March – April 2020

ISSN: 0193-4120 Page No. 25946- 25953

A Feminist Reading of Chitra Banerjee

Divakaruni‘s ‗The Forest of Enchantments‘
Indrajit Patra, PhD Scholar, NIT Durgapur,

Dr. Shri Krishan Rai, Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, NIT
Durgapur

Article Info Abstract:

Volume 83
Page Number: 25946- 25953
Publication Issue:
March - April 2020
Article History
Article Received: 24 July 2019
Revised: 12 September 2019
Accepted: 15 February 2020
Publication: 30April 2020
The present study seeks to analyze Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni‘s novel ‗The
Forest of Enchantments‘ (2019) from a purely feminist critical perspective
primarily under the light of Showalter‘s ‗female‘ phase of writing and
Helen Cixous‘ ‗ecriture feminine‘ (Feminine Writing) theory. Here, the
main aim of the study is to explore how Sita‘s feminine way of writing can
‗unsilence‘ the ‗muted‘ narrative of the Others and also exert a subversive
influence on the binary-driven, phallocentric discursive framework.
Keywords: Feminism, Cixous, Ecriture Feminine, Showalter, Female
Phase, Epic, Mythology, Lacan, Freud, Phallocentric.

‘Female Phase’ and Ecriture Feminine in
play: When the novel begins, we see Sita as
highly appreciative of the primary mode of
discourse which has functioned as the traditional
definer of the main narrative structure. Sita
showers her praises on the formalistic aspects of
the great sage poet‘s magnum opus quite
effusively: ―The poetry is superb, the
descriptions sublime, the rhythm perfect. You‘ve
captured the histories of earth and heaven both,
the adventures and the wars, the weddings and
the deaths, the betrayals and the farewells, the
palace and the forest‖ (Divakaruni, 2019, p. 3);
but she notices that this writing is entirely
marked by a pointed and singularly phallic
masculine framework in which the women have
been relegated into the background as the
passive and often unwanted and disastrous
‗other‘. Sita‘s very words echo those stated by
Helen Cixous especially when she talks about
the ‗ecriture feminine‘. Divakaruni first as the
novelist, and then through her retelling of Sita‘s
narrative through the latter‘s own language
attempts to doubly deconstruct the binary-
driven, rigid masculine narrative framework
based on ‗oppressor‘s language‘. It again
reminds us of Cixous‘ exhortation, ―Women
must write through their bodies, they must
invent the impregnable language that will wreck
partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and
codes, they must submerge, cut through, get
beyond the ultimate reverse-discourse, including
the one that laughs at the very idea of
pronouncing the word "silence" (Cixous, 1976,
p.5).
Following the classification of Showalter as
mentioned in her ‗A Literature of Their Own‘,
the images of body, its various functions, the
changes taking place within it and a
representation of the body as a fountainhead of
subversive imageries are what mark a text as an
essentially ‗female‘ one.‖ In the novel, we see
Sita gradually embarking on her quest to give

