My Grandmother’s House Summary

This central idea of Kamala Das’s “My Grandmother’s House” is the speaker’s yearning for love and emotional security in her life. The lack of love and emotional security in her married life leads her to chase the halcyon days that she spent in her grandmother’s house. Therefore, losing her dear grandmother is a bolt from the blue.

The unpleasant experiences of her married life make her restless, and she is more inclined towards those experiences through which she can fill up the void in her life. Her grandmother’s house and extra-marital affairs are some of her ways to escape the grim reality of her married life. Through a tone of confession, the poetess reveals the bleakness of her life and hints at us about her restless ‘self’ who is in search of love and security. 

My Grandmother’s House Analysis – Line By Line Explanation

The poem “My Grandmother’s House”, written by Kamala Das, starts in a nostalgic state and tells the readers that there is a house that is far from her present residence. In that house, she once “received love”. 

The woman who loved the speaker has died. The woman who is mentioned death in the poem is her grandmother and the house the poet is referring to is her grandmother’s house. We could assume this as it is mentioned in the poem’s title. 

The first autobiographical element can be found in the reference to the house. The house that the speaker is referring to in the poem is the Nalapat House (Das 11). 

Das mentions in the autobiography that she used to visit her grandmother’s house in Malabar. She spent most of the golden time of her life in her ancestral home. Therefore, for Das, the house is close to her heart.

We can also find another autobiographical element in the pronoun’s use “I”. It shows that the poet is talking about herself. Therefore, it can be said that Kamala Das is the speaker in “My Grandmother’s House”. 

Das in her autobiography, My Story tells the reader that her grandmother was a “plump, fair-skinned and good looking” (13) woman. Das had an intimate relationship with her grandmother and shared her secrets like loving a boy in her school with her grandmother. (20) 

During Kamala’s boarding school days, she was a 9-year-old girl. There, she encountered problems like food, cold water that led her to write a “weepy letter” (49) to her father. However, she never received a response from her busy and cold father. 

On the other hand, her grandmother always sends someone to take her from the school to the ancestral home so that she can stay and be free from the hard and fast rules of the boarding school for a weekend. (39) 

Unlike her father, her grandmother showered love and affection on her and never let her feel alone. She says, “None had loved me as deeply as my grandmother.” (107) She has received the warmth and care that lacks in the relationship between her and her husband. 

The use of ellipsis in the poem 

“There is a house now far away where once/ 

I received love…….” and 

“Can you, that I lived in such a house and/ 

Was proud, and loved….” (Das 13) 

suggests the immense love and care she has received in the house. Therefore, the grandmother’s house represents the source of love and happiness for the poet. 

But the house has become desolate after the demise of her grandmother. This is another autobiographical element in the poem. Das mentions in My Story that after the demise of both her grand-uncle and grandmother, the doors of the old Nalapat House were shut down and its servants separated. “The windows were shut gently as the eyes of the dead are shut.” (133)

It becomes a place of silence over the death of the old woman. However, a house cannot withdraw into silence. Here, the poet uses personification. The use of personification suggests a sense of grief through the non-living thing like the house. 

After the death, none lives there in the house except pin-drop silence. Snakes move among books in the house and she was young to read the books. This image of “snakes moving among books” conveys the eerie feeling about the house. 

Her grandmother’s death makes her blood turn cold. Her blood turns cold “like the moon”. 

Experience of Married Life/Sexual Frustration in Married Life

Das was not happy with her married life. Her married life was not satisfactory. Moreover, a glimpse of her married life is seen in “An Introduction” and “A Hot Noon in Malabar”. Das mentions this in her autobiography My Story,

Her lecherous husband had multiple relationships with various women, including some of his cousins and his sister-in-law. This led to personal jealousy in Das. 

She mentions once she asked him to come to her on leave at Malabar. Instead of company her, he spent his time mostly with his cousins and his sister-in-law and almost ignored her. 

She mentions in the autobiography; he is a workaholic, and he never bothered in allowing his professional life to ruin his personal life while working for a Rural Credit Survey Committee Report. At that time, she was “young and needed his companionship for my emotional stability” (188). However, he cared little about her. 

He stayed away from Kamala most of his time due to work-related reasons. Even if he stayed close to her at home, they “had no mental contact with each other. If at all I began to talk of my unhappiness, he changed the topic immediately and walked away. (147)

Because of the void of emotion in their relationship, there was lust in the lovemaking. She mentions in her autobiography,

“At night he was like a chieftain who collected the taxes due to him from his vessal, simply and without exhilaration. All the Parijata that I wove in my curly hair was wasted. The taking was brutal and brief.” (89)

He never thought of starting a conversation with her except one topic, which gave him delight. But she “was ignorant in the study of it. I did not have any sex appeal either. (89) Instead of sex, she mentions, “I yearned for a kind word, a glance in my direction.” (89)

This leads her to mental depression. She expresses her state in the following lines as-     

“The growing misery inside me, the darkness that lay congealed, removed from my face all that was once pretty. I was like a house with all its lights out out. I walked up and down in our rooms wearing a torn saree and although my legs ached for rest, the movement went on and on as if they were propelled by some evil power. I stopped washing my hair. My husband told me that I was going mad. Perhaps I was, but it was not within my power to arrest its growth.” (98)

Because of the lack of emotional bonding between them, she starts to feel disconnected from her husband and emotionally connected with her grandmother.

