Monday, 5 June 2023

Soaphead Church

 Soaphead Church

Dr Manisha Patil 

His business was dread. People came to him in dread, whispered in dread, wept and pleaded in dread. And dread was what he counseled. Singly they found their way to his door, wrapped each in a shroud stitched with anger, yearning, pride, vengeance, loneliness, misery, defeat, and hunger. They asked for the simplest of things: love, health, and money. Make him love me. Tell me what this dream means. Help me get rid of this woman. Make my mother give me back my clothes. Stop my left hand from shaking. Keep my baby’s ghost off the stove. Break so – and – so’s fix. To all of these requests he addressed himself. His practice was to do what he was bid – not to suggest to a party that perhaps the request was unfair, mean, or hopeless. (136) 

If Geraldine represents cat in the primer who loves ‘order, precision and constancy’ as well as the actual animal cat who is ‘as clean and quiet as she is’ (66), then Soaphead with his ‘hatred of and fascination with any hint of disorder or decay’ (134) hates the old and dirty dog Bob, but subconsciously his mind is as dirty as Bob’s body. His case study is curious for two reasons – first, he originally comes from West Indies and second unlike most of the characters in the novel, he is highly educated in Western Classics and as a result, writes down his views (instead of telling) in a standard English which carries no trace of black vernacular dialect. Morrison writes, ‘He had been reared in a family proud of its academic accomplishments and its mixed blood – in fact, they believed the former was based on the latter’ (132) and therefore always married ‘up’. They learnt to separate their bodies, minds and spirits from all that suggested Africa and cultivated dignified British manners which gave them ‘a conviction of superiority’ but made them ‘corrupt in public and private practice, both lecherous and lascivious’ which in fact was considered as their ‘noble right’ (133). Soaphead is the end product of this mutual colonization, willing surrender to the colonizer – a ‘mimic man’. Gurleen Grewal makes this connection between colonial hegemony and mimicry as well as between domestic and international colonization in American context.

The presence of Soaphead Church implicates the mimicry of Geraldine, Pauline, and Pecola as part of colonial oppression. Homi Bhabha has situated mimicry in the context of the colonizer’s project of disregarding the cultural, racial, historical difference of the other while securing value and priority for its own culture and race history. Education was instituted in the colonies to produce a native elite whose interests would coincide with those of the colonizers. Soaphead Church is an example of such production. In the novel, he is much more than a mere function of plot, more than an agent who will grant Pecola her blue eyes and who will substitute as the dog in the Dick-and-Jane primer. We are told that “his personality was an arabesque: intricate, symmetrical, balanced, and tightly constructed” (131), the very words we might use to describe the novel’s narrative structure. His story, the last of the novel’s studies in alienated consciousness, places the other accounts into perspective, for he brings from the West Indies an anglophilia and a consciousness both informed and deformed by a history of colonization. The connection between colonialism and the economic institution of the American South – domestic colonialism – was often made during the 1900’s by radical analysts of black history. In the words of social critic Harold Cruse, “The only factor which differentiates the Negro’s status from that of a pure colonial status is that his position is maintained in the ‘home’ country in close proximity to the dominant racial group.” The novel suggests a similarity of predicament between a colonized West Indian black subject and an African American one; both are inheritors of complex social/historical formations that vex their identities...A man of breeding, of metropolitan learning, the “lightly browned” Soaphead has much more in common with the “sugar brown” Geraldine. Soaphead’s and Geraldine’s common identity formations relate the colonies abroad and at home.12

Soaphead’s personal history informs us not only the refinement of his colonized mind but also his practical failure as a happy, good natured, hardworking and well-functioning human being. He turned out to be a failure in both his personal and professional life. His early marriage (at the age of seventeen) lasted only for two months and depression of it drove him to study hard but without any real interest psychiatry, sociology and physical therapy for long six years at the end of which he found that he cannot earn respectable living. He also realized that he cannot openly confront his potential homosexuality. So finally, he started earning money by deceiving innocent people and gratify his unnatural desire by sexually abusing small girls. Morrison depicts Soaphead as a weak person who considers himself to be strong and powerful. He pounces on the illiterate, superstitious, innocent weak and needy people to sustain his self-deception and illusion of power. He indulges in all his vices and still wears the mask of virtuous and righteous. Morrison uses the same ironic language to describe Soaphead which she uses to describe Cholly’s rape of Pecola. 