Published by: The Mattingley Publishing Co., Inc. 25946


voice to the muted feminine narrative in her
writing when she first points out to Valmiki the
limitations of his own individual perspective:
―what occurred when I was alone in the
darkness, under the sorrow tree, you don‘t know.
You don‘t know my despair. You don‘t even
know my exhilaration, how it felt…‖
(Divakaruni, 2019, p.4). So, Sita is depicted as
feeling thoroughly uncomfortable with
Valmiki‘s language since it is steeped in the
discursive framework of masculine ideology and
as such unable to address such things which are
clearly feminine in spirit. The narration by a
patriarchal or male author can push the woman
subject into a position of passivity and
ultimately death and this is the position that Sita
seeks to encounter when she dips her quill in the
ink. This is also the very essence of the true
feminist criticism, through which the woman as
a writer attempts to address the most intimate of
details felt within her core of being which are
normally omitted or overlooked in the
phallocentric writing. As Carolyn Burke opines,
"when a woman write or speak herself into
existence, she is forced to speak in something
like a foreign tongue, a language with which -
she may be personally uncomfortable" (Smith,
1987, p.56).
So, the novel clearly belongs to the ‗female‘
phase of literary subculture following
Showalter‘s division where the women as
writers engage in a fluent, dynamic and
spontaneous mode of self-discovery and
exploration of their inner desires, experiences
and reflections. Cixous exhorts the female
author to write her body: ―Write your self. Your
body must be heard. Only then will the immense
resources of the unconscious spring forth‖
(Cixous, 1976, p.880). This exhortation of
Cixous is clearly reflected in the novel in
Valmiki‘s words to Sita when he says to her,
―You must write that story yourself, Ma.‖ In
fact, the subculture of female literary endeavor
is incomplete without the creative output by
women themselves as writers of their own
experiences. Their body has to be heard and
here, we not only get to see Sita as the narrator
and definer of her own experiences, but also
Divakaruni herself as the architect of the
Published by: The Mattingley Publishing Co., Inc.
March – April 2020
ISSN: 0193-4120 Page No. 25946- 25953
primary narrative structure in which Sita gets her
opportunity for a complete self-exploration. Sita
decides to ―write her body‖ with the color red
which can be connected to Cixous‘ emphasis on
vagina and breast as the chief sources of the
―white ink‖ with which the women must write.
Here, the color red and the color white are
interchangeable and complementary to each
other. In fact, the color with which Sita wants to
portray her narrative is ―the colour of
menstruation and childbirth, the colour of the
marriage mark that changes women‘s lives, the
colour of the flowers of the Ashoka tree under
which I had spent my years of captivity in the
palace of the demon king?‖ (Divakaruni, 2019,
p.5) . So, Sita seeks to perturb the very
foundation of patriarchal mode of narration
through mechanisms involving "disturbance,
excess, simultaneity, fluidity" (Irigaray, 1985,
19). The narrative framework constructed from a
purely male perspective can be considered to be
a phallic mode of writing which in Gubar‘s
words (as appeared in the ―The Blank Page" and
the Issues of Female Creativity edited by
Showalter) corresponds to the ―model of the
pen-penis writing on the virgin page
participating in a long tradition identifying the
author as a male who is primary and the female
as his passive creation-a secondary object
lacking autonomy. (Gubar, 1985, 295). Sita‘s
narration also attempts to uncover the ―muted‖
story hidden deep beneath the rigid and rational
―dominant‖ discursive framework. Gilbert and
Gubar dub this mode of writing as ―palimpsest‖
and it is clearly subversive in its way of
operating. Her writing seeks to explore the
―muted‖ or hidden narration of the female
characters in the epic, namely Kaikeyi, Ahalya,
Mandodari, and Urmila. Their roles have so far
been analyzed by Valmiki only from a singularly
masculine perspective, but here she essays to
rewrite their stories from a unique feminine
perspective with which she hopes to explore the
deep embedded undercurrents of separation,
seclusion, marginalization and demonization that
mark the lives of the several women characters
mentioned in the story: ―Kaikeyi, second queen
of Ayodhya, who wrested our throne from us out
of blind devotion to her son, only to be hated by
25947

