'I hear a lot about foreigners being able to understand my pictures so well, but I certainly never thought of them when I was making the films. Perhaps it is because I am making films for today's young Japanese that I should find a Western-looking format the most practical.

Kurosawa

In order for them to understand, I have to translate, as it were..... I really only make picture for people in their twenties. They don't know anything about Japan or Japaneseness, not really. Oh, they will in time, but not now. Oh, I'm Japanese all right. I'm truly Japanese.' - Akira Kurosawa

The 'truly Japanese' Akira Kurosawa, who died on Sunday aged eighty-eight, was in is last years often referred to as 'the world's greatest living film-director.' Admired the world-over, he enjoyed particular esteem among film-makers in the West. In a valedictory comment, Steven Spielberg (the most famous of Kurosawa's many famous fans) called him 'the visual Shakespeare of our time' - a felicitous parallel, considering the range, power, richness and amplitude of Kurosawa's enduring accomplishments in the universe of cinema. Ancillary justification for such comparison comes from the fact that Kurosawa gave us two of the finest filmic interpretations of Shakespearean drama - 'Throne of Blood' and 'Ran', based respectively on 'Macbeth' and 'King Lear.' (In the latter, incidentally, Lear's offspring undergo a gender transformation - daughters become sons.)

Kurosawa was the most garlanded and the best-known among Japan's crop of exceptional film-makers. During a fifty-year period (starting in 1943 with 'Sanshiro Sugata,' and ending in 1993 'Madadayo') he made a total of thirty films, many of which are regarded as classics or masterpieces. Yet international recognition and homage did not inflate his ego the way it frequently does in lesser talents. Twice Oscar winner in the 'Best Foreign Film' category (a record in itself), Kurosawa was accorded the Lifetime Achievement Award, the highest honour of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in 1990. (The only other Asian to receive this accolade was India's Satyajit Ray.) Upon hearing about the award, Kurosawa said that 'he had not yet earned it.' He was still learning his craft, he declared. This was not a display of false modesty, but a supremely honest reaction prompted by the nature of his chosen artistic medium and its myriad possibilities.

Kurosawa, a native of Tokyo, came from the traditional samurai class and was the youngest in a family of seven children. He tended, in his own words, to be 'both a cry-baby and a real little operator.' His father, a trained Army officer, was a 'severe man' while his mother was 'a very gentle woman.' Yet, despite this family and class background, he 'hated anything that had to do with the military.' He shunned weapons training - a required course in middle school - and 'never once carried a rifle or a bayonet.'

At the age of seventeen, he enrolled in an art school - 'The Doshua School of Western Painting.' There he became 'rather proficient' and twice his work was selected for national exhibitions. But he was too poor to continue. After leaving art school, Kurosawa drifted towards the Japan Proletariat Artists' Group. He did not imbibe Marxism there; the aim was to study 'the new movements in art and literature.' He read avidly, 'would talk for hours about Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, etc... particularly of Dostoevsky. I was very fond of him, and have remained so to this day. He was a great influence.'

These then were the main elements that went into the shaping of Akira Kurosawa the film-maker - formal training as a painter, acquired familiarity with Western art and literature and, most distinctively, Samurai inheritance in the form of its central ethic. Of these, the first two hardly need any comment. The film-maker must necessarily possess a pictorial imagination, since the medium is fundamentally image-based. The image must serve as the primary mode of articulation, and not as an illustration of the spoken word a la South Asian cinema.

As to the interfacing with Western art and literature, even fewer words are necessary. Kurosawa acknowledged the influence not only of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Turgenev, but also of a very different breed comprising John Ford, Abel Gance, Howard Hawkes, George Stevens, Frank Capra, William Wyler and Antonioni. Such cross-border flows are both proper and inevitable in the realm of cinema.