He could have been an active homosexual but lacked the courage…his cravings, although intense, never relished physical contact. He abhorred flesh on flesh. Body odor, breath odor, overwhelmed him…all the natural excretions and protections the body was capable of – disquieted him. His attentions therefore gradually settled on those humans whose bodies were least offensive – children. And since he was too diffident to confront homosexuality, and since little boys were insulting, scary, and stubborn, he further limited his interests to little girls. They were usually manageable and frequently seductive. His sexuality was anything but lewd; his patronage of little girls smacked of innocence and was associated in his mind with cleanliness. He was what one might call a very clean old man. (131-2)

When Pecola comes to his house with her fantastic wish (“My eyes”…”I want them blue.” [138]), Soaphead considers it to be the most realistic and sensible wish. He understands Pecola’s desperate need to own blue eyes so that she can be beautiful, lovable and consequently happy. He also knows that he does not have the real power to change them. Yet it is not his nature to speak truth. What he does is to tell convincing lies and thereby fulfill his own selfish wishes. Accordingly, he gives Pecola poisonous food to feed Bob, the dog, whom Soaphead abhors touching and tells her, “If the animal behaves strangely, your wish will be granted on the day following this one.” (139) Thus Soaphead accomplishes two feats in one jump. He kills the dog without touching it and makes Pecola believe that she has got eyes without actually changing them. In the normal circumstances, Soaphead would have molested Pecola physically, but her extreme ugliness repulses him. On the other hand, her innocence, her utter helplessness and powerlessness tempts him to do the formidable thing – to play the God. Furthermore, in his biting letter to God, he even justifies his assault on Pecola’s psyche. He writes, 

Not according to my just deserts, but according to my mercy, the little black girl that came a-looning at me today. Tell me, Lord, how could you leave a lass so lone that she could find her way to me? ...Do you know what she came for? Blue eyes. New, blue eyes, she said. Like she was buying shoes. “I’d like a pair of new blue eyes.” She must have asked you for them for a very long time, and you hadn’t replied. (A habit, I could have told her, a long-ago habit broken for Job but no more.) She came to me for them…You forgot, Lord. You forgot how and when to be God...I did what You did not, could not, would not do: I looked at that ugly little black girl, and I loved her. I played you. And it was very good show! I, I have caused a miracle. I gave her the eyes. I gave her the blue, blue, two blue eyes. Cobalt blue. A streak of it right out of your own blue heaven. No one else will see her blue eyes. But she will, and she will live happily ever after…Now you are jealous. You are jealous of me. (143-4)

This letter incriminates not only God but also the church. In their duty to help weak and needy people they have failed and instead begun to play God themselves, judging society’s mistakes in the name of righteous superiority and blaming the victim for her own victimization.

Dr Manisha Patil 

Sunday, 4 June 2023

Geraldine

 Geraldine 

Dr Manisha Patil 

They go to land-grant colleges, normal schools and learn how to do the white man’s work with refinement: home economics to prepare his food; teacher education to instruct black children in obedience; music to soothe the weary master and entertain his blunted soul. Here they learn the rest of the lesson begun in those soft houses with porch swings and pots of bleeding heart: how to behave. The careful development of thrift, patience, high morals and good manners. In short, how to get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions. (64)

