Modi 1
The Theme of Feminism in ‘An American Brat’
By Bapsi Sidhwa
Content:
Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, personal, and social rights for women. Feminists typically advocate or support the rights and equality of women. Although feminist advocacy is and has been mainly focused on women's rights, some feminists, including bell hooks, argue for the inclusion of men's liberation within its aims because men are also harmed by traditional gender roles. Some forms of feminism have been criticized for taking into account only white, middle class, and educated perspectives. This criticism led to the creation of ethnically specific or multicultural forms of feminism, including black feminism and intersectional feminism. Most of those who identify themselves as "feminists" ignore the fact that men and women are not the same. Men and women are physically different – not only sex organs but the way our muscles work, our balance centers, our endurance to strength ratios. Women can do the things men can do but they have to do it the way a woman can. Sometimes the way a man can do it is more efficient sometimes not but if it is then it is a better job for him than for women. So, more men will do it by a natural inclination. The same applies to the way in general, both sexes perceive the world. The emotional and intellectual evaluations of the world
Modi 2
are seen through different filters and lead to different responses making one or the other more naturally inclined to different jobs.
An American Brat Sidhwa highlights the predicament of the Pakistani people in general and of the Parsi community in particular. Bapsi has worked on dual perspective, which is based on both the Pakistani and the Parsi point of view. She speaks both for the Pakistanis and the marginalized Parsi community. In the novel ‘An American Brat’ where the Parsi community is shown actively participating in Pakistani politics. Instead of keeping a neutral, detached stance, Ginwalla family is passionately involved in the easy and lucid. On the first look I felt it to be an account of the funny and charming view of America from a teenage girls’ point of view. What starts off as a worried mother’s ‘packing off’ of her daughter to America to avoid the influence of the growing Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan, moves on to become a funny and often interesting tale of various incidents and accidents in the girls life. The main character, center of attraction the 16yrs old strong minded Parsi girl Feroza Ginwalla goes to a whole new atmosphere to become a woman of new generation and becoming more confident about herself like her mother wants her to be. Her parents are of modern time and they are broad-minded. Feroza is a religious girl when we have a first look at her character. She is very conservative.
Her mother comments about her:
“She won't even answer the phone anymore! 'What if it's someone I don't know?' "Zareen mimicked her daughter in English.”I told her — don't be silly. No one's going to jump out of the phone to bite you!" Page-162 She is five feet and four inches with a fair complexion. She is a beautiful girl. She is 16 years
Modi 3
old. She has daring and dashing personality. She was a girl of sky-nature in her childhood. She had a very serious and mature nature. She was an anti-social child, who didn’t go to birthday parties and hangout with children of her age group doing activities with them. She always ignored everyone and was a stubborn child. She was a sensible girl. She was not attracted towards the Youngman. She was not slap of emotions. She had self-controlled contours and she knew what is right and what is wrong. Her character is shown as an orthodox girl who is forced to see a different world which is way too opposite from her religion. Zareen, her mother on the other hand is shown as a very cool mother who wants her daughter to go outside her Parsee community and learn the terms of a changing world. She gives her daughter an opportunity to go America and try to learn their culture. She is also very different in her way of dressing than Feroza and Feroza never likes her dressing sense. She feels embarrassed when her mother comes to college in a short length blouse which according to Feroza is disrespectful and is not something according to their culture.
These lines show her narrow-mindedness when Zareen goes to her school to bring her back. In the car, she said:
“In the car she said: 'Mummy, please don't come to school dressed like that.' She objected to my sleeveless sari-blouse! Really, this narrow-minded attitude touted by General Zia is infecting her, too. I told her: 'Look, we're Parsee, everybody knows we dress differently.”Page-425
Zareen Ginwala is her mother. She is a modern lady who wears blouses. But Feroza has contrast with her mother’s character. She wears scarves and is religious-minded. Feroza is the novel's protagonist, but her mother, Zareen, dominates the play. Zareen asks her daughter to
Modi 4
marry someone who is not from a Parsee background and contradicts her own statement when she gets to know about David, an American Jewish boy. She gives her daughter the freedom to make her own decisions but they also dominate her thoughts and try to manage them according to her. Somewhere around she forgets that when someone is given so much freedom after some time they start to take advantage of that and stop realizing the basic facts of life, that how their life was earlier and how much they had left behind and changed themselves according to the new world. For a teenager like Feroza, who is quite introvert and orthodox in her thoughts as compared to children of her age it took her mother a while to convince her to go the United States for a few months, where she will stay with her only slightly older Uncle Manek, a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Despite his own early difficulties adjusting to life in America, Manek convinces Feroza to stay on as a student majoring in hotel management, a suitably practical field, at a junior college in Idaho. Manek is Feroza’s uncle who is only six years older than Feroza.