Lastly, Kurosawa's Samurai legacy, which is in the background of his defining quality as a film-maker. Donald Richie (a most perceptive critic and chronicler of Japanese cinema) has written: 'Kurosawa comes from Samurai stock...Whatever part heredity and environment may have played, Kurosawa himself embodies a number of these earlier qualities. In particular, in him is seen in a very pure form, that old-fashioned virtue of compassionate steadfastness, complete moral honesty, inability to compromise, and action through belief - all of which come under that single much maligned term: 'bushido.' '

'Bushido' is a profound and fascinating philosophical concept deriving from a number of sources, most particularly Zen. As Donald Richie elucidates it, 'bushido' in its finest sense signifies a way of living, a process rather than a state of existence. 'Bushido' therefore necessarily expresses itself in the form of action - action that implies responsibility, and the understanding of things as they are.

According to many observers, 'bushido' values are an obvious and characteristic presence in the films of Akira Kurosawa - values which manifest themselves most strikingly in such works as 'The Seven Samurai,' 'Sanjuro' and 'Yojimbo,' films which (by the way) are all-time favourites of mine. What gives strength, texture and significance to Kurosawa's films, then, is a philosophy, a vision, a sense of human life in its totality.

Kurosawa appears to have been a rather private person, notwithstanding the culture of publicity and hyperbole associated with his trade. He didn't much savour being written about, or probed about his art. His self-analytical statements - at least those available in English - point to a general dislike of abstraction and speculation. Nevertheless, it seems to me that in the following utterance Kurosawa sums up the essential quality of his art. ' There are people who criticize my work and say it is not realistic. But I feel that merely copying the outward appearance of the world would not result in anything real - that is only copying. I think that to find what is real one must look very closely at one's world, to search for those things which contribute to this reality which one feels under the surface. These are few and one uses them to create. These are the core around which the world moves, the axis on which it turns. The novels of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev show us what these things are. To be an artist means to search for, find and look at these things; to be an artist means never to avert one's eyes.'

Akira Kurosawa is an honoured name in Sri Lanka; however, I doubt if genuine understanding of the master's cinematic oeuvre has been evident among us. For nearly all commentators here, Kurosawa's 'Japaneseness' resides in costumes, swordplay and verbal peculiarity. The 'real' Kurosawa, the Kurosawa 'under the surface' is yet to be fully discovered or encountered in our land. Once that happens, (I don't know when) we'll realize how inane, juvenile and pretentious is Sri Lanka's current discourse on the art and craft of cinema. And how ridiculous the posturings of our 'film personalities' and 'serious directors' who talk their heads off about the political and social import of their work.

MUSIC EAST AND WEST
Even if it is a considerable time after the event, I feel impelled to say a few words about the de Saram - Shilpadhipathi concert at the Lionel Wendt which, as anticipated, brought me much pleasure. The Western classical aspect of this 'Golden Jubilee Performance' has already been comprehensively dealt with by commentators better qualified than me. My own concern is more with the experimental than with the canonical part of the evening. And from that perspective, one must draw attention to two pieces - John Mayer's 'Prabhanda' for cello and piano, and 'Improvisation' for cello, piano and drums - both of which represent a meeting of East and West, from the Western line of approach.

Now, as the modern history of music amply demonstrates, such meetings take place on different planes and with different ends in view. And their outcomes are equally diverse. Some are productive in a substantial sense; others are mere titillations. The range is wide, and cognoscenti reactions vary accordingly. Some dismiss the very notion of a creative protocol between the Western and Eastern modes of music while others appear very supportive. Yet, whether one approves of it or not, interculturalism in music is a contemporary reality - a reality that needs to be viewed in an open-minded, accomodating and sympathetic manner. What the de Sarams and Shilpadhipathi did at the Lionel Wendt some three weeks ago has to be placed in this context. The John Mayer 'Prabandha' and the 'Improvisation' for cello, piano and drums were not compositions that had attained perfected state of musical utterance. They were experimental, innovative, questing, in the best sense of the terms.

And, above all, the performers knew what they were doing - they were accurate, clear-sighted and modest. I do hope that the trio, who work so well together, will find the time and the means to carry forward their endeavours. And it might prove useful for them to perform together in other lands.

