the problematics of motherhood in twentieth century women's fiction

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5.3.4. Exactly the opposite rings true of Markandaya's
Nectar in a Sieve, where, though the narrator is a woman and
a mother, the voice that emanates is not really hers - a
patrrarchal volce lurks somewhere In the background which
she, puppet-llke, mlmes
1s not her voice one hears
The mother does speak here, but 1t
Moreover, there is a
(con)fuslon of author and narrator ln the novel - a barely
llterate peasant woman can hardly project such a
sophlstlcated and sensltlvely poignant polnt of view w ~th a
flne literary style that does not suit her
R S Pathak
explalns that the author-narrator fusion is Indeed a serlous
technical flaw
The novel though ostenslbiy narrated from
Rukmanl's polnt of vlew is Ln fact belng narrated from
Markandaya's polnt of view
The problem faced by Kamala
Markandaya here 1s that of representing the speech of an
Indlan peasant, barely literate
Thls 1s a dlfflcuity
encountered by Indlan wrlters, writlng in Engllsh, who have
no readymade dlaiect at thelr command to give thelr peasant
characters
Desplte these contradlctlons, the fact however
remalns that the readlng positlon constructed here 1s
rnascullnist, or rather in Elalne Showalter's terminology, a
'femlnlne' one.
5.3.5. The irony mlssinq in Markandaya's novel renders
the text bereft of any feminlst purport, whereas Lesslng In
The Summer Before the Dark maintains an ironic perspective