THE INTRUSION SUMMARY

BY SHASHI DESHPANDE

 

About the Author :

Shashi Deshpande (1938- Present) has significantly contributed in the development of Indian novels in English. She has written short stories, novels, essays, and children’s books. She deals, in her writings, with the physio-psychological oppression of women under patriarchy. He shows the importance of female agency to express feminine sensibilities authentically in her writings.

She was awarded Sahitya Academy Award which she returned in 2015 due to the inactive attitude of the sahitya academy council towards the murder of Kalburgi.

In “The Intrusion”, Shashi Deshpande becomes the agency of women to present feminine sensibilities authentically. Through this text, she shows how women are denied of their agency and become subaltern whose voice is never heard. She shows how the particular woman in the text is given wedded without her consent and eventually raped by her husband who becomes the intruder along with her parents.

Summary :

The narrator along with her husband was going through a fishing village to reach their place of honeymoon. It was a little path with tiny houses on both of its sides. The narrator felt out of place while passing through the fishing village. Men were sitting at fishing nets wearing lungis and women with bold faces and gold ornaments. Turning right after reaching the end of the lane and saw, in front of them, the vast and fascinating sea that removed her doubt regarding the existence of the sea. The fishes with sightless and accusing eyes towards the blue sky, were there in various rows to be dried.

Her husband gave her a look with the indication of wild carnal desire while the narrator stopped for a moment. The narrator felt it difficult to walk on the sands with high heels and saree. Though the husband gripped her hand to help her while walking with difficulties, she felt uneasy as his gripping was very tight with the indication of sexuality. She bent down to collect the shells brought by the sea to release her hand from the tight grip of her husband only to be horrified as something remained alive within the shell and threw it away.

Then they began to pass through another village with broader path and was steeply uphill, completely different from the fishing village. They reached the rocky path with big bolders and finally reached the square and squat building at the top. They entered into their scheduled room and she sat on the chair to remove his tireness. Her husband became highly pleased asking the narrator if the room was pleasant.

According to the narrator, it was room with full of dullness and impersonality leaving no impression on the mind. Bad smell was coming from the bedbugs also. The narrator felt badly to stay with her husband in the same room as she became painfully conscious of the secret smile which indicates the violent and wild carnal desire.

The narrator couldn’t understand what they should talk of as they scarcely knew each other. Suddenly her husband began to speak excitedly that they had been fortunate enough to get that particular room as it was earlier booked by a top class executive and canceled later that help the husband to book that room. Without realizing the feeling of the narrator her husband put emphasis on the words “complete privacy ” that make the narrator sickened. Then, the narrator went on thinking about the strangeness of that room which can never be suitable for children to play ad there is no domestic atmosphere there.

She thought that men come in this room with other kind of girls, probably, prostitutes who would do their given roles with those men and who didn’t go through terror and fears the narrator was going through right then. She wished to tell her husband to change the pillow cover and bed sheets, but couldn’t. She heard the sounds of vigorously washing the face of her husband. She felt physio-psychologically tired even to feel her all emotions. In the mean time, the tea and bread and butter came with the smell of kerosene. She was very hungry.

She wanted to eat the sweets her mother packed for her while coming to honeymoon. She described her mother’s giving sweets in such occasion ridiculous that caused some forlorn feelings on the mother’s face. Being shy, the narrator couldn’t eat those sweets. Then, the narrator went on thinking how her mother-in-law expressed her views regarding his son’s wife who would be both simple and sophisticated.

She also proudly said that her son had been working in a foreign country which demanded his wife to cope up with the foreigners. She didn’t want to be married right then. But nobody paid any attention to her saying as her parents had taken her for granted. Even her father refused her desire by saying firmly that apart from she, he had two more daughters to be wedded.

Being interrupted by her husband’s asking about her silence, she gave an awkward smile which one gives to a distant person. She badly wanted to return home right then, but she couldn’t say that. Her husband began to come closer to her with carnal desire that made her frightened. To escape from his gripping, she asked to go to the veranda to sea the sea though it was far away and the husband let her go. Only smell of dried fishes was there. The narrator felt headache and nausea.

The narrator wished to build up friendship between them before being husband and wife. What they have become right then is husband-wife. She asked her husband to go down to the sea only to be refused by her husband as darkness was going to appear very soon and he informed to go in the next morning. He again approached her by holding her waist with the indication of sexual relation that make her feeling sick as she finds similarities in the husband’s touches with that of the nameless men in the crowds.

When she noticed their bed, she became nostalgic by thinking of the ways she had spent her days in her parental home. Then she heard her husband went to change. She still stood at veranda and went on thinking how difficult it was for her to stay under the same roof with an unknown man. Then she changed her dress and felt relieved to put on modest night dress. Her husband greedily looked over her with carnal desire.

She again went to the door opening the door to much distress of her husband. His husband repeatedly asked her to enter and she entered unwillingly. As soon as she entered the room, her husband embraced her and started love-making which hurt the narrator worstly. She escaped from him by avoiding his intended kiss on her lips that made him angry and he asked why she was behaving like that and why she had been avoiding him. She replied that the scarcely knew each other only to hear that they are married from her husband. She wanted to say that she wished to know everything of her husband, his likings and disliking etc, but she couldn’t ask.

She wished to talk to her husband the whole night to be friends, not the physical relationship. He was looking very angry and turned away from her violently. She began to imagine, while trying to sleep, herself returning her parents shamed and rejected causing much distress to them as society would blame them and besides that, she two more sisters to be wedded.

Suddenly she got slept and noted drowsily the booming sound of the sea with thundering noise between waking and sleeping. She thought she had been in the sea beach and the waves were pounding her. But when she woke up, she realized that she was on the bed, not the beach and it was not the pounding of the waves. It was the forcing of her husband’s body over her that frightened her. She could speak just nothing and tried to push him back with failure. There was no passionate exchange of loving words.

There had been the forcible rape of her by her husband. She began to cry. It was a cry not for physical pain, rather for the intrusion into her privacy, and for the violation of her own rights over herself. She took the bed sheets and her mind became blank as she couldn’t think anything. She couldn’t hear even the sea any longer. Instead, she could hear the loud snoring of her husband who had been lying on his back with legs flung apart.

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RAED MORE….

THE INTRUSION QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

THE GHOSTS OF MRS GANDHI QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

THE GHOSTS OF MRS GANDHI SUMMARY

THE FREE RADIO QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

THE FREE RADIO SUMMARY BY SALMAN RUSHDIE

 

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