Meanwhile, many thanks to all who made the evening possible.

During the past few weeks I have been chronicling the various advantages the People's Alliance may have vis-a-vis the UNP, at any forthcoming election. My main focus was the rabble rousing ability and capacity to appeal to the instinctive and irrational side of the public which the PA possesses in abundance. We have just been treated to a magnificent display of this particular skill during the past two weeks or so. The controversy which blew up over the comments made by Dr. Rajitha Senaratne is well worth studying by all would-be propagandists. This controversy displayed that talent which the PA has time and again, used against the UNP with devastating effect.

About two or three weeks ago, the government media suddenly began to talk about a deterioration in the country's political culture because politicians had started using what they described as 'raw filth' on the political platform. Dr. Rajitha Senaratne was accused of making 'obscene' comments on stage about the bedroom habits of a certain Minister. Within days, a massive campaign had built up against Rajitha Senaratne speeded by the government owned media, but also joined here and there by certain personnel of the private media. It was far from clear what exactly Rajitha had said, but various people, including media personnel had started saying 'Kethai Rajitha, Kethai' And 'Api lejja venawa Rajitha gena'. It was whispered in various corners that what Rajitha has said was so filthy that it was totally unmentionable.

The curiosity of many people was whetted. What had Rajitha said? What filth had he uttered? Then in a dramatic gesture, the government announced that it was going to have an 'Adults only' broadcast of Rajitha's Uyanwatte speech, over Rupavahini at 10.30 p.m. Many people would have broken rest to watch the 'adults only' movie. But those of us who saw it were sorely disappointed. After a week's build up, the actual show turned out to be a damp squib. The offending word was 'ponnaya' a common term used to describe any weak male. Its real meaning in Sinhala is that of an effeminate homosexual. There is no other word in Sinhala to describe a passive homosexual. This is a word in common usage and is by no means an obscenity. When used on a political stage it can acquire the tone of a mild term of derision equivalent to the English word 'PANSY'. This is hardly an obscenity, and virtually nothing compared to the vocabulary used by both sides as a matter of course in Parliament. Parliamentary vocabulary is often real filth, the mere hearing of which can make even a sixty year old woman conceive spontaneously!

Yet the PA propaganda machine was able to make an issue of this single word 'ponnaya' and at least temporarily, create a situation where one of the UNP's main platform orators was virtually under siege from the media. Of course once the PA made that 'adults only' broadcast, the campaign fell flat because the word 'ponnaya' is not considered to be an obscenity in our society. But for about two weeks, the UNP was under siege. How does the PA do it? Had a PA spokesman described somebody in the UNP as a 'ponnaya' the UNP would not even have recognised it as an exploitable issue. Even if they did recognise it as such, they would have been able to make an issue of it. The PA has the savy to do this kind of thing. A lot of people in the private media took some time to realise that they had unknowingly boarded the PA's political bandwagon before they were able to sheepishly dismount and slide away. The PA campaign had such stealth and force, that many people were taken unawares from the rear, and they got carried along for some time before they knew what was happening. I have nothing but admiration for the manner in which this campaign was carried out. Of course somebody may point out that this campaign did not last and that therefore it was less than successful. But I do not think it was meant to last long. I think it was meant to rattle the UNP's key speakers before the run up to the elections. It is now rumoured that they are trying to mount a similar campaign against Mervyn Silva, that irrepressible MP from the South. Whether that purpose has been achieved or not, depends on the condition of the nervous system of the victims concerned. The most important part of the campaign was to shout from the roof tops about 'filth' uttered by Rajitha, but to keep the entire population and most of the media guessing as to the exact words used. This was what really built up the tension in the country and sparked off all kinds of debates about 'Deshapalana Sadaacharaya' etc.

The media and the public were stampeded into thinking what the government wanted them to think. It is this capacity to stampede the public in whatever direction it wishes, that has served the SLFP well throughout the decades. SLFP'ers appear to be born with this ability. If someone asks them how they do it, they may not be able to come up with an answer. Its an inborn talent. For two weeks, they kept the entire opposition under siege over a Non-issue. And that, after spending four years in government and being universally reviled for lacklustre performance. This clearly shows that the PA's abilities should not be underestimated. They are far from dead. If they could bamboozle even media men with such ease, what will they do to the public, come an election?

