obey whatever her husband says. Her choice to divorce also requires bravery. Divorce means losing her legal
standing in her husband’s house, while she already lost her legal standing in her parents’ house upon marriage. Therefore, to file a divorce means she will lose her
legal standing anywhere. However, to divorce is also a transgression in which she has her own idealism about how a marriage should be.
D. Coming back to Ayemenem: Transgressions from Familiy Values
Coming back to Ayemenem, Ammu feels desperate and empty from dream and livelihood. Having no other choice, she has to turn back to everything she has
abruptly fled from for four years. Ammu leaves her husband and returned, unwelcomed, to her parents
in Ayemenem. To everything that she had fled from only a few years ago. Except that now she had two young children. And no more
dreams p. 20-21. On the other hand, the Ipe family do not welcome her back. According to the
traditional view, a married woman does not belong to her parents’ house. As for a divorced woman, she does not belong anywhere. In the novel, this situation is
described as “...having no Locusts Stand I p. 28, 76, 108.” Locusts Stand I refers to Ammu’s legal status. It is actually a Latin phrase
locus standi which means having legal standing. According to Uslegal.com, locus
standi means ...the right to bring an action, to be heard in court, or to address the
Court on a matter before it. Locus standi is the ability of a party to demonstrate to the court sufficient connection to and harm from the
law or action challenged to support that party’s participation in the case Definitions.uslegal.com.
In the novel, locus standi is misunderstood by the children and they pronounce it into Locusts Stand I. In the novel, the term signifies homelessness, something that
Ammu and the children have to bear because legally they do not belong to the Ayemenem house.
Back in Ayemenem, Ammu also has to accept that she is in the subordinate position from that of her older brother, Chacko. In the term of possessions Chacko
owns the family’s property, while Ammu does not inherit anything because she is a daughter. In the pickle factory, the family’s company, Ammu’s position is also under
Chacko’s. The quotation below shows the contrasts between the rights of a son and a daughter:
Chacko told Rahel and Estha that Ammu had no Locusts Stand I. “Thanks to our wonderful male chauvinist society,” Ammu said.
Chacko said, “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is also mine.’ …Though Ammu did as much work in the factory as Chacko,
whenever he was dealing with food inspectors or sanitary engineers, he always referred to it as my Factory, my pineapples, my pickles.
Legally this was the case, because Ammu, as a daughter, had no claim to the property p. 28.
Although Mammachi and Chacko underestimate Ammu’s position in the house, it is Baby Kochamma Ammu’s aunt that resents her existence at all. In the
novel, it is Baby Kochamma that put herself as the one that obeys the Love Law faithfully, but also fiercely, as she uses it to resent other’s position.
She subscribed wholeheartedly to the commonly held view that a married daughter had no position in her parents’ home. As for a
divorced daughter-according to Baby Kochamma, she had no position anywhere at all. And as for a divorced daughter from a love marriage,
well, words could not describe Baby Kochamma’s outrage. As for a divorced daughter from an intercommunity love marriage—Baby
Kochamma chose to remain quaveringly silent on the subject p. 22. Baby Kochamma resents Ammu for being in the same position as she is. She
actually does not have a locus standi either because technically she stays in the house she does not inherit. If seen through the law that Baby Kochamma believes in, Baby
Kochamma does not have the right to stay in Ayemenem House, the house that is inherited by her brother Pappachi from their parents. However, not only does Baby
Kochamma struggles with her own legal status, Baby Kochamma also struggles with her womanhood. She lives with a perpetual broken heart, as she falls in love with a
priest that ignores her as a teenage girl. Although Ammu is also a man-less woman, Baby Kochamma resents her because Baby Kochamma never had the privilege of
being a bride. Baby Kochamma resented Ammu, because she saw her quarreling
with a fate that she, Baby Kochamma herself, felt she had graciously accepted. The fate of the wretched Man-less woman. The sad, Father
Mulligan-less Baby Kochamma. She had managed to persuade herself over the years that her unconsummated love for Father Mulligan had
been entirely due to her restraint and her determination to do the right thing p. 22.