Their relation is beautifully shown through line
“With only six years between them, Manek and Feroza grew up more as siblings than as uncle and niece. Their hostilities often assumed epic proportions.”Page-377
They are jealous of each other but later on we see that when Feroza goes to America, they become very good friends of each other. They called each other ‘boochinai’ and his nick-name is guardian in the USA. Feroza, like other kids is not really excited by her going to America and going in such an advanced cultured. She was innocent and was not aware of the outside world till she was in Lahore. Her character in this novel is shown as a very conservative girl, who is very
Modi 5
far from all the glittery things going on just to attract mankind to it. She is a very stubborn child since her childhood as this is seen when she was beaten by her father, when she was four but she spoke not a single word till her lips started bleeding. Feroza was not irritated with the fact of not getting attention from her father, who was busy drinking every evening and by her mother, who was busy in her social life and trying to adjust herself in the incomprehensive world. Feroza is passionately involved in the country’s current political crisis. Zareen at one point voices her concern over her daughter’s intense involvement in “Bhutto’s trial.” Her concern for her daughter, however, does not stop her from working in “many women’s committees with Begum Bhutto.” Feroza even when she is in America remains acutely concerned about the crisis in her country. She is totally shocked to hear of Bhutto’s hanging.
On coming back to Pakistan, she voices her disappointment at being inadequately informed about Pakistan‘s current political scenario;
“I want to know what’s going on here. After all, it’s my country!” Page 2
She is really concerned about political affairs going in her country and her mind is there only though is totally mixed in the new life of America and has started living it to the fullest. The novel actually describes the painful process of losing and replacing homes, presenting, in the process, an indirect metaphor for the ambivalent position of so many Diasporas writers today. And though Feroza is a Parsee girl, she could be a young woman of any of the subcontinent’s religious communities, choosing between a period of rampant sectarianism at home and the experience of more covert prejudice abroad. Feroza like any other foreign student struggles to find her way and yet manages to settle into school. It’s difficult for her to find that home kind of
Modi 6
comfort in America. Everything is different and it gives a bad feeling of things changing around her too soon and too much. Along the way she also makes friends of all kinds and learns all about relationships, good and bad. She learns new ways to living as a teenager and adapts the culture and mold herself into that. As earlier she was not a friendly nature girl but moving to America changes that also in her. Now she has a best friend Jo, and she also plans to meet Jo’s family in Denver. Fascinated by life in a large city, they decide to transfer to the University of Denver, to study Hotel Management. This time her family is stunned to see a confident and glowing Feroza who knows her mind, refuses to get married and wants a career and more importantly wants the ability to stand on her own two feet. The change in thinking, in her attitude and her confidence is really praised by her family. Her family gifts her $700, and Feroza is thrilled to use this cash to buy her first (second-hand) car. As fate would have it, the person from whom she is destined to buy the car is also destined to be the first love of her life. A blond haired blue-eyed David Press is a man who is equally taken by Feroza’s beautiful features and shyness. David has a dancing and dashing personally. He is a beautiful Youngman. Feroza is much impressed by his personality. She falls in love with him. So, with the passage of time, she becomes morally corrupt. She has illicit relationship with David.
These lines show her illegal relations with David:
“And after this, it was natural for them to be physically close, to tenderly touch each other, to abandon themselves to the ardent intoxication of their youthful hormones. Feroza was as "swept off her feet" as she could wish, as David wished her to be. And the instinct that had guarded her before, now let her go as David released her from
Modi 7
the baffling sexual limbo in which Shashi's cooler rhythm and the restraints of their common culture had set her adrift.”
Soon a letter arrives at the Ginwalla’s home from Feroza, introducing David and a possible wedding with him. A shocked family immediately dispatches Feroza’s mother Zareen to Denver to foil the romance. Zareen feels lonely and helpless in a new country that she has lost her daughter to. Her regret is reflected in the lines:
“I should have listened. I should have never let you go so far away. Look what it’s done to you — you’ve become and American Brat,”
She tells her daughter passionately, her daughter who stands to be excommunicated from the Parsee community for marrying outside of their tight knit group. Zareen here contradicts her own words as she allows Feroza to marry someone outside the Parsee community and now when she has choose her Mr. Right she starts to manipulate her thoughts and make her think like old Feroza, who was well religious Parsee girl.
