The Freaks by Kamala Das detailed analysis, summary and criticism

 

The Freaks by Kamala Das

KAMALA Das (1934-2009)

ž Kamala Surayya, Madhavikutty

ž Indian poet as well as leading Malayalam author

ž Her contribution to Malayalam literature are her short stories and autobiography whereas her oeuvre in English, written under her name Kamala Das, is for her poems and explicit autobiography.

ž Her open and honest treatment of female sexuality, free from any sense of guilt, infused her writing with power

ž She was marked as an iconoclast of her generation.

ž The directness of her voice led to comparisons with Margaret Duras and Sylvia Plath

Works

NOVELS

ž Alphabet of Lust (1976)

ž My Story (Autobiography 1976)

POETRY

ž The Sirens (1964)

ž Summer in Calcutta (1965)

ž The old playhouse (1973)

ž Only the soul knows how to sing (1997)

ž My mother at sixty six (1999)

ž Yea Allah (2001)

AWARDS

ž PEN’s Asian poetry prize 1963

ž Kerala Sahitya Award 1969

ž National Sahitya Award 1985

POEM:

He talks, turning a sun-stained
Cheek to me, his mouth, a dark
Cavern, where stalactites of
Uneven teeth gleam, his right
Hand on my knee, while our minds
Are willed to race towards love;
But, they only wander, tripping
Idly over puddles of
Desire. .... .Can this man with
Nimble finger-tips unleash
Nothing more alive than the
Skin's lazy hungers? Who can
Help us who have lived so long
And have failed in love? The heart,
An empty cistern, waiting
Through long hours, fills itself
With coiling snakes of silence. .....
I am freak.  It’s only
To save my face, I flaunt, at
Times, a grand, flamboyant lust.

ž The poem the Freaks by Kamala Das is about the poet’s marriage in which there is no love between the couple.

ž The poem dramatizes an abnormal situation in love making which exposes the futility of loveless relationships

ž It also brings to light the agony of the female persona who remains a non participant in the act of love making because it denies her the emotional and intellectual thrills of life.

ž The narrator of the poem presents the male partner in love in a very dark light

ž His way of talking is selfish, he has no fascination for her

ž She knows that he cannot go beyond the satisfaction of lustful desires

ž She finds him not only ugly but extremely repulsive

ž His cheeks are sun burnt and brownish in appearance. His mouth looks very horrible like a dark cavern and his shining teeth are uneven and calciferous. The man places his right hand  on the knee of the female in a gesture of love making.

ž Their minds, especially of the woman keep wandering to avoid any sign of emotional involvement in it.

ž The lovers are filled with puddles of desire  ie lust without love. It is purely sensual relationship full of dirt and filth.

ž The poet dramatizes the pangs of sorrow of a woman involved. She has to bear this torture because of social compulsions. She is not against the spiritual love

ž The woman finds herself totally isolated and ignored in the sexual act. She is all fed up with the lustful desires. She feels emotionally and spiritually starved in this type of sensual relationship

ž Their hearts are like an empty cistern filled with snakes of silence waiting to be filled with love not lust

ž The woman has to bear the pangs because of the social compulsions to honour marital commitments

ž At the end she calls herself a freak or abnormal person who makes a show of being lustful inorder that she may be regarded as a normal person.

ž Kamala looks very determined to revolt against the conventional society’s definition of womanhood. Even she challenges the traditional sex roles. In many of her poems, she brings out the emotional emptiness and sterility of married life and the intensity of misery of the wife who surrenders to her husband who is repulsive, and with whom she has no emotional contact at all. 

 

ž The poem 'The Freaks' begins with a slow movement,  representing her indifference to sex and ends on a n impulsive note, in keeping with the compromise. She must not only surrender herself to his love making however she hates it, she must also pretend to like it. Her self-respect insists it; the social customs require it. This is a male dominated world.

ž The motivating force of her notion is love that is frustrating experience. All her efforts to establish meaningful relations with other show to be fruitless. In Freaks, poet depicts the disappointment, senselessness and the torment of a woman who longs for true love but it is denied by her husband who is insensible to her psychological desires. She is revolted by cruelty of her companion. She feels trapped by her male ego. Therefore she refused to play the traditional role as a wife. It is natural that her poems represent a rebellion against male dominated social system .It shows that in a male dominated world she has courage to emphasis her feminine sensibility and to revolt against the system. She is proud of her femininity and does not fail to claim it.

ž She is conscious of a primary need for true love, psychological need and a desire for liberty within the family system. In this sense, she is truly liberated woman and a representative of modern woman who identify her right to sexual fulfillment and psychological security.