An Introduction Summary

“An Introduction” by Kamala Das is an autobiographical and confessional poem that voices out her concern about patriarchy, starting from politics to sexual politics. “An Introduction” encapsulates her personality as it expresses some incidents of her life, her rejection of patriarchal norms, and her rebellion against the gender role as well. The poem revolves around the topics of gender bias, individuality, and imposition of societal norms and standards. 

The poet begins the poem with one aspect of Indian politics. There is little space for women in Indian politics. Though she does not know politics, she can repeat the names of politicians. Just as days of the week or names of months are repetitive, the names of Indian politicians are repetitive, all are male. There are very few names of women on the list.

After politics, she comes to talk about her introduction. She can write in two languages: Malayalam and English. But the critics, her friends, and cousins don’t like her for writing in English. They prohibit her because English is a foreign language. 

In response to that, she asks everyone to leave her alone and give her the freedom to write in any language she likes. Writing in a colonial language like English does not mean she must follow the standardized form of the language. 

Like language, the agents of patriarchy also come forward to impose norms of the society. They make her realize that she is grown up, and this implies that she is ready for marriage. When she feels the need for love, her family and relatives forcefully fix her marriage with a youth of sixteen. 

In her married life, she undergoes pain and suffering. Consequently, she starts to feel repulsive toward her womanliness and rejects her womanliness. 

Seeing the change in her, the agents of patriarchy again remind her of the roles that she needs to follow. Indifferent to them, she goes on to search for love. She falls in with a man. He is every man who wants a woman, and she is every woman who seeks love. 

She asks everyone their identity, and the answer is ‘I’. In pursuing the ‘I’, she identifies with every woman who is having different experiences in life. 

Line by Line Explanation

For a line-by-line explanation, watch the video on our YouTube channel.

Video

Theme of Freedom

If have watched the video, then you will realize the poet is a free spirit. She does not like rules and norms etc confines her individuality. What she wants is freedom. However, the omnipresent ‘they’ keep reminding her that which language she should use in her writing, what to do after reaching adolescence, and what norms of the patriarchy she should follow. But she ignores them all and follows her path.

The poet tells that she writes in two languages, English and Malayalam. Besides her mother tongue, she also writes in English. Critics, her friends, and cousins prohibit her not to writing in a foreign language. The probable reason is English is not our mother tongue, and it is the language of the colonizers. By writing in English, it means adhering to its rules and regulation and accepting the colonizer’s culture.

In response to that, she asks them to leave her alone and asks for freedom of expression. Being a native of an independent nation, she can write any language she wants. No one can hold her from expressing her. 

Though she uses English, it is not standardized English. She can change it as per her convenience by adding queerness and distortions. This means she can add native phrases, local idioms, and cultural referents to her language. No other English words can replace her unique or diverse experience. Only the queerness and distortions can fill up the gap. The way she changes the language to acclimatize with her distinctive experience becomes her language. 

It might sound funny to others perhaps, but the Indian English language expresses her joys, yearnings, and hopes. To her, it is as a natural expression as “cawing/ Is to crows or roaring to the lions,” (5)

Moreover, the poem itself expresses freedom. If we look at the structure of the poem, she does not follow traditional poetry rules like the uniformity of lines, rhyming scheme, and grammatical rules. 

For instance, the use of the pronoun ‘I’ in the poem makes it distinctive, “I too call myself I.” (6) Though it is grammatically incorrect, poetic license offers her liberty to be free from any rule of grammar and to express her thoughts. 

She expresses her freedom of expression when she writes about her adolescence. Being a female poet in the 1960s, it is appreciable to write frankly about a woman’s body. She writes,

“I became tall, my limbs

Swelled and one or two places sprouted hair.” (5)

Adolescence is a period of change. The period is a marker of change of both physical and psychological change. She grows up and her body changes. Seeing the change, her family considers her to be fit for marriage as if this is the only thing to do. They remind her she is growing. 

From the line, we can assume the general patriarchal mindset in the 1960s. The patriarchy looks at a girl as a dependent being whose job is to conceive a child, who can fulfill her husband’s sexual needs and do the household chores. A girl is not supposed to explore her intellectual capabilities. 

She writes about her family in her autobiography My Story, “It was customary for a Nair girl to marry when she was hardly out of her childhood and it was also customary for the much older husband to give her a rude shock by his sexual haste on the wedding night.” (Das 23-24) 

Her family and relatives arrange her marriage to a distant relative. The act of marriage is important, but not the bride. With Kamala Das, her father has conducted lavishly arrangement of Kathakali show. They have not given importance to her consent. Her family and relatives are not bothered about whether or not she is interested in it. “The bride was unimportant and her happiness a minor issue.” (82) 

She writes in My Story, “My life had been planned and its course charted by my parents and relatives. I was to be the victim of a young man’s carnal hunger” (81)

On the wedding night, she openly expresses the horrible experience of her wedding night. Instead of feeling loved, she feels like her husband wounds her body. She says,

“He did not beat me/

But my sad woman-body felt so beaten.” (5)