him for it; Ahalya, her beauty turned to stone by
a husband‘s jealous fury; Surpanakha, wild
enchantress of the forest, whose gravest crime
was to desire the wrong man; Mandodari, wife
to the legendary demon king, forced to watch
her kingdom fall into ruin and her beloved son
perish because of her husband‘s obsession with
another woman; Urmila, my sweet sister, the
forgotten one, the one I left behind as I set off
with blithe ignorance on my forest adventure
with my husband‖ (Divakaruni, 2019, 7). Sita, in
fact very emphatically states that the purpose of
her writing is to challenge the foundational
frameworks that ‗contaminate‘ the discourse
with patriarchal ideology and a phallocentric
mode of projection which aims to keep the
voices of the women suppressed. Sita feels that
the suppressed voices of the women are
speaking to herself from within urging her to
write their raw tales of prolonged suffering and
sustained suppression: ―Write our story, too. For
always we‘ve been pushed into corners,
trivialized, misunderstood, blamed, forgotten—
or maligned and used as cautionary tales‖
(Divakaruni, 2019, 7). Cixous also warns us of
such a constricting and confining space which
denounces femininity with passivity and where
―either woman is passive or she does not exist‖.
Sita seeks to do away with this space to reclaim
an alternative space for femininity which in
Kristeva‘s terms is simply 'that which is
marginalised by the patriarchal symbolic order‘.
Sita through her writing thus aims at
―deconstructing dominant male patterns of
thought and social practice: and reconstructing
female experience previously hidden or
overlooked.‖ (Greene and Kahn, 1985, 6). Sita
wants to engage in what Cixous defines as the
feminine writing or ‗ecriture feminine‘ which in
Bray‘s words is ―the avant – garde textual
practice that challenges and moves beyond the
constraints of phallocentric thought...a path
towards thought through the body‖ (Bray, 2004,
p.49). This drive or motivation of Sita behind
writing her ‗body‘ or self is what that can be
said to be the defining feature of her latent
―psychodynamics of female creativity‖ of which
Showalter has spoken so profusely and
vigorously. Surpanakha‘s dismemberment at the
Published by: The Mattingley Publishing Co., Inc.
March – April 2020
ISSN: 0193-4120 Page No. 25946- 25953
hands of Laxman can be interpreted under the
light of Cixous‘ theory of feminine writing as
found in her ‗The Laugh of The Medusa‘ where
she undertakes a deconstructive reading of
Freud‘s theory of ―castration complex‖ to be
found in the latter‘s essay ―Medusa‘s Head‖.
The cutting of Medusa‘s head, as well as
Surpanakha‘s noses and ears can both be taken
to represent symbolically the castration complex
in males in the Oedipal stage where they realize
the absence of phallus in their mother and starts
identifying with the phallic figure of the father.
In the novel, Surpanakha at first enters into the
scene as an exotic and enchantingly beautiful
girl named Kaamarupini. Her languages are full
of endless possibilities, undertones of
unrestrained sexuality, promises of endless
fantasies and a total disregard of any kind of
patriarchal binaries which permeate the very
fabric of a masculine discourse. From a
Lacanian perspective, we might say that
Kaamarupini symbolizes the possibilities
embedded in the pre-linguistic ―womb worlds‖
while Ram and Laxman clearly stand for the
patriarchal ―Symbolic Order‖ and from a
Freudian point of view, Laxman paves the way
for Sita‘s entrance into the Symbolic world of
phallocentric language when he mutilates the
subversive female figure of
Kaamarupini/Surpanakha. Sita too has an origin
in the womb world of mother Earth and her
marriage also is symbolic of her entrance into
the patriarchal world. It is only through her
‗ecriture feminine‘ that Sita could ―unsilence‖
the story of ―the Others‖ in this novel. The
language in which Kaamarupini speaks is closer
to the unconscious and thus can be said to come
closest to the pleasures that female sexuality is
capable of conveying through female body
which is varied, dynamic, plural and full of
multiplicities. The language of Kaamarupini too
does not allow for closures, constrictions,
hierarchical organizations; rather it is marked
with aimlessness and circularity. Kaamarupini‘s
way of dressing also violates the patriarchal
standard of ideal female way of dressing and is
overtly sexual in its appeal. The highly
iridescent pink sari ―wound tight around her
curves and reaching only to her knees. She
25948

