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Saurashtra University Re – Accredited Grade ‘B’ by NAAC (CGPA 2.93) Barlow, Audrey E., 2005, “A Critical Study of the Autobiographical Elements in the Fictional Works of R. K. Narayan”, thesis PhD, Saurashtra University http://etheses.saurashtrauniversity.edu/id/828 Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Saurashtra University Theses Service http://etheses.saurashtrauniversity.edu 1 A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ELEMENTS IN THE FICTIONAL WORKS OF R. K. NARAYAN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO SAURASHTRA UNIVERSITY, RAJKOT FOR THE AWARD OF Doctor of Philosophy IN ENGLISH Supervised by: Submited by: Dr. Jaydipsinh K. Dodiya, Audrey E. Barlow, Associate Professor, Senior Professor in English, Smt. H. S. Gardi Institute of Department of English, English & Comparative M.P.Shah Arts & Science Literary Studies, Colege, Saurashtra University, Surendranagar. Rajkot. 2005 2 STATEMENT UNDER UNI. O. Ph. D. 7 : I hereby declare that the work embodied in my thesis entitled as "A Critical Study of the Autobiographical Elements in the Fictional Works of R. K. Narayan", prepared for Ph.D. Degree has not been submitted for any other degree of this University or any other University on any previous occasion. And to the best of my knowledge, no work has been reported on the above subject. And the work presented in this thesis is original and wherever references have been made to the work of others, they have been clearly indicated as such and the source of information is included in the bibliography. Guide / Supervisor Candidate signature Dr. Jaydipsinh K. Dodiya A. E. Barlow Asociate Profesor, Research Student, Smt. H. S. Gardi Institute of Department of English, English & Comparative M.P.Shah Arts & Sci. College, Literary Studies, Surendranagar. Saurashtra University, Rajkot. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am sincerely grateful to my guide Dr. Jaydipsinh K. Dodiya, Associate Professor, Smt. H. S. Gardi Institute of English and Comparative Literary Studies, Saurashtra University, Rajkot, for his worthy guidance, patience and a lot of encouragement during the preparation of the present thesis. He spared his valuable time for guiding even during the period of his Sabbatical Leave. Without his innovative ideas, this work would not have attained its present form. Further, I am also thankful to those who have helped me with their valuable guidance and support in the making of this thesis. My special thanks are also due to my colleague Prof. R. R. Harshana and Dr. Piyush S. Joshi for extending their invaluable contribution in going through my entire thesis and making worthy suggestions. I owe a great deal to my dear parents for whom no words of gratitude are enough as they have always encouraged me and blessed me on the path of my academic journey, and who have made me what I am today. I shall not forget to thank my husband Rishi for his constant support and help and of course I owe a great deal to my son Adit too. Finally, I would like to express my thanks to the Librarian, The British Library, Ahmedabad and Mr. Nilesh Soni, Librarian, Saurashtra University, Rajkot and dear friends and relatives for providing me the requisite material and books. I am equally grateful to Mr. Bipinbhai Shah for putting my thesis into computerized print. Surendranagar Audrey E. Barlow 4 INDEX Page No. CHAPTER - I 001-043 INTRODUCTION 044-078 CHAPTER - II REFLECTIONS OF HIS LIFE : NARAYAN'S EARLY WORKS CHAPTER - III 078-112 THE PERIOD OF MATURITY : R.K.NARAYAN'S NOVELS CHAPTER – IV 113-150 PERSONAL REFERENCES : NARAYAN'S LATER NOVELS CHAPTER - V 151-180 SUBJECTIVITY IN HIS SHORT STORIES CHAPTER - VI 181-188 CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY 189-207 ❈❈❈ 5 Chapter - I INTRODUCTION 6 Chapter - I INTRODUCTION R.K. Narayan, an Indian of the purest Brahmin stock who spent his life in the city of Mysore in South India composing fiction in English can be read as the chronicle and the embodiment of the state and the history of the English language. New movements in literature are new uses of language, and this is true of R. K. Narayan in the last century. The new mind requires the new voice, and the new voice is discovered by the writer's genius for intimately registering the idiom of his own world. It is this new voice in English literature which I recognize in the work achieved in India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If Anand is the novelist as a reformer, Raja Rao the novelist as a 7 metaphysical poet. Narayan is simply the novelist as novelist. R. K. Narayan, now no more, has produced a sizable body of work – more than a dozen novels and several collections of short stories – which makes him one of the most prominent novelists in the British Common Wealth. Over a period of forty years of composition he had built up a devoted readership throughout the world from New York to Moscow. The location of his novels is the South Indian town of Malgudi, an imaginative version of Narayan's beloved Mysore, which is as familiar to his readers as their own suburbs, and infinitely more engaging. His writing is a distinctive blend of Western techniques and Eastern material, and he has succeeded in a remarkable way in making an Indian sensibility at home in English art. R. K. Narayan was born in 1907 to a Brahmin family, his family, like that of most Indians, settled ultimately from a village, Rasipuram. His family had long been established in the city of Madras. Tamil, the language of the province of Madras, was the one spoken at home. His earliest memory was of himself sitting half-buried in sand with a peacock and a monkey for company in his grandmother's house, No.1 Vellola Street, Madras, where he lived with her and a maternal uncle, a student of the local college. The large rambling house had been 8 partitioned and rented out as offices, shops and apartments except for a minimum reserved for the Narayan's family. The grand mother was largely dependent on the rents for her living : "The house was built around an enormous Indian – style court yard….. Its doors were thick teakwood slabs four feet wide and six or seven feet high, covered with studs and ornaments, and flanking the doors were matching smooth pillars crowned with little brass figures of monkeys, elephants, eagles 1 and pigeons." Being brought up else where than in one's immediate family was not uncommon, even among the middle-class, in a society where family bonds, however extended, were very strong. Narayan was brought to Madras as a young child so as to leave his delicate mother to care for the younger children. Narayan's father was in the Government Education Service, a headmaster, likely to be switched from school to school and place to place, sometimes at immense distances. Living with granny was altogether a more suitable and, a much to be preferred arrangement for Narayan. Narayan's uncle was a zealous photographer who made young 9 Narayan constantly pose as his rigid and unblinking model. He was frequently taken together with his friends the monkey, Rama, and the boy Narayan discerned with delight at a marked facial resemblance between himself and the monkey in his uncle's photographs. He hoped that others would detect the likeness too. His grandmother was horrified at the superstition that having his photograph taken shortened the subject's life. Photography, pets the peacock and the monkey were succeeded by a kitten with a bushy tail, a mynah, a green parrot, and a little hairy puppy bought for one rupee from a butler serving in a European house – and above all, the local streets, figured largely in Narayan's early experiences. Whether he walked them as a small boy hand in hand with his uncle, or a little later on his own, sneaking out of the house unnoticed, the streets offered boundless material to this precociously alert observer, nutrition for the imagination, education for the feelings, provocation to wander, as well as reminders of the harshness of life and the proximity of death. Already, the instinct for story telling was starting to form. We can see how this is compounded to sharpness of sight, free play of imagination, curiosity and expressiveness. One day, for example, his uncle marched him along the streets on the way to the shops.