A Woman Called Giribala - Literary Analysis Essay

Giribala is a very carefully researched and unique work of Mahasweta Devi.

Giribala presents the plight of a village woman whose daughters are trafficked by their own

father, to pay for the house he dreams of building. Giribala is a protagonist, portrayed as a

woman of strong decision and well. She is a round and complex character who possesses

multiple traits. Though she is a woman of determination her decisions are often driven by

the society or the culture around her. She is introduced as a weak character at the very

beginning in the paragraph 1 line 2 "Nobody ever thought that she could think on her

own, let alone act on her own thought."

Giribala has embraced her fate by marrying a man who is no-good and does not

have his own house. If her culture had allowed her she might have raised her voice and

stood against this injustice and freed herself from the painful journey of her life. But she

is a victim of the hollow cultural belief's which live by the saying "A daughter born, To

husband or death, She's already gone."

After getting married she does not waste her time cursing her fate but rather rises

each time with a hope of a better tomorrow. She is a very hard-working woman who soon

gets adjusted in her new surroundings and starts working at babu's place having a dream

of building a house of her own. She is never afraid of doing hard work and does not want

to seek help from anyone, not even her father. In paragraph 45 after being asked by her

husband on get some bamboo from her father, she says "We'll both work on the

Panchayat road and have our home. We'll save some money by working harder." It

shows that she is not greedy but dutiful.

She is definitely a thoughtful woman who understands what is good for herself

and her children. This trait of her character comes to the fore front when she makes a

decision to get herself sterilize. She does not care about the beating from her husband,

Aluchand who does not hesitate a little in showing his disappointment on his wife's

action. Another incident which shows how foresighted she is becomes clear in paragraph

47 where she shows her concern for her daughter's marriage and secures her jewelry for

her in Line 7 "Bela was now ten, and growing like a weed in the rainy season. Giri

would need the silver to get her married someday soon."

She is a loving mother who does all the right things for her children. She works

too hard and does not bother about her own health. Her mother makes an observation on

her appearance in paragraph 74 line 9 "she lamented about what the marriage had done to

her abundant hair, ho wit had tarnished her bright complexion, ruined her abundant hair

and made her collarbones stick out." She loves her children so much that she dreams of

them going to school one day. Her love for her first daughter is very special which

shattered her when she gets the news that Bela is sold. Giribala sees Bela's shadow in her

second daughter and her grief eats her up from the inside. She gets cautious after this and

takes initiative by starting her hunt of finding a good match for Pori.

Despite being a woman of virtues her character has some unavoidable flaws. She

knows her husband is a puppet in the hands of Mohan who is a master mind behind all

the ruins brought to her and her daughter. She trusts Aulchand once again in the matter of

Pori's marriage. She leaves her husband, and with the tears of pain she regrets that she

did not do this before.

In the conclusion we can say that Giribala is a woman of strong determination and

hope. After being married to Aulchand she just keeps hoping for a house, a better

tomorrow. She never looses her hope for her daughter who has been sold by her own

father in lieu of extra money to build the house. A woman who only desired for a house

of her own and a mother who always wanted good to come to her children, gets nothing

only regrets for her late action of leaving the house. She knew that she was saying good-

bye to a society which turned a blind eye to her plight and blamed her for leaving her

husband. The society which treated the women nothing more than an object relieved

itself by arriving at the conclusion in paragraph 178 line 5 "Now they all felt certain that

the really bad one was not Aulchand, but Giribala."