pulled at it from time to time‖. She is presented
as a highly confident maiden with a wild charm
adding to her beauty in an exotic way: ―she
walked with confidence, swaying her hips in a
clearly sexual way, without
inhibition…offended. But there was something
innocent and natural in her movements, like a
peacock preening itself in mating season. In her
own way she was beautiful, with a wild scent
about her that I could smell even from this
distance, like musk or rain‖ (Divakaruni, 2019,
p.122). Kaamarupini‘s words are also equally
fraught with promises of untamed possibilities
and fulfillment of wildest fantasies. Her looks
and appearances do not permit any easy
categorization into androcentric binaries, rather
they seem to be endlessly disbranching into
something new and blossoming into something
unexpected all the time. Kaamarupini seems to
be acting as the nurturer of possibilities with her
pre-linguistic language containing manifold
meanings and implications. She is ―the dispenser
of love, nourishment and plenitude‖ (Cixous,
115). She says to Ram and Laxman, ―‗I‘ll make
you happy. I know all kinds of magic. I can fly
halfway around the world with you, take you to
beaches filled with silver-white sands where no
man has ever set foot, or to mountains so high
that from their peaks you can see the entire
world. We can frolic in lakes filled with
heavenly lotuses. Or if you prefer, I can build
you a palace filled with every comfort you can
imagine. And should you ever get tired of my
looks, I can change them and become slim and
tall, or soft and curvy, or golden-haired like the
pale women of the north. In fact, I can fulfil
every fantasy of yours.‖ (Divakaruni, 2019,
p.123). She here ―writes herself‖ and her
descriptions make her own body heard. Her
descriptive power evokes the pleasures or
―jouissance‖ (using Lacanian term) that she
seems to be promising to her audience. Then,
when Ram feels her to be transgressing the
limits of patriarchal order he labels her as an
―immoral, unnatural creature‖ and asks Laxman
to silence her. Laxman then chops off her ears
and nose with an arrow accordingly. This
mutilation is the way for masculine desire to
subjugate the wild and unnatural ―Other‖ in the
Published by: The Mattingley Publishing Co., Inc.
March – April 2020
ISSN: 0193-4120 Page No. 25946- 25953
subversive and transgressing female. It also
heralds the triumph of the Symbolic or the
spoken language over the pre-linguistic and
primitive language of the womb. Sita‘s narration
seems to be ―unsilencing‖ the muted story of
Kaamarupini or Surpanakha. Sita becomes
clearly distraught with all these enactment of
masculine violence in front of her. This is clear
in her later words: ―‗Did you need to be so
harsh?‘ I‘d asked, once Surpanakha‘s screams
had died away. ‗To mutilate her so horribly? She
was just an infatuated girl—you could‘ve easily
scared her off‘‖ (Divakaruni, 2019, 126). Sita
knows and can feel the irresistible feminine urge
to seek a mate and is clearly not appreciative of
the violence which has been committed by the
two male protecting figures on a fellow female
being in the name of protecting her: ―I didn‘t
think that living with a mutilated face was any
easier than a clean death, especially for a woman
who had so badly wanted a mate‖ (Divakaruni,
2019, p.127). Sita in her writing attempts to
reverse this process and thus undo this death by
castration itself. Sita is acutely aware of the
desire both in her own heart and in the hearts of
the others like Surpanakha, for desire is the true
drive behind feminine writing or to put it in
Cixous‘ words: ―living means wanting
everything that is, everything that lives and
wanting it alive‖ (Cixous, 2001, p.56). Sita‘s
narrative thus seems to be writing the body or
the desire of Surpankha in the language that is
closest to the circularity, fluidity, excess and
multiplicity of female sexuality. Sita could also
sense the masculine sense of superiority
bubbling forth in Ram and Lakshman and is not
afraid to point that out also: ―Their belief in the
superiority of their own ways was too deeply
ingrained in them‖ (Divakaruni, 2019, p.127).
In Cixous‘s words, the feminine practice of
writing can never be ―theorized, enclosed,
encoded, coded‖; rather ―it will always surpass
the discourse that regulates the phallocentric
system: it does and will take place in areas other
than those subordinated to philosophical-
theoretical domination. It will be conceived of
only by subjects who are breakers of
automatisms, by peripheral figures that no
authority can ever subjugate‖ (Cixous, 1976,
25949

