Familiar Yet Exotic: Anita Nair's Mistress

Introduction :

Anita Nair’s postcolonial novel, Mistress, is set on the Southwestern coast of the picturesque Indian state of Kerala. The locale of the novel is a beautiful resort named Near the Nila situated on the banks of the river Nila. Owned by Radha, inherited from her father, she being the only child of her parents, the resort is presently being run by her husband, Shyam. A representative of the modern and educated Indian woman, Radha has been used by the author to show how the modern Indian woman is still caught in the web of patriarchal making, she is still a long way from independence though the country became free decades ago. By focusing on Radha’s relationships with Shyam, to whom she has been forced to marry, and Chris, to whom she is attracted because of her perceived notions of his broadmindedness, as well as mentions of her father’s role in leading up to her present condition, the novel weaves a tale of the colonisation and objectification of a woman’s body by the men both brown and white. Reading Mistress as a postcolonial text, this paper argues that by showing this objectification of the female body, Nair explores the process of familiarization and de-familiarization (or making exotic), although familiar or not, the woman remains unfamiliar to both men. Both merely try to subjugate her body, thereby becoming familiar with her body, but remain unfamiliar, to her and her strengths as an independent woman, who ultimately doesn’t require men in her journey onwards. Through Radha, the novel also highlights a woman’s condition in a society where owing to the prevalent patriarchal mindset she is in turns subjugated by the father, the husband and the lover.

Critical Background:

In pre-colonial times, when women were merely considered as showpieces to adorn their fathers’ house as daughters and later, husbands’ house as wives, besides other functional utilities, they did not have any authority to take any decisions in the household in general and particularly with respect to the financial matters. Many of them were made to follow the code of conduct laid down by Manusmriti (The Laws of Manu), which states, “In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, and when her lord is dead, to her sons' woman must never be independent.” The colonial times worsened this situation by making a woman’s body the battle field for the opposing forces of the colonizers and the colonized, all men. The term ‘colonialism’ refers to an establishment, exploitation, continuation, possession and extension of colonies in one territory by the people from another territory. It further leads towards unequal relationships between the colonisers and the colonised. Ngugi observes in Decolonising the Mind that the important area of domination as a consequence of colonialism was the mental universe of the colonised, the control through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their association to the world. Further, Edward Said has identified a European cultural tradition of ‘Orientalism’ where the Oriental is strange, fantastic, unusual and bizarre. The Orient’s eccentricity often functions as a source of mirth, marvel and curiosity for Western writers and artists. The Orient is also taken as feminine, passive, submissive, exotic and luxurious while the West becomes masculine, self-controlled and ascetic. All this reveals a discourse leading up to the cultural strategy to identify the land of a nation state to a woman’s body, which in turn leads to the emergence of the dual images of the oriental (Indian) woman – the sacred and the profane – the goddess and the voluptuous exotic female who led the men astray – for the colonized and the colonizers, respectively. The subjugation, physical, mental and cultural, is still seen in the way a woman is considered in the society, Indian society here. The postcolonial theory involves discussion about the experiences of various kinds: migration, slavery, suppression, resistance, representation, difference, race, gender, place and responses to the influential master discourses of imperial Europe…and the fundamental experience of speaking and writing by which all these come into being (Ashcroft 2). It is also built around the concept of resistance, of resistance as subversion, or opposition which can vary with it ideas about human freedom, liberty, identity, individuality, etc. It is this resistance, subversion, identity and individuality of women are what this paper is concerned about. As a result of their involvement in the independent movement, the post-colonial India has witnessed a metamorphosis in the position and status of women, at least the urban educated women. These women have started asserting their identity and fighting for a status separate from men in their lives in defiance of the patriarchal system prevalent in the Indian society. Radha, the woman protagonist of Mistress is one such woman who shows these stages of colonialism, pre as well as post, through her struggles. She is shown to be in constant struggle to survive the two worlds – the one world which she already inhabits with her husband, Shyam, and the other world which is luring her that of Chris, within the overarching presence of her father’s ideas regarding women and their status. Both of these men are in different ways acting as colonizers who want to master her or very narrowly, master her body only.

Discussion:

Women writers in the post-colonial India have created an interesting body of literature by exploring women protagonists’ actions and roles in the context of the rapidly changing socio-cultural scenario, especially concentrating on the psyche of these women. Nair’s Mistress also foregrounds the theme of identity and otherness by depicting Radha’s journey from an unhappily married woman to someone who follows her heart in the hope of finding equality to finally being an independent woman in its truest sense, who realizes that she needs no man to stand on her own. The well-educated Radha had to unwillingly marry Shyam when her father finds about her pre-marital relationship and consequent pregnancy, which she aborts. Through this marriage, Shyam gets a social upgrade and Radha becomes the trophy wife, a possession he is proud of but treats unequally. He prizes his possession, flaunts it, claims ownership but does not know her as a person. He is familiar with Radha’s body, but nothing more. She is only the mistress to him. “I think that for Shyam, I am a possession. A much-cherished possession. That is my role in his life. He doesn’t want an equal; what he wants is a mistress. Someone to indulge him with feminine wiles” (Nair 53). These are perhaps the same feminine wiles that attract the other man, Chris.