Given the manner in which the PA was able to stampede even media men against Rajitha, I have the strong feeling that they will use the UNP as a doormat at any forthcoming election. A doormat used by people to wipe their feet on and by naughty pets to wipe their bottoms on. If the UNP does not show a lovely leg, they are going to find the PA wiping their feet ( and their bottoms too!) on them very soon. These PA propangadists really take the cake, they can travel for miles on just one drop of fuel, like they demonstrated on the 'ponnaya' issue. What defence mechanism does the UNP have against this kind of manipulation? Historically, the UNP never has had any defences against this kind of thing. This has always been the Archillies heel of the UNP. The first time, power was seized from the UNP in 1956, they remained helpless in the face of a campaign full of lies and personal attacks. In 1956, the twin pillars of the SLFP election campaign was communalism and a mud slinging campaign against Sir John Kotelawala. Everything ranging from Sir John Kotelawala's dining-room habits to his bed room habits was unravelled injuicy detail for the hoi poloi to lap up. It was no different at subsequent election campaigns either. Today, we find the same SLFP shrieking from the roof tops about the violation of 'Deshapalana Sadaacharaya' by Rajitha Senaratne. Our 'Deshapalana Sadaacharaya' was deflowered and gang banged by the 'Sanga, weda, guru, govi, kamkaru, pancha maha balawegaya in 1956. Today, our 'Deshapalana Sadaacharaya' is no longer a coy young virgin, but an aged TART which anybody is free to use if he is so inclined.

The wonder of it all is that after so many decades, the PA was able to depict this hoary old whore called 'deshapalana sadaacharaya' as a virgin who had been freshly and brutally violated by Rajitha Senaratne. Haw! Haw! No ordinary person has that kind of ability. Only the PA's propagandists can do something like that. I take my hat off to these guys. They rally take the cake.

At the outset, it has to be observed that E. A. V. Naganathan (EAVN) in his two articles entitled 'Mrs. Kamalika Peiris 'Tamil Problem' published in the Island Newspaper of the 11th and 13th April, 1998 has not defined 'Tamil Problem' as perceived by Mrs. Kamalika Pieris (KP) or himself. The thrust of the series of articles contributed to the Island over the last twelve months or so by KP was to critically evaluate the claim for a Tamil 'homeland' - a claim first politically articulated by the so called Federal Party founded in 1949 after Sri Lanka became an independent nation state within the British Commonwealth of Nations in 1948.

The 'Tamil Problem' that has now erupted into a military challenge to the Sri Lanka Government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is rooted in this demand for a Tamil 'homeland'. The fundamental question we therefore have to ask is what is a 'homeland' as demanded, within the polity of Sri Lanka and in the larger context of the state of Tamil Nadu across the Palk Straits that is part of the polity of India. In this context, EAVN's argument in respect of a so-called Tamil state that is said to have been established in Sri Lanka in the 13th century runs as follows: says he, 'It will be recalled that the Tamil state came into existence with the invasions of Mahga of Kalinga (1215 A.D.) Chandrabhanu of the Malaysian Peninsula (1247 AD) and Kulasekara of Pandya(1248 AD)'

Here useful starting point therefore is to understand what is exactly meant by a 'homeland.' The term 'homeland' has been defined (the New American Webster Dictionary in its third edition published in 1995) simply as one's native land. A native is defined as 'Pertaining to one by birth or place of birth'. Thus a Jaffna or a Batticaloa Tamil or an Indian Tamil of whatever caste or creed or place of birth in Sri Lanka using whatever dialect of the Tamil language, is a resident of the homeland Sri Lanka in which he may choose to live any-where. The Encyclopaedia Britannica does explain what home rule is but there is nothing as to what a 'homeland' is. Interestingly however, in reference to South Africa it does enlarge on the 'Bantu Homelands' or Bantustans that were set up by the Government of South Africa to complete the separation of the black indigenous Africans from the whites. The indigenous black Africans were allocated to one of ten Bantustans irrespective of domicile, on the basis of tribal identity. The ten Bantustans accounted for 13% of the land area of South Africa while 87% was reserved for the whites. The citizens of Bantustan were subject to the pass laws of white South Africa for their employment and movement in their own land. The Bantustans were never recognised by any country other than South Africa.