883). So, what Sita here attempts to accomplish
by re-narrating the entire Ramayana from her
perspective is an attempt to let her resources of
the unconscious bloom into endlessly
proliferating branches of creative grandeur. The
most powerful of emotions that a woman feels
are hardly ever addressed by the male narrators
in their writings who remain content in dealing
with the actions and events mostly on a physical
level. It tells the tales of kings and princes, their
wins and defeats in battles, the bloodshed and
the glory of victory with queens, daughters and
princesses acting as subservient, auxiliary
figures whose very existence and function in the
story is to help fulfill the masculine desire of the
protagonist/s. Sita says to Valmiki, ―For you
haven‘t understood a woman‘s life, the
heartbreak at the core of her joys, her
unexpected alliances and desires, her
negotiations where, in the hope of keeping one
treasure safe, she must give up another‖
(Divakaruni, 2019, 9). This is what Nancy
Chodorow has also stressed upon when she
points out the continuity and fluidity of
women‘s sense of self and their capacities for
identifying with the emotional states of the
others: ―women's sense of self is continuous
with others and that they retain capacities for
primary identification … the basic feminine
sense of self is connected to the world, the basic
masculine sense of self is separate‖ (Chodorow,
1978, p.168-169). Gardiner‘s words also echo
those of Chodorow‘s when the former stresses
upon a woman‘s capacity for empathizing with
others and defining themselves more completely
in their relation to others. Gardner puts it thus:
"both writer and reader [of a text written by a
woman] can relate to the text as though it were a
person with whom one might alternatively be
merged empathically or from whom one might
be separated and individuated" (Gardiner, 1981,
357-58). Sita in the very beginning also states
that her core of being revolves around her
husband Ram and thus her narrative too should
center around none other than Ram: ―Ram:
monarch, father, warrior, husband. The beloved
who abandoned me when I needed him most.
My greatest joy and my greatest despair.‖
(Divakaruni, 2019, p.10). The magic bow that
Published by: The Mattingley Publishing Co., Inc.
March – April 2020
ISSN: 0193-4120 Page No. 25946- 25953
often speaks to Sita alone in solitary darkness
can very well be thought of as her unconscious
speaking to herself: ―‗Ram is the greatest of the
great, the saviour of the good, the destroyer of
demons. You‘ve been connected to him since
before the ages of man. Out of love for him
you‘ve taken on this human body and agreed to
be the cause for the final battle‖‘ (Divakaruni,
2019, p.31). Thus Sita‘s capacity for identifying
herself with the cause of Ram is very clear and
her power of empathy presents itself at its best
when she tries to see things from other‘s
perspective. Sita even feels a deep connection
with the natural world around her even when she
is imprisoned in Lanka: ―The plants and trees
were innocent and beautiful. When I touched
them, I could feel their sympathy for me. If they
were ailing, my touch cured them. And thus we
grew to love each other‖ (Divakaruni, 2019,
156). In fact, it is her power of empathizing with
the causes of the others that eventually
transcends Sita to the role where she is equated
with the mother nature or Earth herself. She is
also bestowed with a magical healing touch and
that is why people often view her as ―the earth-
goddess herself. Appeared straight out of the
ground just to bless‖ them. She is as abundant,
open, dynamic and infinitely fruitful as the
mother nature herself. So, from an ecofeminist
point-of-view, we may say she is the nature
incarnate and her descriptions are more in tune
with the unfolding of natural cycle of events
rather than what has been created by Valmiki.
Physicality as the Primary Driving Force
behind Feminine Creative Endeavor: Also, we
may conclude that the inner turmoils in the heart
of a woman once fully explored is hardly less
fascinating than the elaborate description of the
battles fought by the male heroes on the physical
plane. This attempt of self-exploration by the
female author or narrator in turn relies on
tapping into the physicality as a source of
inexhaustible energy and inspiration. Adrienne
Rich says, ―In order to live a fully human life,
we require not only control of our bodies...we
must touch the unity and resonance of our
physicality, the corporeal ground of our
intelligence‖ (Rich, 1976, 88). Cixous states that
since women embody the essence of physicality
25950