Knowing that he cannot possess Radha’s mind, Shyam tries to possess her body, going to the extent of raping her, and keeping a tab on her in many other ways. His referring to her as “my Radha” also reveals how much he believes in possessing his wife. He believes that if a husband is unable to dictate to his wife, the society would question his virility, which is why he intrudes in her personal life to the extent of making her do what he wants. From things like selecting the colour of her sarees, to keeping an account of her menstrual cycle by putting crosses on the dates in the calendar, “[T]hese red crosses are my periods, aren’t they? Why are they here? On your calendar? If anyone should keep tabs, it should be me” (Nair 203). Later, when he finds out about Radha’s dalliance with Chris, he thinks of killing her. Ironically, he, who was dishonourable enough to molest his wife, talks of dishonour and betrayal he has been subjected to because of this affair of hers. He invokes even the Gods in his defense, as if it is a god given prerogative to perpetuate violence against women. “What is the husband of an adulterous allowed to do? Am I permitted to vent my fury at being betrayed? Will I be able to defend my honour? Will any court of law, human or divine, hold it against me?” (Nair 350). Elsewhere, he contemplates getting Chris killed but decides against it only because he does not want Radha to turn her adulterous love “into a temple” and sever her ties with him (Nair 297). He realizes that he never knew Radha and that he could never go beyond merely possessing her body, and this step of Radha’s is enough to throw aside that veneer of false familiarity that he ever had.


Chris is a travel writer and cello player from America who arrives at the resort in search of his own identity and to find out the story relating to his birth. In a very neo-colonial fashion, Radha’s exotic looks and body lure this other man, the Westerner, Chris. Radha, who already feels stifled in an unequal troubled marriage, is as much attracted by his attentions as by her perceived notions of an equal treatment that Chris’ Western upbringing may entail for her. She realizes not too soon that being a Westerner does not necessarily mean that a man is less patriarchal or will treat the woman as an equal. In the colonial fashion, she, in fact realises that she has been explored, ravaged, and plundered by this Westerner too, as has often been done by her husband under the pretensions of his conjugal rights over her. She, or her body, has been explored and exploited the way a western tourist, the erstwhile colonizer, explores the ancient and the exotic oriental land that India has always been for them. Like the land that is open to the intrusive gaze of the neocolonial tourist, she has been subjected to this leering gaze, which she mistook for love and has been left devastated and bereft.

Chris initially appears to Radha all that her husband is not: modern, liberal, intellectual, sensitive, and accepting of a woman’s opinion and treating her as an equal. As the relationship progresses, she realizes that Chris is conservative in his ideas, and that his modernity is completely circumscribed by his own location and identity. During their first major argument on contemporary politics and war when Chris calls Saddam Hussain evil, Radha retorts by comparing Hussain to Bush and points out the latter’s dubious political motives behind invading Iraq. Chris gets angry and rebukes Radha saying that he finds her attitude of tolerance unacceptable. Radha is dismayed to realize that their sense of history, of politics, and even of ethics is different, and runs too deep in his case for it to be accepting and tolerant of any differing opinion that Radha has. She hits back by saying that he will never understand what tolerance is about, since it is beyond the Westerners. Interestingly, after this discord, Radha starts comparing her situation to that of a wasted country. “What do I have now? ... I am a country that has to rebuild itself from nothing…if you will be there to hold my hand through the rebuilding process” (Nair 293). Like the ravaged colonized nations that had to be rebuilt once they achieved or were given independence, Radha evokes the colonial premise of comparing women to land, and obliquely referring to her own colonization with all its entailments. She is now ready to be independent and looks for someone to help rebuild her life, having initially felt that perhaps Chris could be that man till she realizes the futility of her thought. He is attracted by her exotic looks and like Shyam does not go beyond possessing the body. Like in Shyam’s case, he fails to make Radha anything beyond his mistress. The exotic becomes the familiar to him, but only in its outer trappings.

 Conclusion:

Radha is perplexed about choosing between the two men, since for her each one is the replica of other, “[W]hen I think of Chris, what I see is the shadow of Shyam... I know for certain that I cannot live with one or the other” (Nair 398). She increasingly realizes that Chris is the embodiment of the traits that are specific to a colonizer, like, “I see that he dislikes his opinion being questioned” (292). Radha’s position is comparable to a state that is first invaded, and which then suffers the ravages of a terrible war, completely plundered and looted without any regard to any consequence that any of these actions have on the land or its inhabitants. She says, “[A]nd yes I do think that you have taken away something that is mine. You invaded my mind, my body” (293). But, realizing the incapacity of men to help her achieve any semblance of personal independence and realizing that she needs to depend only upon herself, she finally rejects both men intruding in her life. The one who had appeared familiar to these two men, in turns become unfamiliar to them. This process of de-familiarization is important for Radha. As a result of this rejection by her of the two men – the native and the foreigner, she who had been a mistress to these two becomes her own mistress. Thus, Mistress is a woman’s voice for freedom and emancipation. Women look forward to a happy and wholesome married life but which does not materialize because of the marriages to men like Shyam, for whom a wife comes as a package of possessions, not only the physical package, but along with lots of other materialistic possessions. Radha breaks out of this mould and her life comes a full circle when she chooses an independent life for herself without men but with an unborn child to look forward to, irrespective of its paternity. She, who had not been allowed to even breathe on her own in the past, by choosing a life less ordinary for a woman, breaks the laws of patriarchy and achieves independence. Through this, she displays agency and, in the process, walks into a future with responsibilities of her own making, as a woman who is mentally, physically and emotionally strong to be mother of a child and not a mistress to any man, husband or lover.

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