To talk of a Tamil 'homeland' is a contradiction in terms because the claimed land area is part of the homeland Sri Lanka. If, however, the intention is to exclude any native from the claimed homeland, there has to be a nation state. It is therefore significant that in 1947, after the rejection of the demand for 'fifty fifty' by the Soulbury Commission and the acceptance of office in the UNP Government by G. G. Ponnambalam (GGP) the so called Federal Party (FP) was formed under the leadership of S. J. V. Chelvanayakam (SJ-VC) and E. M. V. Naganathan (EMVN) both of whom had been closely associated with GGP in the leadership of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) in fighting for the Tamil cause in the first election under the Soulbury Constitution held in 1947. The name Federal Party, it must be noted is deceptive.

The Tamil name of the party was Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadcchi (ITAK) which may be rendered into English as Tamil Nation Party and not Federal Party. In this context attention is drawn to the following observation of A. J. Wilson (AJW) in his biography of SJVC who was his father-in-law. 'Indeed on the 15th of February 1949, SJVC made a speech to his KKS constituency clearly outlining his plan of action. He declared that 'Tamil Ceylon must govern itself' and enunciated for the first time 'the elementary right of small nations to self determination.' (S.J.V. Chelvanayakam and The Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationa-lsim 1949 - 1977 page 29).

It would seem that this demand of his was not political rhetoric even at that time. For on the 26th of November 1947 in moving an amendment to the address of thanks of the first parliament, he posed the question 'why the Tamils should not have the right to secede from the rest of the country.' The obvious question is what area or areas was the rest of the country as far as he and the leadership of the ITAK were concerned?

It is thus clear that this term 'homeland' is a euphemism for a nation state. It is hence not surprising that EAVN has identified the term nation state with ethnicity by citing the rise of nation states in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries and also by elaborating on the examples of Germany, France, Italy, Spain etc. though in the case of the United Kingdom he observes that it is not an organic state. He fails to define or explain what is an organic nation state.

Nor does he explain why the United Kingdom is classified as non organic. The fact is that the United Kingdom is not a mono ethnic state as are the other examples by and large. For the Welsh have their own language as do the Scots and Northern Irish with their Celtic and Gaelic which are languages older than English. Yet the official language in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is English. Nevertheless, he acknowledges the United Kingdom to be a nation state as are Germany, France, Italy, Spain and as Cyprus was until invasion of the island by Turkey. Of these, the United Kingdom, France and Spain are unitary states as was Cyprus. Germany and Italy are federal states.

EAVN'S European history and Tamil 'homeland'
We have therefore to ask what is the purporse of EAVN's two articles entitled 'Mrs. Kamalika Peiris's 'Tamil Problem.' K. P. has, throughout her contributions to the on going debate on the demand for a Tamil homeland, made herself very clear in exposing the attempt to falsify history in support of a claim to a so called Tamil 'homeland.' Hence the three questions posed to her by EAVN in his first article are superfluous and irrelevant. Indeed, it would seem to be an attempt to confuse the reader as to the issues relevant to the demand for a so called Tamil 'homeland.' KP with her usually perspicuity saw the irrelevance of the questions. Hence in her article entitled 'Tamil Separatism and the definition of a Nation' published in the Island of 21st April 1998 she explores the meaning of the term nation. She concludes that there is no accepted standard meaning of the word nation. As she points out, interpre-tation of the world is related to purpose, amongst other conside-rations. Nor is there a legal significance attached to the world.