more than males they mean ―More body, hence
more writing‖ (Cixous, 1976, 886); and as
dynamic, ever-changing beings women are ―not
simple partial objects but a moving, limitlessly
changing ensemble, a cosmos tirelessly
traversed by Eros, an immense astral space not
organized around anyone sun that's any more of
a star than the others‖ (Cixous, 1976, 880).
Cixous also feels that women are physicality
incarnate and thus while writing, they should
write with the aim of giving expression to their
overflow or excess of energy, passionate
intensity and physical vitality: "I think in terms
of overflow, in terms of an energy which spills
over, the flow of which cannot be controlled‖.
Several passages of the novel also bear
testimony to this overflow of the excess energy
which permeates every pore of Sita‘s narrative.
The passage which portrays as simple an event
as Sita‘s first glimpse of Ram becomes charged
with strong undercurrents of sensuousness in
Sita‘s hand. The strong irresistible urge of
possessing the male figure in all its wholeness is
brought forward in the following words: ―I only
saw Ram‘s face, those lotus-petal eyes. The lines
of his lips were as tender as in my dream.
You‘re mine, I whispered. I‘m yours. He tilted
his head as though he‘d heard me, all the way
across the great hall. I thought I saw him smile‖
(Divakaruni, 2019, p.32). In fact, even when
Divakaruni describes the overwhelming flow of
passionate emotions that Sita feels just by
looking at Ram, we can also feel the clear and
unmistakable ‗feminine‘ fragrance of erotic
energy which spills over and exceeds all bounds
uncontrollably in its attempt to find a truly
fulfilling expression. Sita‘s description of Ram‘s
eyes evokes the sweeping power of raw
physicality untamed and untouched by any form
of masculine and hierarchical societal
constraints: ―Ram looked at me. His eyes were
large and very dark, and shaped like lotus petals.
Pulled into them, I felt like I was falling. No, it
was more like I was whisked away to a distant
place that shone with a light that was at once
brilliant and cool, to a time when I‘d been
someone else. There was an ocean, undulating
gently around me, white-foamed as innocence,
so beautiful that for a moment I couldn‘t
Published by: The Mattingley Publishing Co., Inc.
March – April 2020
ISSN: 0193-4120 Page No. 25946- 25953
breathe‖ (Divakaruni, 2019, p.32). Her
controlled yet powerful, radiant and charming
way of sublimating the erotic energies through
language is what exemplifies the power of a true
feminine writing. Then again, in the passage
where Sita and Urmila as the would-be brides
are present in the royal hall to choose their
future soul-mates, in the descriptions of their
dressings, we get glimpses into the highly
sensuous and extremely physical landscape
belonging to an essentially feminine world of
creativity: ―…here we were in thin summer-
cotton saris that barely hid our curves, tendrils of
hair coming loose from our hasty braids, our
bodies giving off the mingled scent of
sandalwood and excitement and female sweat‖
(Divakaruni, 2019, p.32). These images of
―mingled scent of sandalwood and excitement
and female sweat‖ remind one of Cixous‘s
images of ―disturbance, excess, simultaneity,
fluidity‖ through which she believes the
phallocentric discursive frameworks could be
challenged and even dismantled. Sometimes,
the passionate intensity threatens to spill over
and upset all carefully sculpted superstructures
of rules and regulations, as is evident when Sita
upon getting close to Ram for the first time in
her life, feels quite ―inexplicably, shockingly‖
the desire to rest her head on his bare chest.
Later, we come acros much more passionately
charged and intensely physical imageries of the
two lovers gradually getting to know each other,
getting close to each other, and often finding it
hard to resist the temptations to indulge in the
pleasures of the flesh. Sita admits, ―When we
were close, things happened to our bodies that
we couldn‘t always control‖ (Divakaruni, 2019,
p.122) and when they used to lie down on the
bed and hold each other, their ―bodies thrummed
with a hungry urgency‖ (Divakaruni, 2019,
p.270). Then the passage where Sita describes
her first night of consummation with Ram we
see the vividly glowing exuberance of her
essentially feminist language trying to capture
the ―jouissance‖ of sexuality at its peak. Sita
starts by saying that she and Ram ―waited until
after the fanfare had died down to consummate
our marriage…‖ and then goes on narrating in
great details the physical pleasures of their first-
25951

