‘A feeling of guilt, regret or sadness’ (MW) – Shame recurs
as a central theme in Rushdie’s The Moor’s
Last Sigh as the narrator details a family saga replete with eccentricity,
guilt and erstwhile shameful activities. While any other individual would
unravel under such circumstances, Rushdie’s characters seem to channel their
guilt into gainful artistic expression. Even though the novel has a
pre-occupation with boundaries and dividing lines, the outlet provided through
shame seems to blur these boundaries and produce a unique hybridity not
possible elsewhere.
Chapter 5 introduces Aurora as the budding artist, the young
girl who can unite India through her artistic outpourings. Right before she
enters her lock-up, Aurora, “for the first time in her life the presence of her
servants filled her with shame” (58). By channeling this feeling, she is
able to compose a universe which defies boundaries, which interprets reality
through the painting of a sort of hyper-reality. She succeeds in creating “creatures
of her fancy, the hybrids, half-woman half-tiger…” (59), and uses the
creatures to arrive at a specific interpretation of the real. In this godless
work, she is capable of inverting binaries, mocking doubles and forging a
hybridity that could potentially unite the diversity in mother India.
Moving to the father’s
narrative, we see a similar hybridity being forged between defeated races of
Muslims and Jews. This discourse comes in the direct aftermath of him
unearthing his mother’s secrets, “the uneasy jewelry of shame” (79). Reflecting
on his uneasy family heritage, he muses in the centuries-old defeat of his
ancestors at the hands of Catholic kings. Again, in this moment, he is able to
invert binaries and blur boundaries- “was weeping such a weakness … was
defending-to-the-death such a strength?” (80). While ending this monologue,
this idea recurs- “confronted his mother with his family’s hidden shame”
(81).
While the individual characters seek artistic expression
through lonely meditations on shame, their confluence allows for a higher
reveling in the shameless. They make a mockery of social, familial and religious
traditions as they perpetuate their ‘shameful’ love-making, whether it be in a
church, over their ancestor’s grave or in front of their guardians and
relatives. While the father moves to “cover his face” (101), the mother continues
to provoke, to revel in her shame- “Aurora … stretched her long body for
maximum provocation” (100), not willing to bow down to the border lines of
tradition.
Finally, the narrator seems to inherit this lust for the
shameful, for self-degradation and self-inflicted suffering- “Bastard: I like the sound of that
… Ergo, Bastard, a smelly shit; like,
for example, me” (104). But more on this later.
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