Topic “Niru as India – the wife/colonialism parallel”
Thesis Statement:
In T. Gupta’s adaptation of “A Doll’s House,” Niru symbolizes India, reflecting the shared struggles of a subjugated wife and a colonized nation under British rule. Through Niru’s experiences, including her lack of autonomy, cultural erasure, and pursuit of freedom, the play illuminates the oppressive dynamics of colonialism and patriarchy, highlighting the interconnected challenges faced by individuals and nations.
The essay will explore Niru’s marital subjugation mirroring India’s colonial oppression, analyze power dynamics between Niru and Tom reflecting colonizer-colonized imbalances, and examine Niru’s journey towards liberation paralleling India’s struggle for independence.
CORRECTIONS FROM THE TEACHER ABOUT THESIS STATEMENT
I think this thesis is great! Here’s some feedback:
– Strong diction, with lots of good ideas. You’re taking into account the context and that is great.
– make sure to do some additional research to understand India’s independence, if necessary.
– in what way does the subjugated wife resemble a colonized nation. Is a colonized nation the abused wife of toxic imperialism? I’d comment more specifically on this relationship, as saying Niru stands in for India isn’t exactly an original idea – it was a topic – but by using the word subjugated, you’re making connections with that relationship to colonialism. Maybe say a little more about what kind of relationship it is to go even further with originality.
Perspective: The essay should entirely reflect A Doll’s House T. Gupta perspective. We won’t analyze it from any lens, but you can use the terminology from postcolonial, Marxist, and feminist lens.
Terminology: Use terminology associated with postcolonialism, Marxism, and feminism wherever applicable.
Sources: You’re allowed to use additional sources, but no more than two. Make sure to properly cite them.
Structure:
Start with a theme statement and a mapping statement.
Create three body paragraphs, each with three arguments, proofs, evidence, and a mini conclusion. Fro the argument we are only using quotes from the play and symbols romthe play. Only ones we can use an outside source for an argument.
End the essay by referring back to the theme statement. ( conclusion)
Length: Aim for approximately 1375 words.
Citations: Ensure all citations and references are properly formatted and included.
Quotations: When quoting from the play or other sources, summarize the information rather than using verbatim quotations.
Example: I’ll attach an example essay for reference. Please follow its structure closely.
AI Usage: Avoid using AI in any form for this task.
EXAMPLE ESSAY
Essay on Perks of Being A Wallflower
“We accept the love we think we deserve” is one of the best-known quotes from the book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky. It is also a reoccurring theme of the book and is demonstrated through various characters. Throughout this book, Stephen Chbosky shows how often one’s relationship to love determines what they think they deserve and where they feel they belong. For example, people who struggle with self-love often find themselves feeling like they belong in relationships where they’re made to feel small, people who experience physical abuse in their childhood end up associating it with love and find themselves feeling like they perhaps only deserve to belong in abusive relationships, and lastly, people who fail to come to terms with their sexual abuse end up finding a sense of belonging in becoming like their abusers.