The schoolteacher, Geraldine is the middle-class black woman who had struggled a lot to achieve stability in life. She embodies the white standards of morality, cleanliness and respectability. The mission of her life is to get rid of ‘funkiness’. However, funkiness here symbolizes both the African-American essence and the feminine and respectability here turns out to be an instrument of repression. Morrison deliberately describes background of girls like Geraldine at the very beginning and then gives a male perception of them before showing her response to Pecola. ‘They come from Mobile, Aiken. From New Port News. From Marietta. From Maridian’ (63), the Southern provincial towns, where social conduct of people and especially those of women are scrutinized under the magnifying glass of morality and ethics. Black women are by default considered to be loose thanks to the legacy of slavery. So, to pose themselves as virtuous, they had to suppress even the normal signs of sexuality. For them stability and security are more important than sexuality. As a result, ‘[t]hey never seem to have boyfriends, but they always marry. Certain men watch them, without seeming to and know that if such a girl is in his house, he will sleep on sheets boiled white, hung out to dry on juniper bushes and pressed with heavy iron. There will be pretty paper flowers decorating the picture of his mother, a large Bible in the front room. They feel secure.’ (65) This pursuit of white bourgeoisie values provides her with all the material comforts but at the same time suppress all spontaneity in her life and make her totally incapable of experiencing sexual joy with her husband which even Polly experiences with her husband Cholly. Michael Awkward writes, ‘Geraldine’s efforts constitute, it seems to me, a splitting of herself into a good, moral, funkless self which she works diligently to maintain, and an evil, immoral, nappy-edged black self that she suppresses and attempts to expel. That this suppression and attempted exorcism of blackness render her incapable of enjoying life or of loving her family – or herself – seems to her a small price to pay for the warding off of ignominy of an association of evil.’11 In short to embrace the American ideal, she has to deny her authentic black self. In America, white male is defined in terms of reason and culture and black female, by contrast, means passion and nature. Women like Geraldine try to overcome these so-called negative traits and in the process distance themselves from African-American community. Geraldine taught her son to differentiate between niggers and colored folk: ‘Colored people were neat and quite; niggers were dirty and loud.’ (67) It made him sadistically vicious because of his alienation from other black children with whom he is forbidden to play. Moreover, he also realized that his mother valued a cat ‘who will love her order, precision and constancy; who will be as quite as she is’ (66) more than any other human being including himself. She fulfilled all his material needs but never ever acknowledged his emotional needs, let alone fulfilling them. She also denied him close physical contact. Even to her husband she gave her body sparingly and partially. Only the cat was allowed to share her ‘sensual delight.’ (66) Due to the lack of healthy emotional bonds with his parents and with his peers, he takes pleasure in hurting others. When he took Pecola as his prisoner and threw the big black cat right in her face, he was doubly delighted by fright of both Pecola and the cat. But when he saw the same emotional bond develop between Pecola and the cat which existed between the cat and his mother, he grew furious, killed the cat by throwing it on the wall and then blamed it on Pecola. When Geraldine saw her cat, the only object of her affection, dead and encountered Pecola, a source of disorder, as its murderer, she reacted with self-protective anger and horror. 

She looked at Pecola. Saw the dirty torn dress, the plaits sticking out on her head, hair matted where the plaits had come undone, the muddy shoes with the wad of gum peeping out from between the cheap soles, the soiled socks, one of which had been walked down in the heel of the shoe…She had seen this little girl all of her life…they [girls like Pecola] had stared at her with great uncomprehending eyes. Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared at her. The end of the world lay in their eyes and the beginning and all the waste in between…Grass wouldn’t grow where they lived. Flowers died. Shades fell down…Like flies they hovered; like flies they settled. And this one had settled in her house. (71-2) 

For Geraldine, Pecola becomes the symbol of ‘funkiness’ – blackness, femaleness and poverty – the thing she most despises and fears. Unconsciously, she knows that the line which demarcates her (colored folk) and Pecola (dirty nigger) is very thin and if she is not careful enough she can easily degenerate into the ‘nasty little black bitch’ the name she calls Pecola. When she tells Pecola to get out of her house in the composed voice, her use of slang language gives away her fear of her own evil and her own unworthiness.

Dr Manisha Patil

राजस्थानी सिनेमा का इतिहास ।

 राजस्थानी सिनेमा का इतिहास ।

 मित्रों

सादर प्रणाम,

      आप को सूचित करते हुए प्रसन्नता हो रही है कि "राजस्थानी सिनेमा का इतिहास ।" इस शीर्षक के साथ एक ISBN पुस्तक प्रकाशित करने की योजना है। इस पुस्तक हेतु आप अपने आलेख भेज सकते हैं ।  पुस्तक प्रकाशन की जिम्मेदारी Authors Press, New Delhi ने ली है। 