We can refer to the My Story to understand the lines above. She recounts the horrible wedding night. When she was resting on the bed, “Then without warning he fell on me, surprising me by the extreme brutality of the attack. I tried unsuccessfully to climb out of his embrace.” (84) She adds, “Again and again throughout that unhappy night he hurt me and all the while the Kathakali drums throbbed dully against our window and the singers sang of Damayanti’s plight in the jungle.” (85) 

Unfortunately, her experience of marriage is a nightmare. We discussed a similar issue in Shashi Deshpande’s “The Intrusion”. The former is a representation of some women’s experiences and the latter is the proof of the former. In both the fictional and real stories, both women became “the victim of a young man’s carnal hunger.” (81) 

The poet also expresses frankly the wounds of her married life with her readers in other poems. For instance, in “An Introduction”, “My Grandmother’s House”, “A Hot Noon in Malabar” etc. we get the miserable life that she has experienced.

She feels that lovemaking is not an act of love, but an act of torture and suffering. Her body feels beaten. The womanliness becomes the cause of her misery. She became a target of her husband’s lust and oppression. It led to her mental depression, and she feels disgusted with womanliness. 

As a reaction, she wants to be free from her womanliness. The poet rejects her role as a housewife by following the things that men do. She puts on a shirt and her brother’s trousers. She also cut her hair. Her rejection of the roles implies she is rejecting to be an obedient wife and mother. She rejects being an object of her husband’s lust. She rejects being a dependent being of the patriarchy. 

Upon seeing that, the agents of patriarchy again remind her role in the house. They ask her to put on a saree and hold on to the identity that she is supposed to have: an obedient wife, an embroiderer, a cook, etc. According to them, she must have any of these roles which suit the norms of society. These are the certain values that are associated with the image of a ‘woman’. They ask her for the petty roles of a housewife. 

They want her to fit into her supposed role. The process of making a woman is a societal process in which patriarchy imposes norms and values of society on a woman. These are some examples of dos and don’ts that every woman hears. With Kamala Das, the surrounding people, possibly her family members and relatives, ask her to play the pre-defined roles of a woman. 

The categorizers also prohibit her from sitting on walls or peeping in through the lace-draped windows. Moreover, she is asked not to pretend to have schizophrenia or show an excessive sexual appetite. Moreover, she should not cry embarrassingly loud when the lover abandons her rather, she should conceal her emotions. 

Expecting a pre-determined role from her implies they ignore her individuality. She can’t have her thoughts and live life in her way. Despite such restrictions, she breaks all the norms. She goes outside of her married life sphere and searches for love. She falls in love with a person. Relationship outside marriage is not allowed in a patriarchal society. 

Since she wants freedom, therefore she is not happy with the identity that society gives her. She goes on to search for identity. During her search for freedom, she asks each man about their identity. Everyone tells her he is ‘I’. The ‘I’ is stuck to the male personality like a “sword in its sheath”. She blurs the distinction between ‘I’ and her. She says it is ‘I’ who drinks at midnight at strange hotels in unfamiliar towns. It is ‘I’ who laugh and make love. It is also ‘I’ who feel ashamed and lie dying with a rattle in her throat. She identifies herself with every woman out there who is undergoing diverse experiences. 

She is also a sinner as she has committed many immoral things and is a saint because of her ability to suffer. She has loved and has had painful experiences of betrayal. Since there is no difference between her and other individuals in terms of joys, sorrows, and experiences, so she, too, declares herself as ‘I’. This is how the poet asserts her identity in the patriarchal society. 

She is neither more than nor less than what other human being is. She is not different. She is like everyone else who has feelings, desires, fear, etc. 

Freedom is an integral aspect of Das’s poetry. Be it in choosing a language, choosing a role, or finding an identity, she is choosy and always prefers her own choice.

Poem structure

The poem “An Introduction” has irregular rhyme; it does not follow any specific pattern. However, Kamala Das uses literary devices like enjambment. Ellipsis is excluding some parts of a sentence by using three dots. Kamala Das often uses ellipsis in her poetry. In “An Introduction” we see the use of ellipsis in line- “I wore a shirt and my/ Brother’s trousers, cut my hair short and ignored/ My womanliness.” (6)

She also uses enjambment. For instance, 

“I don’t know politics but I know the names 

Of those in power, and can repeat them like” (5) 

Conclusion

One of the common features of Das’s poetry is the honest expression of her privacy. Kamala Das’s persona is no nymphomaniac; she is simply ‘every woman who seeks love’; she is ‘the beloved and the betrayed’ (Naik 218). However, she remains the eternal Eve who proudly celebrates her essential femininity. 

Bibliography

Mahanta, Pona, et al., editors. Poems Old and New. Macmillan, 2011, pp. 177-178, 424-426.

Naik, M.K. A History of Indian English Literature. Sahitya Akademi, pp. 218,219, 2012. 

Das, Kamala. “An Introduction.” Kamala Das: Selected Poems. Edited by Devindra Kohli. Penguin Random House, 2014, 5-6.

–. My Story.  Harper Collins, 2020, 81- 82, 84-85.