Zareen has a strong role in the novel as her dominating the thoughts of Feroza is seen from the very starting of the play and giving her daughter so much of allowance to live her life away from the family and in American standards. Zareen as a mother wanted to make her girl confident enough to face the world and start participating in life activities made Feroza confident and independent. But good things never come easy, though the change was what all Zareen wanted in her daughter but it was a little too much. Change is necessary but should not bring bad things with it that people who earlier used to like her innocence is no longer present in her. Zareen
Modi 8
regrets her decision when she sees a dramatic change in her daughter. Cyrus and Zareen decide to break-off the wedding by sending Zareen to Huston where Feroza is living in an apartment with her best friend Jo and her fiancé David. It’s difficult for Zareen to be comfortable with this situation and Zareen adores Jo (though she doesn’t realize this lovely girl is a lesbian), but she barely speaks to David…at first. Zareen spends some time in Huston and start to like the place and the special feeling of being in America and having so much of freedom. And despite her mission which is to break off her daughter’s engagement, David starts to leave a great impression on Zareen. He even takes her shopping at the Galleria, where she buys pale pink hot pants, of all things. In fact, Zareen enjoys America and its freedoms so much that she starts to understand why her daughter has changed. It almost seems as if she will accept her daughter’s choice. But then Cyrus and Mumma call from Pakistan to remind Zareen of what she’s doing in America. Lots of troubles come in Feroza’s and David’s way as Feroza isn’t the only one whose family is worried about her choices. Turns out David’s bubbe aren’t too happy with the fact that her grandson is planning to marry outside the faith, and she manages to stick her two cents into the equation. At the end of one particularly difficult evening, the young couple’s future starts to look very dark indeed.
Modi 9
Conclusion:
Feroza is a round as well as dynamic character. We can conclude it in such a way that it is not the fault of Feroza but the fault of her family who gave her so much independence. She was innocent and did not agree to go to America, but she was sent by her family. Just a sixteen years old girl and such a corrupt and destructive world of America proved horrible. Feroza would have been independent and confident if she had lived with her family and if her family would have helped her to grow in such a confident women. Sending her away for higher studies with so much freedom in such a corrupt place proved wrong for her and her family as well. So, the result had to be necessarily for Feroza. Zareen, her mother first forces her to move to America with her uncle and then regrets her own decision afterwards. Overall, we can see Zareen manipulating Feroza’s thoughts and wanting her life to work her Zareen wants it to be. Feroza was never asked what she wanted, she was forced to be liked that and when she got changed no one liked that change. Zareen also discovers that her daughter has grown in ways the Pakistani mother could never have imagined.
According to me, Feminism is not for everyone, and it shouldn’t be forced on people who are not in a favor of changing themselves according to the changing world. Feminism talks about embracing oneself to deal with the changing techniques going on in the world. It helps one to be confident, to make one self eligible enough to accept the challenges that come their way. For Zareen feminism was about changing herself and her daughter according to the new world and be a part of new terms and conditions of the society, which she tried to force on her daughter also. Zareen forgets that, that everybody has their own realization point in their life, one cannot
Modi 10
force their experience, their thoughts, their style on someone just to make them a better person to live according to the society. Which she later understands by herself when she move to America to break-off the wedding of Feroza and David and realizes that why her daughter has changed and it’s a impact of America and it’s freedom which makes Feroza change her mind in many ways and Zareen also starts to comprehend the fact that everyone has their own realization point which makes them a better person and according to their will. For Feroza, freedom earlier was of no requirement as she was happy who she was, when she was in Lahore. When Zareen used to make her understand that why she doesn’t want her to marry someone in Parsee community and why she wants Feroza to move to America and be independent and learn new terms of living, Feroza never understand the reason behind that. But, clearly we can see that, that she understands that very well when she starts to live alone and interact with all kind of people and even make friends in America to learn some American ways of living the life. Feminism cannot be forced on someone, not everyone is in a requirement of a change, they are happy by who they are. And giving so much sudden freedom to someone comes with a lot of responsibilities.