प्रकाशन का खर्च SEWA संस्था, कल्याण द्वारा वहन किया जाएगा अतः किसी तरह की सहयोग राशि किसी को नहीं देनी है।

         आप से अनुरोध है कि  राजस्थानी सिनेमा, राजस्थान के किसी फिल्म विशेष, उसके वैचारिक, सांस्कृतिक परिप्रेक्ष्य इत्यादि से संबंधित अपना मौलिक एवं अप्रकाशित आलेख यूनिकोड मंगल में फॉन्ट साइज़ 12 में भेजने की कृपा करें। आप अपने आलेख की word file भेजें न कि PDF. आलेख 15 जून 2023 तक manishmuntazir@gmail.com  इस ईमेल आईडी पर प्रेषित कर दीजिए । 

      

आलेख लिखने के लिए कुछ  उप विषय :

राजस्थानी सिनेमा का इतिहास

राजस्थानी सिनेमा का प्रदेय

राजस्थानी सिनेमा के नायक 

राजस्थानी सिनेमा की नायिकाएं

राजस्थानी सिनेमा में स्त्री चित्रण

राजस्थानी सिनेमा में गीत संगीत

राजस्थानी सिनेमा बनाम राजस्थानी संस्कृति

राजस्थानी सिनेमा का भाषाई स्वरूप

राजस्थानी सिनेमा और फिल्म प्रबंधन

राजस्थानी सिनेमा का आर्थिक ढांचा

राजस्थानी सिनेमा और कालबेलिया नृत्य

राजस्थानी सिनेमा में चित्रित ग्रामीण जीवन

राजस्थानी सिनेमा में चित्रित शहरी जीवन

राजस्थानी सिनेमा में चित्रित आदिवासी समाज

राजस्थानी सिनेमा और धार्मिक फिल्में

राजस्थानी सिनेमा और रंगबोध

राजस्थानी सिनेमा का सामाजिक प्रदेय

राजस्थानी सिनेमा और सरकारी प्रोत्साहन

राजस्थानी सिनेमा बनाम क्षेत्रीय अस्मिता 

राजस्थानी सिनेमा से जुड़े अकादमिक कार्य

राजस्थानी सिनेमा संबंधी साहित्य

राजस्थानी सिनेमा का व्यवसायिक स्वरूप 

राजस्थानी सिनेमा पर हिंदी फिल्मों का प्रभाव

राजस्थानी सिनेमा के फिल्म निर्देशक

राजस्थानी सिनेमा पर बाजार का प्रभाव

राजस्थानी सिनेमा और तकनीक 

राजस्थानी सिनेमा से जुड़े मुख्य आयोजन

राजस्थानी सिनेमा और OTT 

राजस्थानी सिनेमा से जुड़े ब्लॉग एवम वेब साइट

राजस्थानी सिनेमा और लोक कलाएं

राजस्थानी सिनेमा का अंतरराष्ट्रीय स्वरूप

राजनीतिक पृष्ठभूमि से जुड़ी राजस्थानी फिल्में

पर्यावरण संरक्षण से जुड़ी राजस्थानी फिल्में

( इन उप विषयों के अतिरिक्त भी आप राजस्थानी सिनेमा के किसी पक्ष को लेकर अपना आलेख भेज सकते हैं)

इस संदर्भ में जो साथी कुछ और जानना चाहते हों उनसे अनुरोध है कि वे व्यक्तिगत रूप से मैसेज या फोन करें ताकि समूह के अन्य सदस्यों को परेशानी न हो ।


धन्यवाद ।


डॉ मनीष कुमार मिश्रा

डॉ हर्षा त्रिवेदी 

Mobile number

9082556682

8090100900


Email

manishmuntazir@gmail.com

Saturday, 3 June 2023

जहां तक संभव हो।

 जहां तक संभव हो।


शायद यह एक

संरचनात्मक दुर्बलता ही है कि हम

भाषा के स्तर पर

इतने अभागे हो रहे हैं

लगातार ।


परंपरा का संवर्धन

अनिवार्य आवश्यकता के रूप में

कुछ सिद्धांत गढ़ती है

जो

प्रशंसात्मक रूप में

अंतिम जन तक

स्वीकार किया जाता है

लेकिन

बिना मौलिकता के

बिना प्रतिकारात्मक साहस के

क्या सिर्फ अनुवाद से

कोई हल निकलेगा ?