To begin with, people who struggle with self-love often accept and surround themselves in relationships where they’re made to feel small. Often, the characters tend to feel a sense of belonging in these relationships, especially since they’re convinced that that’s what they deserve to feel like. A prime example of this would be Sam and Patrick. Both Sam and Patrick struggle with fully loving themselves and are seen getting into questionable relationships throughout the book. Sam mostly dates older self-obsessed guys, like her boyfriend Craig. For her to do this makes sense in a strange way; Sam, the girl who can’t love herself enough, and Craig, the guy who can’t tell how much self-love is too much. This is demonstrated when Charlie, the main character, thinks to himself “…It’s like he would take a photograph of Sam, and the photograph would be beautiful. And he would think that the reason the photogram was beautiful was because of how he took it.” (Chbosky 91). This quote shows to an extent how self-obsessed Craig is and how much he takes Sam and her qualities for granted. It is possible that Sam somehow thinks that lack of self-love from her side and excess of self-love from her partner’s would somehow balance each other out and leave both of them happy and satisfied. However, the only one it satisfies is Sam’s partner and Sam is left feeling undesirable and insignificant. On the other hand, Patrick is only seen in one relationship throughout the movie, with Brad. Patrick is openly homosexual, however, Brad is closeted and ashamed of his identity. So much so that he has to get severely drunk to be with Patrick for most of their relationship. However, Brad eventually stops getting drunk just to be able to sleep with Patrick, and to Patrick, that is more than enough. This is proved when Charlie asks Patrick if he was sad that he had to keep his relationship with Brad a secret but Patrick replies he isn’t because “…at least now, Brad doesn’t have to get drunk or stoned to make love.” (46) This showed how low Patrick’s expectations were as if just the fact that someone thought he was worthy of love without getting drunk was more than enough. This showed how Patrick was left feeling small in his relationships due to a lack of self-love. Moreover, it is also possible that this willingness to accept these kinds of relationships perhaps comes from Sam’s mother and Patrick’s father, who supposedly, before marrying each other, were in problematic relationships themselves too where they were made to feel insufficient just like Patrick and Sam.
Secondly, survivors of physical abuse end up misinterpreting abuse as love and tend to find their way back to it. They often confuse the familiarity of this pattern as a place where they deserve to belong. An example of this would be Charlie’s Aunt, Rebecca. Charlie’s grandmother was with someone who turned out to be a “terrible person” (86) who’d hit his Dad, Aunt Rebecca and Grandma “all the time” (87) after his grandfather “died in Korea.” (86) Having experienced that for 7 years of her childhood, his Aunt Rebecca was never really able to detach the idea of made-up love from abuse and saw abuse as a natural consequence of love. Therefore in her adulthood, she “went through the same kind of husbands” (87) one by one and never really stopped seeing abusive relationships as what she deserves and where she belongs.
Lastly, people that went through sexual abuse in their childhood unintentionally moulded themselves like their abusers in one way or another and considered it their place of belonging. An example of this would be Charlie and his aunt, Helen. Charlie’s “aunt Helen was molested” (90) by “a friend of the family” (90) who “kept coming over for visits” (90) even after aunt Helen informed everyone about the abuse. It is possible that having a serious situation like this be treated so normally could have tricked her into thinking of it as the normal thing. Perhaps it is why aunt Helen molested Charlie, perhaps it was her way of making sense of her abuse and of the love she had for Charlie because love and abuse are very intertwined in her mind. Perhaps abusing Charlie was like loving him for her. Hence by becoming like her abuser and molesting Charlie, Aunt Helen felt like she belonged somewhere, on the other hand, instead of becoming a sexual predator, Charlie was more like his Aunt Helen in the way that he misunderstood a lot of other things such as neglect as love. He always just kept everyone’s “secret” (18) and let everyone do anything to him in the name of love. This becomes evidently clear when Sam says “You can’t… put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love.” (200). Charlie’s definition of love from the very beginning was based on neglect and putting everyone’s needs first just like his Aunt Helen, and it is in the neglect where he felt he really belonged. This shows how unprocessed trauma can lead to a vicious cycle and feeling like one belongs only in it.
In conclusion, people who struggle with self love often convince themselves they belong in relationships where they’re made to feel insignificant, people who’re physically abused misdefine abuse as love and find a sense of belonging in abusive relationships, and people who’re molested as children find themselves feeling a sense of belonging in becoming like their abuser in one way or another due to unprocessed trauma. The Perks of Being a Wallflower shows people as creatures who can soak in their environment (negative) and often unintentionally become like it or mould themselves in a way to complete it. This in turn leads to people getting stuck in a vicious cycle of abuse and misinterpreting abuse of some kind to a love of some kind. In the end, either people break free of this cycle by somehow coming to terms with their trauma, or they identify it as a part of themselves and continue to contribute to its growth whether deliberately or not.
