"No One in the House Knew Her Name": Servant Problems in R. K. Narayan's Short Stories. Issue 3 (2nd October 2018)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- "No One in the House Knew Her Name": Servant Problems in R. K. Narayan's Short Stories. Issue 3 (2nd October 2018)
- Main Title:
- "No One in the House Knew Her Name": Servant Problems in R. K. Narayan's Short Stories
- Authors:
- Hai, Ambreen
- Abstract:
- Abstract: The invisibility and precarity of domestic servants in South Asia remains a pervasive societal and political problem, not often addressed in South Asian literary studies. This essay analyses four short stories by R. K. Narayan that center on marginal, subaltern servant figures, male and female, young and old. It makes two related arguments: one, that Narayan uses the short story form (as opposed to the novel) to give unusual compassionate attention to these servant figures, and to critique the arrogance and injustice of the employer class; and two, that Narayan's mode of representation, with its limitation to upper class narrators' perspectives, creates a distance from the very figures it seeks to delineate, sometimes reinforcing the very class biases or suspicions of the servants that it attempts to question. Emphasizing attentiveness to forms of narration as well as to content as a reading strategy, this essay assesses both the interventions and limitations of Narayan's portrayal of servants in his fiction.
- Is Part Of:
- South Asian review. Volume 39:Issue 3/4(2018)
- Journal:
- South Asian review
- Issue:
- Volume 39:Issue 3/4(2018)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 39, Issue 3/4 (2018)
- Year:
- 2018
- Volume:
- 39
- Issue:
- 3/4
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2018-0039-NaN-0000
- Page Start:
- 335
- Page End:
- 353
- Publication Date:
- 2018-10-02
- Subjects:
- R. K. Narayan -- short stories -- domestic servants -- precarity -- representation of marginality and subalternity -- class relations in India
Indic literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals
Literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals
India -- Civilization -- Periodicals
South Asia -- Civilization -- Periodicals
South Asia -- Languages -- Periodicals
South Asian literature -- Periodicals
South Asian literature
Language and languages
Civilization
Indic literature
Literature
South Asia
India
Criticism, interpretation, etc
Periodicals
Electronic journals
891.1 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsoa20 ↗
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rsoa20/current ↗
http://www.tandfonline.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1080/02759527.2018.1542872 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0275-9527
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 10167.xml