संभवतः नहीं 

अतः 

एक कोशिश के तौर पर ही सही

स्वयं में समाहित करने हेतु

भाषा के 

समावेशी संघर्ष को

आशा भरी संभावनाएं तलाशनी होंगी

जहां तक संभव हो सके।

Dr Manish Kumar Mishra

Assistant professor 

जिससे सिद्ध होता है

 जिससे सिद्ध होता है


एक

रोचक विषय की तरह 

नवाचारी प्रवृत्ति को

लगातार खोते चले जाना 

कितना दुर्भाग्यपूर्ण है!!


परंपरा से उखड़े लोगों को

निरंतर

आगाह किया गया कि

नवीनता

परंपरा की ही कपोलें हैं लेकिन

उनकी उपेक्षा ने

उन्हें उनकी जड़ों से

काट दिया

शायद ये लोग 

जड़ताओं और जड़ों में

अंतर नहीं समझ पाए।


एक नज़ीर के तौर पर

ऐसी बातों का

स्मरण रखना चाहिए

जिससे सिद्ध होता है कि

बाद की कहानी

अपनी पृष्ठभूमि का ही

विकास है ।

Dr Manish Kumar Mishra

Assistant professor 

Wasted Beauty

 Wasted Beauty

Dr Manisha Patil 

The Bluest Eye is an enquiry into the reasons why beauty is wasted in this country. The beauty in this case is black; the wasting is done by a cultural engine that seems to have been designed to murder possibilities...

– New York Times

The discussion of white hegemony has shown us that notions like beauty, morality, success and happiness are not natural products but social constructs. In America these notions are invariably linked with whiteness and when black people accept these notions undoubtedly and also try to imitate white people, what they achieve is not salvation but their own destruction.

Polly 

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another – physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it and collected self-contempt by heap. (95)

As a young girl, Polly always fantasized herself waiting for her Prince Charming. ‘He was a simple presence, an all-embracing tenderness with strength and a promise of rest...She had only to lay her head on his chest and he would lead her away to the sea, to the city, to the woods...forever.’ (88) So when Cholly first tickled her foot, she felt as if her dream has come to life. Cholly did love her then and he did take her away to city (Lorain, Ohio). But they did not live happily ever after. In a Northern city, full of white people and away from her own family, Polly started feeling lonely. Cut off from her family and deprived of emotional support from other black people, Polly fell an easy prey to materialism and consumerism. Unlike the communal spirit in the South, where people feel genuine concern for each other, up North people are judged by the way they dress and talk. ‘Pauline felt uncomfortable with the few black women she met. They were amused by her because she did not straighten her hair. When she tried to make up her face as they did, it came off rather badly. Their goading glances and private snickers at her way of talking (saying “children”) and dressing developed in her a desire for new clothes…The sad thing was that Pauline did not really care for clothes and make up. She merely wanted other women to cast favorable glances her way.’ (92) The increasing need for money made Polly seek a job but it did not end her hardships, but rather increased them.

In a racist and sexist world, black women’s suffering is multiplied. Not just white men but also white women and black men have their own share in the troubles of black women. It is as if they compensate their own powerlessness in relation to white men by displaying their power over i.e. causing trouble to black women. Furthermore, we also see white women and black men competing with each other in their power over black women. Polly’s representative example makes it very clear. 

To make the ends meet, Polly started doing day work for a white woman. She was working hard both at home and at her job and, Cholly, her husband and her employer were harassing her. Cholly was troubling her for money and her employer was constantly lecturing her how to clean and do. ‘Look like working for that woman and fighting Cholly was all I did. Tiresome.’ (92) One day Cholly came to white woman’s house drunk wanting some money. There followed a quarrel between the two, causing Polly to lose her job. Her employer was generous enough to let her stay if she left Cholly but not generous enough to give Polly, her hard earned 11 dollars so that she could cook food. She lectured Polly over having more self-respect and not letting a man take advantage of herself but bluntly refused to pay her 11 dollars and again that too under the pretext of caring for Polly and her future.