Indeed, EAVN seems to confirm the point in classifying nation states as organic or nonorganic to suit his purposes without defining the terms. In the last para of his concluding article, EAVN reveals his real intent in his words quoted below.

'The blame must rest fairly and squarely on previous generations of the Tamil leadership for its failure to present the case for Tamil Nationality and self government, logically and cogently, at the appropriate time, with the visits of the Donoughmore and Soulbury Commissions. 'There is no reason to blame the previous Tamil leadership on this score. For they were well aware that in justice there was no Tamil history to justify a demand for a Tamil 'homeland.' The old Tamil leadership was interested in political power at the centre, particularly in view of the inevitable transfer of power by the British in India and Sri Lanka after the Second World War.

The preposterous demand that the minority community (accounting for 25 per cent of the population of which the indigenous Tamils accounted for 12 per cent) be given fifty per cent of the seats in Parliament was made to garner votes for the ACTC by appealing to communal passions and not reason. When the hustings were over, reason prevailed and the Tamil Congress agreed to support the UNP government of D. S. Senanayake accepting ministerial office with GGP becoming the minister of industries and fisheries. SJVC and EMVN would have none of this. A Tamil 'homeland' was their objective and there was to be no compromise on that issue. Accordingly, they reviled GGP and his supporters as traitors to the cause and formed the ITAK or Tamil Nation Party. Thus the stage was set for continuing to appeal to communal passions as a basis for seeking political power in the cause of Tamil national 'homeland.'

(To be continued)

(Today's Lobby is dedicated to 'Cats Eye' whose undaunted dedication to the cause of feminism and the rights of women deserves admiration. And just to remind our columnist that when it came to rights of women, it took the men to draw attention to the cause. This is why today's Lobby deals with the works of five writers from five countries. All men, who told the world of the tragedy of women trapped in a man's world).

In 1857, Gustave Flaubert was bringing out his novel, Madame Bovary, in France. Emma Bovary, as we know, swallowed rat poison. You see, our Emma led two lives: on the one hand were the flabby romantic dreams she was fed, like all young girls. On the other, there was the dismal bourgeois reality of the man she married. Let's see how Flaubert treated her first romantic idealism.

A certain agitation caused by the presence of this man had sufficed to make her believe herself possessed at last of that wonderful passion which hitherto had hovered above her like a great bird of rosy plumage in the splendour of a poetic heaven.

Rather overstuffed, the language, but I don't knock Flaubert. Oh no! He's great French writer. Then we come to Emma's down-to-earth reality:

Charles' conversation was as flat as a street pavement (Hah! Never in Kandy, surely!) on which everybody's ideas trudged past in their workaday dress, provoking no emotion, no laugher, no dreams.'

Contrast
Flaubert builds on this contrast and it persists to the end - an appalling divide between the hard, squalid facts of bourgeois life and death, and the romantic sentiment that is Emma's self-congratulatory image of what life should be. Quirkily enough, even as Emma dies, vomiting blood, a blind beggar sings in the street outside:

When the sun shines warm above

It turns a maiden's thoughts to love.

Sad? Wry? Pathetic? I suppose we each respond to the tragedy in our own way. So what's my point? I just start writing, allow the Muse to develop. Even the Greeks believed that it was the Muses who caused Literature although today's teachers of English find this a most unsatisfactory explanation. Trouble is, they haven't come up with a replacement. Literature is simply something that is there....and because it is there, it is taught. Why or how it came to be here, there or anywhere is best called a 'decent mystery', and like all such decent mysteries, we like to probe. After all, didn't Shaw say that 'Decency is indecency's conspiracy of silence?'

So if a child were to ask: 'Mummy, where does Literature come from?' Mummy is sure to put the subject in the same class as that old answer to 'Where did you come from, baby dear?' and is sure to add, 'Now go to sleep and stop asking questions.'

