Marriage- An Intimate Look. Review on Dark Room, The - R K Narayan

The '' Dark room'' is one of the rare RK Narayan novels, which deals with social consciousness. Narayan generally writes on the lives of the inhabitants of Malgudi, their hopes, and fears, successes and failures. By and large, his novels exude optimism and are cheerful in nature, however the '' Dark Room'' is an exception to this fact.

The novel is about Savitri, a typical Indian housewife whom her husband Ramani, being a pompous and insensitive man ill-treats her in very subtle ways. The marriage slowly descends into being a living hell from which there is no return for Savitri. The steady deterioration of the marriage is movingly described. The book is a tribute to the servile Indian woman who swallows all humiliations, slights to just keep the marriage afloat and keep up pretences in the society.

Narayan brings the pressures of married life out well. This book raises a lot of disturbing questions regarding the institution of marriage. It is possibly one of the earliest books upon the question of woman's rights, gender equality etc. Readers might well remember that this book was published around forty years back when these issues were not even considered important. This book is a standing testimony to farsightedness and social vision of the author.

The question as to whether the personality of the individuals in the marriage should be submerged in the larger interest of the marriage is one, which has been partially answered. Narayan believes in the old school of thought, which believes that a woman has to discharge the duties of a wife and a mother for her role in life to be self-fulfilling. Notwithstanding, this belief of his, he is quite harsh on the insensitiveness of the husband who treats his wife with indifference and contempt.

These actions of Ramani forces Savitri to withdraw herself into a cocoon, literally so. She retreats to a dark room when she is deeply hurt. The dark room is the room used to store the junk of the house. This is a very significant fact as Savitri's self worth is deeply wounded, she identifies herself with junk, something which has outlived its utility and biding time before it is thrown away. The room is dark and she feels that there is no light waiting at the end of the tunnel. The reason for her patience is due to her two children, for whom she has a lot of hopes.

The books though over forty years old deals with issues which are contemporary and the reader will find it to be very topical. The scenes of marital discord in the book have been repeated over thousands of homes and will continue to do so. In The modern age where one finds a lot of marriage's coming apart, the messages the novel tries to convey are educative and hopefully readers may imbibe some of them. The novel is set in a South Indian milieu and Narayanan manages to recreate the scenes of every day life successfully.

Narayan's ideas regarding Woman's emancipation, marriage run through the entire book invisibly but his treatment of Savitri's character is sympathetic. The book is definitely worth a read but let readers be forewarned, this book will raise a lot of disturbing questions which will haunt the readers for some time to come. Readers familiar with Narayan will see a new facet of the man, this book should be read for that reason alone.