Alka Joshi’s “The Henna Artist” is such a beautiful novel. It’s a poignant story of love and loss, of family and of the struggles we as women go through.What it takes to survive as a woman in a man's world. How hard it is not only to survive but to succeed and thrive.
It’s so frustrating to read a historical fiction piece and see the same trends still at large today. Women are still shamed for stupid things, having a baby out of wedlock, leaving their husbands. There is so much shame dumped upon women for things that men are almost expected to do.
Lakshmi leaves her husband because he is abusive. She made the most important decision of her life. To save her own life, to get the hell out of there. Because of her action, her action of literally saving her own life, her entire family is shamed. Her younger sister grows up having no idea what love is, what it is like to have someone that really loves her or is kind to her. So that when she goes and lives with Lakshmi, Radha is so desperate for any type of love that she lets a boy she knows she can’t have, convince her that she can.
Watching nothing happen to Pavarti’s son when Radha became pregnant by him hit a nerve in me so hard that I wanted to scream. This is not something confined to the 1950’s not something confined to times past. I have seen so many women and girls shamed for the same situation while nothing happens to the guys. It is appalling. His family continued on as if nothing had happened and Radha was left with only her sister’s support and the awful decision of deciding if she wanted to keep her baby or have any hope at a future.
In her own way Lakshmi is ruined because she slept with a man. The irony of Pavarti caring when she knew her husband was sleeping around and had steady mistresses is honestly hilarious. But the lengths she went to, did anything happen to her husband? No of course not, but Lakshmi loses the business that she spent years scraping every penny together, working tirelessly to build. Parvati’s husband who had always been a friend to Lakshmi does nothing to aid her, whoops, I screwed up your entire life with one night, sorry about that, guess you’d better deal with that.
...so irritating
I loved how the novel dealt with it though, Alka didn’t shy away from the pain and devastation that is so obviously being felt in situations like that. She let it all be seen and felt on the page, and yet she ended on a note of hope. Showing what we all know in our hearts but can’t always see, that there is always hope, there is always a future. We have no guarantee that that future will be easy or even turn out the way we want it to. But there is always a tiny grain of hope, some way out and into a new life.
“The Henna Artist” by Alka Joshi
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Henna_Artist/AvmUDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
Comments
Post a Comment