Moreover, the love-less Baby Kochamma also struggles against the envy whenever she sees the twin and how they draw comfort from each other.
The twins were too young to understand all this, so Baby Kochamma grudged them their moments of high happiness when a dragonfly
they’d caught lifted a small stone off their palms with its legs, or when they had permission to bathe the pigs, or they found an egg hot from a
hen. But most of all, she grudged them the comfort they drew from each other. She expected from them some token unhappiness. At the
very least p. 22. Ammu, along with her two young children, becomes the black sheep in the
family. She is underestimated by her parents, becomes the subject of grudge by her aunt, and de jure, she and her children are homeless. However, since Ammu, Estha
and Rahel stays in Ayemenem House as members of the Ipe family for people from outside they seem to be a unit of proper, rich family. The Orangedrink Lemondrink
Man in the cinema Abilash Talkies says to Estha “...You’re a lucky rich boy, with porket munny and a grandmother’s factory to inherit. You should Thank God that you
have no worries p. 50.” The social gap between the three and the poor people in Keralla is seen as a
justification for these poor people to resent and to hurt them. Orangedrink Lemondrink Man in the cinema harassed Estha sexually, seeing him as a lucky little
boy whose perfect little world will not be destroyed if he takes a tiny advantage of his innocence.
Ammu, Rahel, and Estha’s ambivalent position, in which they are in the right position to be hurt, but not in the right position to whine, is described by Chacko in
his usual speech: “We’re Prisoners of War,” Chacko said. “Our dreams have been
doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad
enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter.” p. 26.
This ambivalence position put them to be the subaltern among the high-
respected touchable family. Being under the hegemony by the Love Law and the family that has been interpellated by the Love Law, Ammu and her two children
suffers the subaltern’s speechlessness: they cannot speak their mind, feelings, needs, and wants. If they do, they will be considered transgressing the Love Law, the
Ideological State Apparatuses that has been internalized deeply within individuals in the society.
However, Ammu is not a person that loves to be treated sympathetically. Soon after her return to Ayemenem, many relatives come to comfort and console her. She
despises their effort. Within the first few months of her return to her parents’ home, Ammu
quickly learned to recognize and despise the ugly face of sympathy. Old female relations with incipient beards and several wobbling chins
made overnight trips to Ayemenem to commiserate with her about her divorce. They squeezed her knee and gloated. She fought off the urge
to slap them. Or twiddle their nipples. With a spanner. Like Chaplin in Modern Times p. 21.
It again, shows her stubbornness, as well as her independent soul. There are also times when Ammu realizes her position of not possessing
anything. This realization set her loose, and a little bit wild. This tendency of wilderness is usually triggered by the songs that she listens to on her tangerine
transistor radio.
Occasionally, when Ammu listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her
skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch, to a better, happier place. On days like this there was something restless and untamed
about her. As though she had temporarily set aside the morality of motherhood and divorcehood. Even her walk changed from a safe
mother-walk to another wilder sort of walk. She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She
spent hours on the riverbank with her little plastic transistor shaped like a tangerine. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims p.
21. In times like that, Ammu has transgressed from her boundaries of being a
mother and of being a widow. After having no more dreams to pursue, Ammu becomes more encouraged in doing things she wants and in expressing her rage.
What was it that gave Ammu this Unsafe Edge? This air of unpredictability? It was what she had battling inside her. An
unmixable mix. The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber…. On the days that the radio played
Ammu’s songs, everyone was a little wary of her. They sensed somehow that she lived in the penumbral shadows between two
worlds, just beyond the grasp of their power. That a woman that they
had already damned, now had little left to lose, and could therefore be dangerous. So on the days that the radio played Ammu’s songs,
people avoided her, made little loops around her, because everybody agreed that it was best to just Let Her Be pg 21-22.