time of making love: ―… because it was the first
time for us both, it was special in a way that I
knew I‘d remember all my life. Ram wasn‘t shy
about telling me what pleased him, and he asked
me what I liked until I overcame my shyness and
answered. Bedtime became at once exciting and
joyful, a secret gift I looked forward to all day
while we went about our separate duties—his as
heir-apparent, mine as new bride‖ (Divakaruni,
2019, p.301). Her passionate descriptions of the
overbrimming sweetness of the intensity of not
just the moments spent in the act of lovemaking
but also the time afterwards speak amply of
Divakaruni‘s power of projecting the physicality
in its most radiant state: ―What I enjoyed as
much as the physical pleasures of love was the
time afterwards, when Ram and I lay, limbs
intertwined, heads on the same pillow, and
conversed into the night. Darkness added a
special intimacy to the moment. I felt I could tell
Ram things I would have hesitated to bring up
otherwise‖ (Divakaruni, 2019, p.302). Cixous
also compares and contrasts the feminine writing
(I' ecriture feminine) with masculine writing
(literatur) and opines that female writing is
always closer to body, sexuality and nature and
thus invariably opposed to the dualistic binary
oppositions. In fact, the description of the love-
making scene in the Pushpak vimana is even
more erotic and close to the irreplenishable
source of feminine energies of self-exploration.
The ―magical night, so precious and fleeting,
when (they) floated far above the earth, balanced
between the battles of the past and the duties of
the future‖ (Divakaruni, 2019, p.303) reminds us
of Cixous‘ picture of the ―immense astral space
not organized around any one sun‖ and the
bodies of the lovers when they come together in
an ecstatic unison evokes the picture of a
limitlessly changing ―cosmos traversed by
Eros‖. Sita‘s description of the ―desperate,
hungry lovemaking in the magical chamber
created by Pushpak‖ is the female writing where
binaries dissolve, contradictions die away, self
vibrates with the resonance of pure physicality,
pleasures seem to touch the pinnacle of an all-
fulfilling glory of maximum possible unity and
the language that ―does not contain, carry or
hold back‖ seems to come alive against the
Published by: The Mattingley Publishing Co., Inc.
March – April 2020
ISSN: 0193-4120 Page No. 25946- 25953
sublime backdrop of astral immensity. Sita
narrates, ―I pressed my lips against his and felt
his body come alive against mine. We made love
in the moonlight, our limbs straining against
each other‖ (Divakaruni, 2019, p.303). The
nature herself seems to be partaking in the very
act of blissful lovemaking in the magical night
by making it even more magical than usual.
Sita‘s descriptions smack of pure physicality
which can only be appreciated in terms of an
―overflow, in terms of an energy which spills
over, the flow of which cannot be controlled: ―In
my frenzy, I left my nail-marks on his chest. He
bent my willing body into the positions that gave
him most pleasure. Mad with love, we asked
boldly for what we wanted and watched passion
ripple across each other‘s faces as we were
satisfied over and over, only to crave the joys of
love again. Our hungry bodies came together
with an almost audible click, two halves that had
been torn asunder reuniting. The elation of it
was so immense that I thought I‘d break into
pieces and dissolve into the silver moonlight‖
(Divakaruni, 2019, p.304-5). The culminating
point of her ecstatic act of lovemaking does not
end as something which is closed, final and
exhausted of any further possibilities, rather it
renews itself into something varied and rhythmic
as if heralding the beginning of something new:
―At the height of my ecstasy, I felt something
happening deep within me. It was as though a
being—from where I didn‘t know—appeared
and attached itself to my core and pulsed
happily. Its presence filled me with excitement
but also with a nameless worry and a fierce
desire to protect‖ (Divakaruni, 2019, p.305).This
again reminds one of Cixous‘ words when she
says that ―her writing can only keep going,
without ever inscribing or discerning
contours...She lets the other language speak-the
language of 1000 tongues which knows neither
enclosure nor death...Her language does not
contain, it carries, it does not hold back, it makes
possible‖ (Cixous, 1978, 259-260).
Conclusion: The study aimed to show how the
excess, the opulence , the overflowing
‗jouissance‘ which stand out as the chief
distinguishing features of a purely feminine
mode of writing can present a narrative from a
25952
 March – April 2020
ISSN: 0193-4120 Page No. 25946- 25953

unique viewpoint that is more than just capable Born: Motherhood as Experience and In
enough of subverting the male-oriented, stitution. New York, W. W. Norton.
traditional mode of narration. The feminine
spirit expresses itself in fruitfulness, abundance,
unrestrained self-expression, intensely personal
descriptions of fulfillment of its bodily hungers,
empathetic responsiveness and compassionate
outlook to life in general etc. and in this text Sita
as the fictional narrator and Divakaruni as the
actual narrator can both be said to have fulfilled
the above-mentioned criteria to stand out as a
perfect specimen of a contemporary retelling of
a classical epic from a feminist perspective.

References:

1. Divakaruni, C. B. (2019). The Forest of

Enchantments. HarperCollins Publishers
India, Kindle Edition.
2. Cixous, H., Cohen, K. & Cohen, P.
(1976). The Laugh of the
Medusa. University of Chicago, USA.
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and
Society. Vol. 1, No. 4. pp. 875-893.
3. Cixous, H. (2001). The Norton
Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed.
Vincent B. Leitch. New York: London:
W.W. Norton & Company.
4. Smith, D. E. (1987). The Everyday
World As Problematic: A Feminist
Sociology. USA, University of Toronto
Press.
5. Gubar, S. (1985). "The Blank Page" and
the Issues of Female Creativity, Critical
Inquiry 8, no. 2 (Winter), 243-263.
6. Bray, A. (2004). Helen Cixous, Writing
and Sexual Difference. United
Kingdom, Palgrave Macmillan.
7. Chodorow, N. (1978). The Reproduction
of Mothering. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
8. Gardiner, J. K. (1981). "On Female
Identity and Writing by Woman,"
Critical Inquiry, (8, Winter) pp. 357-58.
9. Showalter, E. (ed.). (1985). The New
Feminist Criticism. New York,
Pantheon Books.
Rich, A. (1976). Of Woman

Published by: The Mattingley Publishing Co., Inc. 25953