Gender Discrimination (all)
Perhaps the conspicuous theme in all of Devi's works, gender discrimination manifests itslef in a myriad of ways. Her characters lack power within their marriages, are pigeonholed into their social roles of wife and mother, strive for things they cannot have, experience sexual violence, are defined by their bodies, and are castigated and criticized and condemned. They struggle to define who they are against a backdrop of extreme patriarchy, not to mention classism and capitalism. Their status as poor women is doubly problematic; their voices are muted, if not totally absent. A few manage to push against the strictures that bind them, such as Giri, Moyna, and Dopdi, but their fates are still uncertain or, in Dopdi's case, marked by death. If Devi offers any hope for women in postcolonial India, it would be education, but it still seems to be a Sisyphean struggle.
Subalterns (all)
Devi's characters are not members of the elite; rather, they are of low castes and of the Indian tribes. They are the "subalterns," a term used by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci to refer to a group of people "subject to the hegemony of another more powerful class" (Oxford Reference). Devi's women work long hours for wealthy landowners, or find it hard to get education, or join rebels in arms against the ruling elites, or fall prey to their rural community's entrenched superstitions, or are sold off for high bride-prices. They lack power in any conventional sense, and their gender intersects with their social class to further diminish them.
Education (Why-Why Girl)
Moyna is full of questions about the world—both the natural world and the world of class and work and social structure. She is attuned to the unfairness of her lot in life, but she is also hungry to know about fish and the stars. The only way she can be truly satiated is to learn to read and find her answers in books. Then, when she is older, she will become a teacher and pass those answers on to other children and also encourage them to ask questions themselves. Education is thus the ticket to self-knowledge and knowledge about why things are the way they are. It might not always reveal a perfect or even palatable answer, but asking questions both in and out of formal educational settings is a powerful tool.
Marriage (Bayen, Breast-Giver, and Giribala)
Devi does not present marriage in the best light; rather, her stories are filled with marriages in which the husbands use their wives poorly, abandoning, condemning, or destroying them. The husbands know that society has given them all the power, and thusly they wield it as often as they can. Even if used pettily, their power is indisputable. They can sell off daughters, abandon a wife with cancer, or declare a wife a witch, and still manage to retain the general regard of the community. And when a woman, such as Giri, decides to leave her husband because he is unscrupulous, greedy, cruel, and capricous, she is the one who comes under censure.
Modernity (Bayen and Breast-Giver)
In "Bayen" Devi skewers the backwardness of the rural community that would condemn Chandi as a witch because of things outside of her control and because she was a woman who defied caste and gender rules. In "Breast-Giver," modernity is a bit more complicated. Devi is critical of the Haldar household's 16th-century mindset in which women are to be impregnated over and over again and Jashoda's value lies fully in her breasts, but she is critical of the modernity embodied by the daughters-in-law when it means cruelly leaving behind anyone who does not have the opportunities they do. It is good that they want to work and sterilize themselves so they do not have to keep bearing their husbands children, but they are callous in their disdain for Jashoda; just because they are "modern" women does not mean they should not be sympathetic to older women like Jashoda who were abused by the patriarchy in ways they were not.
Sexual Violence (Giribala and Draupadi)
One of the most horrific effects of patriarchy is sexual violence. Men view women as objects for their pleasure and their bodies as sites on which to act out their fantasies as well as punishments. Dopdi is raped because she is a tribal rebel who possesses information about the other rebels and raping her is a message; while tribal men might also be tortured, they most likely would not be raped. Giri's daughters are sent away as veritable prostitutes; though we do not know exactly what happens to them, we can guess that they might be victim of assault by their "husbands."
Identity (all)
The women of Devi's stories fall along a spectrum when it comes to identity. Some of them seem to have a very underdeveloped sense of self that is tied almost fully to their roles as wife and mother; some see their once-defined identity crushed by their community and the patriarchy and thus retreat into a shell of their former selves; some do not allow others to dictate their identity and assert their subjectivity even under the most straitened circumstances. The diversity of experience reflects the reality of the woman's condition in postcolonial India.