On the times like that, people realize that Ammu has turned into someone else. She is even seen as a dangerous woman because she has nothing left to lose. She
views her future only as a Road to Age and Death, a road that has neither milestone nor shades of trees p. 107. For the people around her, Ammu is considered to be in
the edge of madness. It is just a short distance from being the next mad person in the family.
Ammu is also known to have a sassy mouth. She often says sarcastic things in formal occasions that make people around her uneasy. For example when she
criticizes Margaret’s oriental mindset on the day of her arrival in Ayemenem as follows:
“Must we behave like some damn godforsaken tribe that’s just been discovered?” Ammu asked….And truth be told, it was no small
wondering matter. Because Ammu had not had the kind of education, nor read the sorts of books, nor met the sorts of people, that might
have influenced her to think the way she did. She was just that sort of animal p. 86.
Ammu’s refusal to be seen exotic by a white lady is a form of her
transgression from Anglophilia values that has been preserved by her family for decades.
However, from the Anglophilia values, Ammu becomes a learnt woman. She teaches her kids herself at home, and at the age of seven, the twins have mastered the
great English literature canons, such as Shakespeare pieces p. 40 and Kiplings. Rahel and Estha are highly trained in English literature for their age, so that they
know more about English literature than Sophie Mol, their English cousin p. 69, and an nun from England misunderstands their cleverness for Satan’s power p. 29. At
the age of seven, the twins also have mastered simple reading and writing in English p. 75. Ammu’s dream is to build her own school. She shares her dream with her two
children who secretly want to study at a proper school. Ammu’s mouth said. “I’ll be a teacher. I’ll start a school. And you and
Rahel will be in it.” “And we’ll be able to afford it because it will be Ours” Estha said with his enduring pragmatism. .. “We’ll have our
own house,” Ammu said. “A little house,” Rahel said. “And in our school we’ll have classrooms and blackboards,” Estha said. “And
chalk.” “And Real Teachers teaching.” “And proper punishments,” Rahel said p. 151-152.
In her relationship with her children, Ammu often use harsh, sarcastic words p. 54, 76, and even slap her kids, although not harshly p. 34, 71. Sometimes
Ammu also grows tired of her children and want her own body back.
Ammu grew tired of their proprietary handling of her. She wanted her body back. It was hers. She shrugged her children off the way a bitch
shrugs off her pups when she’s had enough of them. She sat up and twisted her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. Then she swung
her legs off the bed, walked to the window and drew back the curtains. Slanting afternoon light flooded the room and brightened two children
on the bed p. 106. When she is extremely enraged, she refers to her children as the millstone
round her neck. When she is captured by the family due to her love affair with Velutha, she screams to her twins, “If it weren’t for you I would be free. I should
have dumped you in an orphanage the day you were born. You’re the millstones round my neck” p. 136
The use of millstones as metaphor intertextualized with the 1962 movie Mutiny on the Bounty Lemaster 3, a movie based on the historical event on the
expedition of HMS Bounty in 1789. In the movie, corpses are drowned in the ocean by tying them with millstone that will prevent them from floating. Here, in her rage,
Ammu sees her children as the burden that keeps her drowning, prevents her from reaching her dreams.
However, Ammu loves her children, she enjoys her relationship with her children and she values their love to her.
Ammu kissed her again. “Goodnight, sweetheart. Godbless.”
“Goodnight, Ammu. Send Estha soon.” And as Ammu walked away she heard her daughter whisper, “Ammu” “What is it?” “We be of
one blood, Thou and I ” p. 153. The above quotation shows Ammu’s strong bond with Rahel and Estha.
However, he bond to her children is her biggest obstacle in reaching her desire. Her love to her children becomes the millstone that drowns her in the abyss of the Terror.
From the analysis above, it is seen that Ammu continuously transgress the values preserved by her family with small acts. As a member of an Anglophile
family, Ammu despises the act of idolizing Englishness. As a woman a mother, a widow, a daughter she often freely expresses her rage that makes others around her
uncomfortable.
E. The Terror: Fornication as Transgression