She often desperately thinks of visiting her grandmother’s house to get rid of the unpleasant experiences of her life. Kamala Das describes her grandmother’s house as a shabby house. The windows have not been cleaned for long and the air in the house has become frozen. Therefore, the air in the house is described as frozen.

The poet wants to peer through the “blind eyes of windows” or listen to “the frozen air”. Here again, the poet uses personification. Windows can’t have eyes, the windows are personified. It suggests that because of the lack of care and cleanliness of the house, the windows have become dusty. 

The “frozen air” could refer to the blocked air caused by the immobility in the room. Both “blind eyes of windows” and “frozen air” suggest the idea of bleakness caused by the demise of her grandmother. 

The poet also says that in wild desperation, she wants to pick “an armful of/Darkness” from the dark house to her house and lie behind her bedroom door like a brooding dog. It suggests sweet memories of her childhood. This might imply bringing some objects from the house.

Here she uses the simile of a brooding dog. Just like a brooding dog, she can easily get lost in the fond memories that she shared with her grandmother. By doing this, she can always freshen her memories. This shows the solace and peace that she found in her grandmother’s house now lacks in her present house. 

The Poem from a Psychological and Biological Point of View

Das is in need of company and it drives her to find means to escape from her boring life. Here, the pleasure principle can be brought into the discussion. 

According to the pleasure principle, when a human being is disturbed or not happy about a certain aspect of life, the mind of the person tries to divert from it to the opposite of the reality where the person can attain pleasure. 

In Das’s case, the inability to fulfill her sexual and psychological appetite causes her to feel depressed. In order to escape from the unpleasant reality of her married life, the poetess compares her childhood days with married life, and she finds her childhood days are happier, more pleasant than her present. 

The fact of thinking often about her grandmother’s house suggests the speaker is not happy in her married life. Therefore, the speaker is so nostalgic about her grandmother’s house and often wishes to go back to her grandmother’s house. She wants to relive the old, beautiful days to conceal her harsh reality. This manifests that she needs psychological company. 

While she recollects the past days, she says probably to her husband that she lived in such a house where she has received love and she is proud of that. 

Using the word love as in “ I received love…….”, “Was proud, and loved….” (13) and “to/ Receive love” (13) in the poem shows her tireless pursuit of love in her life. 

Unfortunately, now she has lost her way from her life, and she is in search of love. Since she fails to find love in her relationship with her husband, therefore she thinks, “I would have to look for it outside its legal orbit. I wanted to be given an identity that was lovable.” (89-90) 

In her quest for love, she begs strangers to receive love, and it compels her to pursue clandestine relationships, at least for a little love. 

Her confession of her extra-marital affairs is seen in “The Sunshine Cat”

“the band
Of cynics she turned to, clinging to their chests where
New hair sprouted like great-winged moths, burrowing her
Face into their smells and their young lusts to forget
To forget, oh, to forget” (23)

The poem ends with a note of confessional note. As a confessional poem here, Das confesses her extra-marital relationship. Love becomes an avenue of escape for her. The hopelessness and dryness in her relationship made Das a beggar of love who engages in relationships with strangers to get the vitality of her life back. This is a clear suggestion that Das was not content with her marriage. 

In this context, Naik says, “In Das’s autobiography My Story Das reveals that the anguished persona of her poetry is evidently derived from a traumatic frustration in love, and marriage, finally urges her to “run from one/ Gossamer love to another,’ sadly realizing that “Love became a swivel-door/When one went out, another came in.’” (Naik 219). 

Since it was her instinctual need therefore she needed someone. She expresses the frustration in a sexual relationship in her poem “The Freaks”.

If it was not her instinctual need, then she would not ask strangers for exchange of love. If it was only a psychological need, she would have thought about some other psychological relief. It is more of an instinctual need than a psychological need. So we can say that under the veil of grandmother’s memories, it reveals her quest to quench her thirst for sexual appetite.

Structure of the Poem

My Grandmother’s House was published in the poetry anthology named Summer Time in Calcutta (1965). “My Grandmother’s House” has only 16 lines and follows no definite pattern of rhyme. The tone of the poem is melancholic. The moods of melancholy and nostalgia dominate the overall atmosphere of the poem.

Conclusion

This is a poignant poem where the poet is reminiscent of the old happy days of her childhood days. The dearth of emotion enforces her to take shelter in the psychological space which is attained by dwelling in the memories of her childhood and the failure of sexual life pushes her to cater to her appetite by making love with strangers. In general, the poem shows the anguished life of Kamala Das.

My Grandmother’s House Theme

The theme of the poem is longing for love and affection. The poem is an expression of the poetess’ longing for the grandmother’s house where she used to find bliss. To know more, watch the video on our YouTube channel.

Video

Bibliography

Das, Kamala. My Story. Harper Collins, 2020.

Das, Kamala. “My Grandmother’s House.” Selected Poems, edited by Devindra Kohli. Penguin, 2014. 

Mahanta, Pona, et al., editors. Poems Old and New. Macmillan, 2011.

Naik, M.K. A History of Indian English Liteature. Sahitya Akademi, 2012.