House and home

in Clear Light of Day

I. The house and the home, fixtures and fixities essential to the
narration
I. A. Description and distinction: house, home, a narrative fixture

“The Misras had been their neighbours for as long as they could remember (Theirs was not a
neighbourhood from which people moved – they were born and married and even died in the same houses,
no one ever gave one up)” (p. 194)

“A part of her twitched, stirred like a fin in resentment: why was the pond so muddy and stagnant? Why had
nothing changed? She had changed – why did it not keep up with her?

Why did Bim allow nothing to change? […] whenever she saw them, at intervals of three or five years, all
was exactly as before.” (p. 17)

“But even for Bakul it was too hot, the atmosphere of the old house too turgid and heavy to push or
manipulate. Bending down to tie two perfect bows, he merely sighed ‘So, I only have to bring you home for
a day, Tara, and you go back to being the hopeless person you were before I married you.’” (p. 25)
I. The house and the home, fixtures and fixities essential to the
narration
I. B. The relationship to home, a defining trait of the characters

“’Now this is precisely what I told you’, Bakul said, bustling into the bedroom after making his phone call. ‘I
pointed out to you how much more convenient it would be to stay with my uncle and aunt, right in the centre
of town […]’. ‘But I had not meant to go anywhere. I only wanted to stay at home.’” (p. 15)

“’I shall never leave Baba and Raja and Mira-masi’, making Tara look away before her face could betray her
admission that she, closely attached as she was to home and family, would leave them instantly if the
opportunity arose.” (p. 200)

“She stared sullenly, without lifting her head, at a watercolour above the plaster mantelpiece – red cannas
painted with some watery fluid that had trickled weakly down the brown paper: who could have painted
that? Why was it hung here? How could Bim bear to look at it for all of her life? Had she developed no taste
of her own, no likings that made her wish to sweep the old house of all its rubbish and place in it things of
her own choice?” (p. 30)
I. The house and the home, fixtures and fixities essential to the
narration
I. C. The house, an active setting

“The concept of ‘home’ often performs an important function in our lives. It can act as a valuable means of
orientation by giving us a sense of our place in the world. It tells us where we originated from and where we
belong” - John McLeod, Beginning Postcolonialism, 2000

“What attracted Tara was the contrast their home provided to hers. Even externally there were such obvious
differences – at the Misras’ no attempt was made, as at Tara’s house, to ‘keep up appearances’. They were
so sure of their solid, middle-class bourgeois position that it never occurred to them to prove it or
substantiate it by curtains ate the windows, carpets on the floors, solid pieces of furniture placed at regular
intervals, plates that matched each other on the table, white uniforms for the house servants and other such
appurtenances considered indispensable by Tara’s parents.” (p. 195)

“Here in the house it was not just the empty, hopeless atmosphere of childhood, but the very spirits of her
parents that brooded in” (p. 31)
II. Home and the house as a refuge… or a prison ?

“House imagery in Desai evokes a sense of desertion and

incarceration. It throws light on the musings of the lacerated
self’s immured existence.” (S.P Swain, The incarcerated self and
the derelict house : house imagery in Anita Desai’s novels)
 A) Imprisonment and liberation

→ The house as a prison

“Theirs was not a neighbourhood from which people moved – they were born and
married and even died in the same houses, no one ever gave one up” (Clear Light
of Day, p. 194)

“They pushed her back into the grey suffocating cell and denied her.” (Clear
Light of Day , p.127)

“When would it leave – for the club ? For the office ? Why did it not go ?” (Clear
Light of Day, p. 92)
 → Bim : a protector or a guard ?

“She felt Bim’s hold on her again – that rough, strong, sure grasp – dragging her down,
down into a well of oppression, of lethargy, of ennui. She felt the waters of her childhood
closing over her head again – black and scummy as in the well at the back.” (Clear Light
of Day, p. 211)

“That was what the house had been – the lawn, the rose walk, the guava trees, the veranda
: Bim’s domain. (…) Bim, who had stayed, and become part of the pattern, inseparable.”
(Clear Light of Day, p. 217)

“The house symbolically projects Bim’s stifled anger and acerbity, her longing for silence
and staticity.” (S.P Swain, The incarcerated self and the derelict house : house imagery in
Anita Desai’s novels)
 → The need for an escape

“It made Bim more ambitious at school (…). She was not sure where this would lead but
she seemed to realise it was a way out. A way out of what ? They still could not say, could
not define the unsatisfactory atmosphere of their home.” (Clear Light of Day, p. 185)

