossified values within South Asian community. Through multiple perspectives from different female protagonists, in both Bhaji on the Beach and Life, Syal endeavors to deal with the interweaving relations among gender and ethnicity in South Asian communities in Britain. In the two works, women are the central protagonists; nevertheless, their sense of belonging or their recognition of self
23 Bhaji on the Beach, Syal’s first screenplay, is directed by Gurinder Chadha and screened in 1993.
Born in Kenya, Gurinder Chadha moved to Britain with her parents in 1961. She is a British film director of South Asian descent and good at dealing with ethnic issues among South Asian communities in Britain. Because of her upbringing, most of her films explore both the lives of South Asians in Britain and the cross-cultural conflicts. Chadha gains a worldwide fame with her well-received film Bend it Like Beckham (2002). Bhaji on the Beach (1993) is her first feature film.
Bhaji on the Beach can be reckoned as an archetype of Life because of their similar narrative strategies, including the focus on quandaries of three South Asian adult women and the narrative techniques. Bhaji on the Beach deploys its protagonist Asha’s hallucinations to bring out South Asian British women’s conflicting dilemma and their internal struggles. In “South Asian Womanhood in the Diaspora: Gurinder Chadha’s Bhaji on the Beach, and Bent It Like Beckham,” Feng describes Asha’s first hallucination in which the deity Rama intones “Duty! Honor! Sacrifice!” to declare the destiny of South Asian women (166). Moreover, Feng states that the six scenes of hallucinations actually represent Asha’s self-discovery.
As well, aside from “an omniscient narrator” (Gunning 122), Syal in Life makes each heroine have her firs-person narration respectively. These narrations not only disclose the contradictory feelings of the three heroines but also delineate their interrogation and further awareness of self.
somehow is marginalized. All the issues about home, identity, belonging and relationships reinforce the intersections and negotiations of cultural differences.
Indeed, similar to Life, Bhaji on the Beach has a multi-dimensional representation of South Asian British women; even so, as a screenplay, it has its limitation in portraying specific details and other subtle features. This is because a screenplay or a film can be less effective in offering the audience a deeper insight into the characters’ internal conflict than a novel does. Compared with Bhaji on the Beach, Life lets the reader observe more detailed interactions between three intimate friends and have more opportunities to inspect how the protagonists make their cultural choices. By mapping out a wider range of challenges among the three heroines, in the novel Syal gives a more complex yet reality-reflecting account of circumstances faced by South Asian women in Britain.
Set in urban London, in Life, Syal depicts the lives in a year of three intimate friends: Sunita, Chila and Tania. Sunita, who used to be a bookish person, now is married and has two children, Nikita and Sunil, and becomes a “Super Mummyji.”
She was once recognized by her friends as the “Most Likely to Succeed” in school (Life 17). Nevertheless, she failed her finals and got flunked out of the university.
After leaving the school, she married Akash, who is now a marriage counselor. Once being a brilliant law school student, now she has settled into an exhausting
domesticity day after day. Sunita, in fact, is completely devoted to her marriage and fully puts her kids and family first. Gradually, she becomes dissatisfied with herself and her husband’s frequent absence in household affairs. Chila, the baby, also the most naïve among the three, is getting married with wealthy and smashing Deepak who appears to be a perfect husband. Chila has always been regarded as delicate and timid, yet she seems to surprisingly hit the jackpot by capturing a desirable groom through an arranged marriage. However, the fairytale marriage of her dreams turns
out to be an illusion and gradually Chila senses the cruel but real difficulties in matrimony. Tania, an ambitious career girl, is the pivot throughout the whole story.
She, sexy and smart, is a single and successful packager and also a filmmaker. She not only has an up-and-coming career but also maintains an admirable relationship with Martin, a white British who has been exceedingly fascinated with exotic cultures.
Under the surface of splendid lifestyle and impressive achievements on work, Tania actually has exiled from her family and community for years.
Sunita, Chila, and Tania are now at the crossroads. They all have strived to make life as perfect as what they have always expected it to be. Yet, fate appears to interfere with their ostensibly ideal lives all the time. Sunita, for instance, at first believes that she has a nice family life but later finds herself trapped by unceasing domestic
routines. She further gets deeply disappointed at her dismal jobs and feels frustrated in the gradual alienation from Akash. As for Chila, she is the one who faithfully obeys traditions and follows her parents’ arrangement because she is convinced that the elders would make the best decision for her. However, once married, she starts to realize that matrimony is not as romantic as what she has imagined. Tania is not only attractive and svelte but also has a “snappy Soho job” (Life 16) that most people
dream of. Nevertheless, she has been keenly aware of the fact that she belongs to none:
neither to British society nor to South Asian community. “You don’t belong” (13) is a voice that keeps echoing in her mind; hence, Tania refuses to be seen as an Asian and tries to avoid reporting issues related to Asians. For Tania, it seems that some
uncomfortable truths would be uncovered as soon as she rebuilds the connection with her South Asian descent.
Significantly different from Anita and Me, Life provides a thorough insight into the adult women’s innermost thoughts and astute feelings. Regarding the
characterization of the three heroines in Life, Campbell-Hall states that Syal applies
an equal treatment to the characterization and “elegantly manages to shift authorial voice from among the three young women, lending a surprising maturity to a narrative focusing primarily on the agonies of the shift from adolescence to young adulthood”
(298). In addition, as the central characters, the three women “represent a ‘trinary’
opposition of content/depressed/alienated” (Campbell-Hall 300) which appears to be stereotypical perception of South Asian women. As a matter of fact, in her writings, Syal does not ward off these stereotypes of South Asian women. On the contrary, she seems to intentionally represents her characters in these stereotyped images, which, indeed accord with Gill Gregory’s observation in her review that “Syal explores the fracturing of identity experienced by women who have consciously or unconsciously chosen to fit in with prescribed roles” (26; qtd. in Gunning 123).
Starting with a joyful wedding between Chila and Deepak, Life is framed with a typical “ha ha hee hee” atmosphere in a traditional Indian wedding. The first part of the novel is mainly concerned with three relationships between three different couples:
one is newly wedded, another has married for quite some years, and the other still in courtship. After the wedding, Tania is encouraged by her white boss to have Chila and Sunita take part in the documentary project on love and marriage in South Asian British community. Through the lens, the documentary faithfully records emotional entanglement within their relationships. It also unmasks the instabilities and frailties behind the happiness of marriage and friendship. The early days of Chila and
Deepak’s life together seem to be sweet and harmonious. Compared with the pleasant union of the newly wedded couple, the marriage between Sunita and Akash, now full of conflicts, apparently is at the opposite pole. As for Tania’s relationship with her white boyfriend Martin, it grows more and more problematic as Tania’s documentary progresses. At first, both Chila and Sunita are willing to demonstrate the ideal part of their marriage; nevertheless, at the opening party, they find that the documentary
indeed displays a perfect image of matrimony but simultaneously it also uncovers the reality hidden behind their so-called happy marriage. The documentary faithfully
indeed displays a perfect image of matrimony but simultaneously it also uncovers the reality hidden behind their so-called happy marriage. The documentary faithfully