My Story

Abstract

The paper makes an analytical study of My Story, thefamous fictional autobiography by Kamala Das. In My Story, Kamala Das tells her personal experiences including her growth into womanhood, her life in matriarchal rural South India after inheriting her ancestral home, her unsuccessful quest for love in and outside marriage and her struggle as a woman writer. The paper shows how the author describes the multiple types of oppression faced by women in the Kerala society, especially through the forces of a caste ridden patriarchal society. Besides, she also speaks about the internal dissention produced by members of her own gender on the other. By delineating her personal experiences, she speaks for her contemporarywomen companions and

The comparative freedom enjoyed by the women of Kerala, the social permissions they were allowed, their educational background and their health and hygiene consciousness were perhaps some of the major reasons for Kerala’s striking progress. What made this tiny state different from the rest of India, was perhaps the importance given to women in its matrilineal societies. In this regard the upper caste Nairs seem to have provided the role model for a vast number of people to emulate. “At a time when the vast majority of western women suffered oppression in silence and fear, the Kerala women lived in a matrilineal society” (Mittapalli 107). Being matrilocal (in which the husband lives with the wife’s people), their family house granted them security and comfort which their western counterparts lacked. The women and their children were assured safety and economic well-being even if their male partners

But the hypothetical situation where the bride’s consent was necessary continued even to the near present. Years later, when the question of Kamala’s marriage was raised, she, a mere 15-year old, was not the one who made the choice, allowing herself to be persuaded by the social and financial requirements of her family. The woman’s voice or choice was definitely secondary to that of her karanavar, her maternal uncle, the patriarch. Kamala Das’sValiamma is viewed as an unhappy person with great capacity for silence. Kamala reconstructs this person’s life story from sketchy details gleaned from the reports of various relatives, who are quite reluctant to speak of the unfortunate circumstances: husband pass that way but he did not.(31)

It offers a genuine insight into the helplessness of a woman in the matrilineal framework of the Nair tharavadu, where the authority of the patriarch or karanavar was final. He was a sort of dictator who was expected to look after the basic requirements of his siblings and their offspring. In return, the womenfolk pledged their allegiance to him, accepting his word as final; subverting all contrary pictures of him and idolizing his