“And Raja so ill – till it seemed that the house was ill, illness passing from one generation
to the other so that anyone who lived in it was bound to become ill and the only thing to do
was to get away from it, escape…” (Tara, Clear Light of Day, p.221)
 B) Protection and vulnerability

“The empty house across the road breathed it at them. Its emptiness and darkness was a
warning, a threat perhaps.” (Clear Light of Day, p.89)

“He felt ill. (…) But he was sure (…) it was something to do with… (…) Lord Byron,
heroism, Pakistan, Jinnah, Gandhi, the boys at college, hissing at him from being the
gate-post” (Clear Light of Day, p.83)
III. Home in the postcolonial context : a comparative
approach.
3.A The intimacy of home challenged by the intrusion of
foreign languages.
“In the corner of the room was Granny’s old metal fan. It clicked and
whirred, drowning out Mama’s English-laced Arabic. I could make out
none of the conversation, except to take note when she switched
to French. It was the single language she spoke that I still didn’t
know. She seemed to use it more often that summer.” (Chronicle of a
Last Summer, Chapter I)

“‘See’, he told his sisters when he came upon them, bent over their
homework at the veranda table, laboriously writing out Hindi
compositions on My Village or The Cow, ‘you can’t call this a
language’. He made a scornful sound in his nose, holding up one of
their Hindi copy-books as if it were an old sock.” (Clear light of Day,
Chapter II)
3.B The house as a symbol of country.
“Father and son argued hotly whenever they met (…) so that all the
arguments they built in silence burst out with great explosiveness on
those few occasions. In the meantime, Raja grew more and more
sullen and unpredictable in his temper while their father appeared to
retreat deeper into the shadows off-stage where he existed unseen by
the children” (Clear light of Day, Chapter III)

“After Granny died, Abdou left. Mama closed downstairs and Nesma
moved upstairs with us. Everyone stopped coming for lunch. I missed
Abdou, but sometimes he came to visit.” (Chronicle of a Last Summer,
p93)
3.C Home and childhood.
“Our house was Granny’s house. Mama was born in it. It was two floors
and like a castle. (..) Under it was a wishing spot. Any wish you made
would come true. Baba had built me a playhouse in the corner. It was
wooden and painted red. (…) There was a secret box of treasures that
Granny hid in the staircase when the house was being built.”

“The garden was filled with trees. We had mangoes, figs, tangerines,
sweet lemons. There was also a tree that grew from the seeds Mama
threw out of the window when she was a little girl. Custard apple. We even
had a coffee tree that Mama’s friend brought us from Ethiopia.” (Chronicle
of a Last Summer, p93)
3.D Home as the embodiment of a privileged status.
Abdou would tell me stories about Sudan. Once, Egypt and Sudan were like
one country. It was because of the English. They made some countries
theirs. They divided other countries. Abdou didn’t like the English or the
Americans. He told me they were trouble. If there weren’t any English or
Americans the world would be a different place. Mama said that Abdou
was the one who should mind his own business.

The Nile was across the street. We could see it from the upstairs balcony.
Mama said our house was plain but unique. Baba called it modern. People
would take pictures. There were little windows at the top, near the roof,
tiny, in threes, like secret rooms. There was a round window on one side,
and a triangular window on the other. (Chronicle of a Last Summer)
(…) in early August we began to pack. (…)
Mama (…) sleeps in the bedroom she was born
in. I can’t imagine what a new life might mean,
even though in ways she already has
one.(Chronicle of a Last Summer)

“The Indian diaspora, for instance, does not

define homesimply as the Indian homeland.
Rather, members of this global community focus,
as Amitav Ghosh argues, on recreating Indian
culture within their various places of settlement
(Jumana Bayeh, in “Home in the Lebanese
diaspora literature”)
Conclusion
 Bibliography
❖ HEDETOFT Ulf, HYORT Mette, The Postnational Self: Belonging and Identity,
University of Minnesota Press, 2002
❖ KLINKENBORG Verlyn, Several Short Sentences about Writing, Knopf, 2012
❖ McLEOD John, Beginning Postcolonialism, Manchester University Press, 2000
❖ STITZ Theresa, Concepts of Home and Belonging and their meaning in the
postcolonial fiction, GRIN, 2017
❖ SWAIN S.P , The incarcerated self and the derelict house : house imagery in
Anita Desai’s novels
❖ BAYEH Jumana, Home in the lebanese diaspora literature.