In the rough world of the worker, everyone will believe that Literature is a reflection of reality. If good, the reflection is dialectical, complex, highly mediated; if not it could simply be crude. But what does it all mean? Aha! I see a way now to tie in Flaubert and get this bit of prose together. Yes, I have a point! Those middle class woman of the nineteenth century. The Flaubetian woman, the Thckerayan woman, the Tolstoyic woman, the Hardy woman, even the Ibsenian woman. Now I can go with all speed, for glory be! I have a point!

In looking at the situation of middle class women in the 19th century we will find that the re-creation in the worked of authors in different countries can be startlingly alike. Take old England's middle-class prosperity. This was built up on the fact that that a sixth of the employed population were domestic servants (even Mary Poppins!). As such, the middle-class woman remained in a sort of gilded cage, freed from household chor's. Now let's look at Thackeray's Vanity Fair. Imagine Jane Osborne's awful, boring existence as she sits before her father at the breakfast table:

She remained silent opposite to him, listening to the urn hissing, and sitting in tremor while the parent read his paper and consumed his accustomed portion of muffins and tea. At half past nine he rose and went to the city, and she was almost free till dinner time, to make visitations in the kitchen and to scold the servants; to drive abroad and descend upon the tradesmen, who were prodigiously respectful; to leave her cards and her papa's great glum respectable houses of their city friends; or to sit alone in the large drawing room, expecting visitors; and working at a huge piece of worsted by the fire, on the sofa, hard by the great Iphigenia clock, which ticked and tolled with mournful loudness in the dreary room. The great glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great console glass at the opposite end of the room, increased and multiplied between them the brown Holland bag in which the chandelier hung, until you saw these brown Holland bags fading away in endless perspectives, and this apartment of Miss Osborne's seemed the centre of a system of drawing-rooms.

Oh, all the details of female servitude are woven in deftly. Even the Iphigenia clock. You recall, this Iphigenia was Greek Literature's most famous example of a woman who was an obedient, sacrificial victim. Also, we have the mirrors that convey a long series of empty repetitions. What we have is a picture of a nineteenth century 'civilised' lady, respected by tradesmen and surrounded by a sort of nagging aimlessness. Angels described this condition beautifully when he said that these women were 'surrounded by false homage and estranged from all real work.'

If Thackeray was truly reflecting the women of the time, he was obviously making them quite idiotic, but he also gave these idiots reassurance - that theirs was a very natural position although they remained as useful or as active as rubber shovels. Oh, the critics don't see it this way. They think that it is all a matter of biological determination! And yet, in 1857, William Acton added yet another nail in the coffin when he discussed the sexual feelings and responses of these women. What Acton did was write a medical textbook: The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs, and he dwelt much on what he called woman's 'sexual passivity'.

I should say that the majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind...The best mothers, wives, and managers of households, know little or nothing of sexual indulgences. Love of home, children and domestic duties are the only passions they feel.

As a general rule, a modest woman seldom desires any sexual gratification for herself. She submits to her husband, but only to please him; and, but for the desire of maternity, would far rather be relieved from his attentions.

You will find the above excerpt quoted in The Other Victorians by Stephen Marcus (New York 1967).

Now all this may sound pretty absurd today. We are given this picture of women in an ornamental role. But we also see that this is being re-lived and even attacked in the works of Flaubert, Tolstoy, Hardy, Henry James and Ibsen. Five books from five countries, yet, in all five, the story is much the same.

I have already given a pertinent excerpt from Madame Bovary. Let us now look at Tolstoy's Anna Karenin. Like Emmaa, Anna, too, commits suicide. The last moments of Anna are full of an obsessive alienation from people around her. She becomes isolated and vulnerable, on the verge of a neurotic despair after a feeble revolt from her husband. We see her at Nizhny station, men peering into her face, hissing to each other. She is appalled at the hideousness of a mis-shapen lady and the 'Grotesque and affected girl' who accompanies her, the 'grimy, deformed-looking peasant' who follows.

In her railway carriage she finds a husband and wife 'repellent' and, as more men stare at her, she feels her panic rising. She wants out because she knows that 'everything is false and evil - all lies and deceit!' As she steps out of the carriage her hatred for humanity implodes. She hates herself. She is determined to punish her lover, Vronsky, escape from all, especially herself. She steps under a goods train.