This particular episode echoes the clashes between the Black Civil Rights’ Movement and the feminist movement in 1960s. Both the movements wanted to enlist black women in their camp but none the less marginalized them. The Black Civil Rights’ Movement was pronouncedly macho which challenged white masculinity by asserting black masculinity. Black men felt that slavery and racism had emasculated them. So, to repossess their manhood, they expressed hyper-masculinity. They also felt that it is black women’s duty to stand by black men in their struggle. However, their hyper-masculinity was often expressed against black women – abusing and beating black women was the most common behavior pattern. On the other hand, feminist movement prioritized the middle-class white women’s concern at the cost of black women. The white feminists ignored the fact that a black woman’s experience is fundamentally different from that of a white woman. For a middle-class white woman who is financially well off, single parenthood may be the assertion of individuality but for poor black woman single parenthood obviously means further oppression. In such a case, she will always try to keep her man. Polly says, “No good, ma’am. He ain’t no good to me. But just the same, I think I’d best stay on.” (94) Bell hooks comments,

As a group, black women are in an unusual position in this society, for not only are we collectively at the bottom of the occupational ladder, but our overall social status is lower than that of any other group. Occupying such a position, we bear the burnt of sexist, racist and classist oppression. At the same time, we are the group that has not been socialized to assume the role of exploiter/oppressor in that we are allowed no institutionalized ‘other’ that we can exploit or oppress…White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or be oppressed. Black men may be victimized by racism but sexism allows them to act as exploiters and oppressors of women. White women may be victimized by sexism but racism enables them to act as exploiters and oppressors of black people. Both groups have led liberation movements that favor their interests and support the continued oppression of other groups. Black male sexism has undermined the struggles to eradicate racism just as white female racism undermines feminist struggle. As long as these two groups or any group defines liberation as gaining social equality with ruling class white men they have a vested interest in the continued exploitation and oppression of others.5

Caught like this between devil and the deep sea, Polly sought escape in the silver screen. Hollywood movies depict an idealized white world: ‘white men taking such good care of the women and they all dressed up in big clean houses.’ (95) The life which Polly could not have in reality, she fantasized in the movies identifying herself with the heroine. Susan Willis writes that ‘in mass culture many of the social contradictions of capitalism appear to us as if those very contradictions had been resolved.’ Commenting on it Jane Kuenz says, ‘In other words, economic, racial and ethnic differences is erased and replaced by a purportedly equal ability to consume even though what is consumed are more or less competing versions of the same white image.’6 She further says, ‘Like the Dick and Jane story, Pauline’s movies continuously present her with a life again presumably ideal, which she does not now have and which she has little, if any, chance of ever enjoying in any capacity other than that of “the ideal servant” (101) In the absence of alternate images which might validate and endorse a kind of virtue not tied to physical beauty or ones offering competing definitions of beauty itself and in the absence of a network of family and friends, especially women friends, whose own lives would provide a differing model and the context in which to erect her own, Pauline succumbs to the “simple pleasure” of “black and white images projected through a ray of light” and “curtailing freedom in every way.” (95)’7 Her movie education had taught her to grade each and every face she saw ‘in the scale of absolute beauty’ and ‘all there was to love and all there was to hate.’ (95) She herself tried to pass this beauty examination by dressing up like Jean Harlow but terribly failed when her tooth fell down. Then she stopped caring for herself and ‘settled down to just being ugly’ (96) She concluded that, ‘she is destined never to be so beautiful or cared for as those women on the screen. She does not understand that her rotten tooth is the physical embodiment of her inability to be an unmarked citizen who has the economic power to erase the unwanted traces of her body by purchasing a new artificial tooth. Instead, she directs blame inward and loses interest in her physical appearance and her home: “Soon she stopped trying to keep her own house. The things she could afford to buy did not last, had no beauty or style and were absorbed by the dingy storefront.” (101) Not understanding this system aspect of her situation, Pauline imagines that her inability to be beautiful or stylish stems from some inherent fault; in so doing, she fails to account for the economic barriers to her attainment of the privileged home maker position in one of those white houses.’8 

