EXAM NOTES WITH SUMMARY & CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF POEM "MY GRANDMOTHERS HOUSE" BY KAMLA DAS

THE POEM:

1:There is a house now far away where once                                          
2: I received love……. That woman died,
3: The house withdrew into silence, snakes moved
4:Among books, I was then too young
5: To read, and my blood turned cold like the moon                                

6: How often I think of going
7: There, to peer through blind eyes of windows or
8: Just listen to the frozen air,
9: Or in wild despair, pick an armful of
10: Darkness to bring it here to lie                                                 

11: Behind my bedroom door like a brooding
12: Dog…you cannot believe, darling,
13:Can you, that I lived in such a house and
14: Was proud, and loved…. I who have lost
My way and beg now at strangers' doors to                                         15: Receive love, at least in small change?

EXAM NOTES WITH CRITICAL ANALYSES SUMMARY & POET BACKGROUND WITH THEMES:

1) POET BACKGROUND :

·         1: Kamala Das (1934-2009)- an Indian English poet, noted for her Malayalam short stories and a widely read columnist who wrote on diverse topics including women's issues, child care, politics among others.

       

      2:  Summer in Calcutta (1965) – This collection deals with the theme of "love, or rather, the failure of love or the absence of love.”

   

    3: Many critics have regarded Kamala Das as a confessional poet because she deals with private humiliations and sufferings which are the stock themes of confessional poetry.

         

          4: Confessional poetry is poetry of the personal or “I”. It marked its in the mid twentieth century and dealt with private experiences with and feelings about death, trauma, depression and relationships, which makes these poems autobiographical in nature.

         

     5: 'Each time I have wept, the readers have wept with me. Each time I walked to my lover's house dressed like a bride, my readers have walked with me.'- Kamala Das For more info click here

2) THEMES: Themes of trauma, death & depression  due to her crumpled human relationships.

3) RHYMING SCHEME: This poem is a free verse which means that the poet is not confined and surmounted to match the words and make them rhym.

5) MOOD OF THE POEM: The poem is set with the mood of nostalgia & even pondering for two forms of love one is the physical love which she gets from her husband and the other one which she used to get from her grandmother ,the true form of love for which she yearn in her poetry.

6) SUMMARY 

The house represents the cozy comforts of a place where the child was accepted and given care. Her present, on the other hand, offers a contrast to the past. The sweet irony is that the present despair has made her conscious of the value of love she received earlier.

The poem is not about the inability to relate with other people but about a strong sense of past relationships.

The poem wraps within itself an intriguing sense of nostalgia and uprootedness. In her long eternal quest for love in a loveless world, the poet remembers her grandmother which surfaces some emotions forgotten and buried within her.

The yearning of the poet is a symbolic retreat to a world of innocence, purity and simplicity. There is a strong contrast between her past and her present situation.

The poem deals with her own personality- "In her poems Kamala Das lays bare her hesitations, failures, ignorance, shame and feelings of guilt since all of them wear the stamp of her personality. There is no attempt to idealize or glorify any part of the self.” Her poetry is the outcome of a struggle to relate her private experiences with the larger world outside— it is a struggle to maintain her personal identity.

 "Alienation", "the lonely crowd" and "inner-directed”. Poets usually go against the grain of social atomizing, and reflect the inevitable, distorted enlargement of individual psychology. 

7) CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE POEM:

1; Kamala das in this PEOM seems to be a confessional poet, throughout the poem she yearns for the love, attention and affection she used to attain from her grandmother when she was young.

2; The verses 1&2 she is basically talking about the love she used to attain from her grandmother , she yearns for that love and attention from her grandmother in the house where she lived in with her grandmother and now she lacks that love which she used to get from her because her grandmother has died.

3; The verses 3&4 elaborate us how even the house has become silent because she soul of the house has died she metaphorically means that it was only grandmother who made four walls of brick into a home where there was peace , & affection among poet and her grandmother and now when she has died the house has turned silent as a result snakes have started crawling on the books shows us how much time has went and the house is closed since her grandmother's death.

4; In the fifth verse the metaphor " blood turned cold like moon" contrasts the fact that how she cannot feel those emotions again because of the fact that her grandmother has died , this even hints towards the fact that she having scarcity of love and affection in her life which she again wants to attain and as grandmother has died she cannot do so which obviously turns poet hopeless of her situation.

5; The verses 6,7 she mourns and longs to return back to the house where her grandmother lived once, she uses the metaphor blind eyes of Windows which basically means the house whose soul was the grandmother where she was loved and she used to have peace there she again wants to experience  being loved that feeling of oneness and the feeling of belongingness.

6; The verses 8&9 again signifying the metaphor 'frozen air' points out towards the fact that her grandmother has died and because of this since the house is closed there is no fresh air in the house but she contracts this with the verse 9 &10 the metaphor "pick an armfull of darkness" signates how she want to rejoice all the memories where she was loved truly and those memories she wants to recreate to refurbish herself again with the feeling of being loved eternally.

7; In the verses 11 & 12 the metaphor " like a brooding dog" signifies how eagerly she is waiting ,  for someone to get that true love and that sense of belongingness from where she could have all emotional stability so that even she could feel loved.

8; From the verses 13 to 15 Kamala das by saying darling she clearly slangs this to her husband with whom her relationship is more of a physical, there's only physical intimacy not the mental one when she says can you believe that I lived in a house where she was loved and she used to feel protected but now when she looks at the relationship she has with her husband she feels incomplete she feels alone that she says that even small amount of change in the form of love can rejoice her again with zeal and she will feel complete again.

REFERENCES & LINKS

Biography/Kamala-Das

The Mother Of Modern Indian English Poetry

Love and sexuality in the writings of Kamala Das

My Grandmother's house by kamala das

http://academicsstuff.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-grandmothers-house-kamala-das.html

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