So did Anna fight her way out of her nineteenth century strait-jacket. The escape was death, just as it was with Emma Bovary. Tolstoy published Anna Karenin in 1878, and in that same year. Thomas Hardy gave us The Return of the Native and Eustacia Vye, who also committed suicide. She drowned herself.

Eustacia Vye found it impossible to live a fulfilled life. She struggled hard to achieve it. Hardy gave her strength, true but her struggle is pretty muddled. As a child, her heroes were William the Conqueror, Stafford and Napoleon. You see, Eustacia wanted to be as a man. She had the attitude, the will the dreams of manliness, masculinity. Even as she grew up she revelled in playing a man's role, a Turkish knight, in a Christmas play. And then proof! It's all gone! She marries, and is forced to become both economically and emotionally dependent on her husband. There's no way out. Before she drowns herself, she wavers between a wan husband and a third-rate lover.

'Can I go, can I go?' she moaned. 'He's not great enough for me to give myself to - he does not suffice for my desire!......If he had been a Saul or a Buronaparte - ah! But to break my marriage vow for him - it is too poor a luxury!.....And I have no money to go on alone! And if I could, what comfort to me? I must drag on next year, as I have dragged on this year, and the year after that as before. How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how distinctly has been against me!....I do not deserve my lot!' she cried in a frenzy of bitter revolt. 'O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control!'

From America, Henry James gave us his miniature portrait of Daisy Miller in 1879, stressing on the lessons a woman must painfully learn if she dares step out of line. There's Mr. Winterbourne, chockful of a nonconformist conscience, who warns her. She must not visit the Colosseum by moonlight with that young Italian. She will become ill. She will catch malaria. She will die. Daisy defies him. She breaks the code, enjoys that moonlit dazzle of defiance. And she does catch malaria, and a week later, she is dead. What? Of course it serves her right, and let that be a warning to all you high-strung women out there. Do as the man says, and save yourself a lot of grief!

The Norwegian Ibsen gave us his play Hedda Gabler in 1890. This was superb critical view of the stunted and perverse situation the nineteenth century middle class woman found herself in . Hedda, too, was the stunted and perverse product of this age. Cut off from all meaningful activity and afraid to break out for fear of scandal and the iron coresets of convention, Hedda begins to admire, even broodingly, the unconventional Lovborg. But she is still faced with the reality of her own repression and, in lonely desperation, blows her brains out on the London stage.

Five books
Five books, five authors, the stories so closely parallel, and all within a generation, yet, coming out of France, Russia, England, America and Norway, each and all telling us of confused and spirited heroines who all set off more or less alone, to buck society. In every case there was defeat and death. Was this a sort of intercontinental ballistic coincidence or was it the way Literature reflected the real world? In every story the authors shared the awareness of that tragic gap between a woman's needs and abilities and the dwarf strictures of nineteenth century society. In all these stories the authors emphasises particular angles out of experience or maybe their own convictions.

It must be said that we've come a long way since, but society of that time was most annoyed. When the Revue de Paris began serialising Madame Bovary, it was prosecuted for 'outrage to public morals and religion.' A Russian magazine that carried Anna Karenin in monthly instalments, refused to use the final section. The British press called Ibsen a 'much-ferreting dog' and even re-christened him 'Ibscene'. Hardy, too, was attacked by the press and this is partly why he gave up writing novels in 1895. No body made much of a fuss about Daisy Miller because her small gesture of rebellion was promptly dealt with by the mosquitos. But let it be said that these writers who posed and analysed the problem, gave heart to the women who subsequently rose up - not from Literature but from life itself.

The first awareness that there was a struggle, even a despairing mental one, needed the courage of the writer. God bless them all! Do read Flaubert, especially you who are making the world one - where man and woman stride forward, hand in hand, to achieve. Flaubert and his ilk fired those first shots, told of the humility, the painful endurance, the tragedy. Men who made the world of women aware of themselves, made them assert themselves!

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