However, the more tragic part was yet to come. When she went to the hospital for delivery, the white doctor dismissed her labor pain saying, “now these here women you don’t have any trouble with. They deliver right away and with no pain. Just like horses.” (97) She was also subjected to the dehumanizing gaze of other young white male doctors who looked at her stomach and between her legs and said nothing to her. Her musing, ‘I hurt just like them white women. Just cause I wasn’t feeling hoping and hollering before didn’t mean I wasn’t feeling pain’ (97) became representative thought of all the silent/silenced black women in America. Unfortunately, this experience did not make her rethink her criteria of beauty, virtue and happiness. She judged even her new born baby Pecola according to white beauty scale and found her ugly and therefore unworthy of love and happiness. Instead, she found pink-white Fisher baby worthy of her love. ‘When Claudia witnesses Pauline’s mothering of the Fisher girl, she recalls, “The familiar violence rose in me. Her calling Mrs. Breedlove Polly, when even Pecola called her mother Mrs. Breedlove” (86) That her role as Polly distracts from the quality of mothering Pauline gives her own daughter is not surprising given the historical precedent set in the plantation household. The mistress-mammy relationship allowed the white woman to maintain the idealized status of mother, while freeing her from the actualities of mothering. In turn, this transference of mothering established a burden of superhuman mothering on the black woman. Thus, Mrs. Fisher, like plantation mistress, remains associated with the “universal qualities of nurturance and self-sacrifice” despite the fact that she leaves the mothering to Pauline (Bridenthal 232; Fox – Genovese 113). Because the mammy is represented in Hollywood films as “satisfied, even pleased, with this inequitable arrangement”, Jeremy G. Butler argues, the mammy “does not just represent nurturing; she also promotes black women’s exploitation as nurturers of white characters who hire and use her” (292) Thus the viewer is led to believe that this seemingly familial relationship cannot be exploitative’.9

For Polly herself this relationship seemed far from exploitative. Rather she believed that ‘[i]t was her good fortune to find a permanent job in the home of a well-to-do family whose members were affectionate, appreciative, and generous. She looked at their houses, smelled their linen, touched their silk draperies, and loved all of it. The child’s pink nightie, the stacks of white pillow slips edged with embroidery, the sheets with top hems picked out with blue cornflowers. She became what is known as an ideal servant, for such a role filled practically all of her needs…Soon she stopped trying to keep her own house. The things she could afford to buy did not last, had no beauty or style, and were absorbed by the dingy storefront. More and more she neglected her house, her children, her man…Here she found beauty, order, cleanliness, and praise…The creditors and service people who humiliated her when she went to them on her own behalf respected her, were even intimidated by her, when she spoke for the Fishers...Power, praise, and luxury were hers in this household. They even gave her what she had never had – a nickname – Polly. It was her pleasure…[h]earing, “We’ll never let her go. We could never find anybody like Polly. She will not leave the kitchen until everything is in order. Really, she is the ideal servant.” (98-9)

Jennifer Gillan remarks, ‘Embodying the role of Polly becomes a substitute for what Pauline wants: a satisfying and substantial self. When she cannot access that self on her own, through her family or the black community, she accepts the self-imposed upon her by the Fishers. Pauline wills herself not to know her own history because it is too painful. She seems to forget her own role in creating the seeming naturalness of Hollywood’s image of “white men taking such good care of the woman and they all dressed up in big clean houses” (95)…Because she believes that she is squalid and dark like her apartment and the Fishers are stately and clean like their house Pauline can only maintain a positive self-perception by affiliating herself with the Fishers. Yet houses such as theirs are clean because she and others like her labor in them; they are big because white employers can still find black labor to exploit.’10 

Dr Manisha Patil 

Sex championship in Sweden

 

In Sweden words first European Sex Championship going to be held soon.

It's surprising but true that The world will have its first sex championship in Europe/ Sweden with proper set of  rules and regulations . As per the social media and some big print media house's it is said that The first ever European Sex Championship will be held on June 8 2023 by the Swedish Sex Federation.
For a country like India this is very surprising. As per the social and cultural traditions people normally doesn't like to talk on such topics, but european culture is very open.

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