The similarities in the role of women in the two stories are that they are confined and within limits set by their culture or society. Guleri has to stay with her husband and parents in law, and she only gets to see her family once a year.
‘Whenever Guleri was homesick she would take her husband Manak, and go up to this point. She would see the homes of Chamba twinkling in the sunlight.’
Guleri’s life very much comprised of her ‘daily chores- fed the cattle, cooked food for her parents in law- and then sat back to work out how long it would be before someone to come and fetch her from her parents village’.
This shows that Guleri did not have much self-government at all. She is forever thinking about getting away, to go and visit her parents. However looking at the Sikh culture and how it offered little freedom to women during this time, Guleri is a bit of a contradiction to this. She does believe she is entitled to some scope. This is seen by the way she converses with Manak. She does not let Manak take charge and she is ‘childishly stubborn’ towards him.
Mary in ‘The Three Sisters’ is similar to Guleri in a sense that she too is confined within limits, set by her culture or society. Mr. Watts makes it clear that Mary is not to go out to town or any public place for three years.
‘She is not to expect to go out to town or to any other public place for these three years’.
However like Guleri, Mary contradicts the idea of respecting and adapting to the dominating role of men. She is very demanding to Mr. Watts.
‘I am to have a new carriage hung as high as the Dutton’s…You must build me a theatre to act plays in’.
How ever she did not obtain her wishes as again she was over powered by Mr. Watts. This reinforces how little power women had against their husbands or families.
Although one of the stories ‘A Stench of Kerosene’ is set more recently in India and the other ‘The Three Sisters’ is set in England hundreds of years ago, there is great similarities between the roles and representations of women in the two different cultures and societies.
In ‘A Stench of Kerosene’ Guleri, Manak and Guleri’s father believe in marrying for love and happiness. Guleri and Manak love each other very dearly and this is portrayed by the writer through their actions when Manak’s mother brings him a new wife. He could not feel for his new wife as he did for Guleri.
‘Manak’s body responded to the new women but his heart was dead within him’
Guleri’s love for Manak is forcefully shown by the writer, as when she hears of Manak’s new wife ‘she soaked her clothes in kerosene and set fire to them’. This shows how emotionally hurt she was. When Manak heard of this he too was greatly hurt.
‘Manak mute with pain, could only stare and feel his own life burning out’.
The words such as ‘pain’, ‘stare’ and ‘life burning out’, the writer uses to describe feelings and thoughts dramatically. They portray the deep feelings of love between the two partners.
This clearly shows that the attitudes of Guleri and Manak towards marriage were for love. Guleri’s father had similar beliefs. He wanted his daughter to marry for happiness and to a good family.
‘He had sworn that he would not take money for his daughter, but would give her to a worthy young man from a good family’.
Love between Guleri and Manak, and Guleri’s fathers beliefs are shown by the fact that Guleri being from a modern prosperous family from the city marries, Manak. Manak is from a more rural area where there are farms and more country side, showing that Guleri did not care about moving away from her modern wealthy life, stepping down a class just to be with him. Guleri’s father’s belief is substantiated by the fact that he does not object to the marriage and he too does not care about the wealth of whom Guleri marries.
However Amrita Pritam shows mothers during that time to have an attitude towards marriage for the reason of getting your son/daughter married off and having them produce a grand child. She shows this through Manak’s mother. Manak’s mother does not care about the happiness of her son. She just wants a grandchild.
‘Manak and Guleri had been married seven years but she had never born a child and Manak’s mother had made a secret resolve that she would not let it go beyond the eight year. This year true to her decision, she had paid five hundred rupees to get him a second wife…’
The mother’s in both ‘A Stench of Kerosene’ and ‘The Three Sisters’ are shown to have similar views. They have a great power over the decisions and actions of their sons/daughters towards marriage. In ‘The Three Sisters’ the mother just wants to marry of her daughters at any opportunity.
‘my mother has given us an account of it, telling us that she certainly would not let him go further than our own family for a wife’.
‘A Stench of Kerosene’ is written in the present tense with short bursts of past tense every now and again to set a scene, and as it is a short story to familiarize the reader with the characters. It is written in the third person narrative, this keeps the reader distant from the characters. Amrita Pritam wants the reader to concentrate on the situation rather than the personalities of the characters. The use of shock, tragedy and emotive language is used to portray the love between Guleri and Manak.
‘Guleri is dead’, ‘mute with pain’, ‘feel his own life burning out’, suddenly the blank eyes filled with horror and Manak began to scream’.
These are all used to appeal to the reader’s imagination.
Jane Austen uses satire, comedy and irony within her style of writing to show the true meaning of marriage. She satirizes people’s beliefs of marriage at the time, of financial support and materialistic happiness and ridicules them with comedy. To enable the reader be close with the characters and deep into their thoughts, she writes in the first person, in an epistolary format. She writes in this way of letters to introduce the characters and their thoughts fairly quickly, as it is a short story. Jane Austen uses irony where Mary is considering marrying Mr. Watts however she ‘hates him more than anybody else in the world’.
The writers illustrate the role of women to be very limited and they show, arranged marriages to be unsuitable for many women. Amrita Pritam shows marrying for love is possible through her feelings, thoughts and actions of Guleri and Manak. Jane Austen illustrates her own views through the eyes of Sophy in ‘The Three Sisters’. Sophy believes that marriage should be about marrying for love and emotional happiness. She wants a husband who will love her with ‘constancy and sincerity’.
In my opinion the role of women and the representation of marriage in the two novels are opposite to today’s society and its beliefs of marriage. The two novels show that, women writing these stories at that time of these controversial beliefs may have meant that women were beginning to lift themselves from under the thumb of men who were thought to be dominant. Today’s society consists of non-patriarchal discrimination, of women with equal rights as men, and in some cases women are thought to be the dominant sex.
