BYE BYE BLACKBIRD: A Reflection of the Struggle for Female Autonomy against a rigid system of patriarchy

Abstract

I am a married woman. I am also a working woman. I love what I do. And I am actually paid to do what I love. Yet, everyday I return home from work with a heavy heart. No. My workplace poses no threats. Although many working women across the world would disagree with me; but fortunately, I am not one of them. My greatest threat is my returning home to my in-laws and tolerating their snide comments on my being out all day. The men in the house can do it. That is not a problem. But my going and staying out to work is a matter of domestic debate. I usually don’t retaliate. But I cannot help brooding over, from time to time, how unfair life still is towards women. When you really think about it, the fact that women all over the world are still fighting for equal rights defies all logic. Humans have mastered flight, walked on the moon and created the internet but women still can’t be trusted to make autonomous decisions about their own bodies, be guaranteed freedom from violence or harassment or get paid the same amount as men for doing the same damn work. From time to time, many women have voiced their disgruntlement over the gender inequality. Anita Desai is one such powerful and persuasive voice among the writers, endeavouring in all her works to reflect the how the female autonomy strives to prove its existence in a strictly patriarchal cultural pattern. This paper seeks to refer to one of her novels, Bye, Bye Black Bird (1971) to highlight the way man-woman relationships are bedevilled by cultural encounters. The novel deals with alienation of an English lady, Sarah, married to Adit, an immigrant from India, who spends her days wallowed in the guilt of committing a mistake of marrying an Indian in her own society. In spite of being a woman from the so-called advanced west, she is quiet, meek and submissive; while Adit, behaves most of the time, like a typical Indian male, conservative, rigid and patriarchal. Through Sarah, Desai draws our attention to the annihilation of self that marriage involves for a female, through a recurring theme of insecurity, fragmentation, homelessness and the quest for identity among different communities across the world