With reference to RK Narayan's short story "A Horse and Two Goats", describe the rural life and the position of women in village as depicted in the story.
Answers
Answer:
Although women do not figure prominently in Narayan’s story, Muni’s relationship with his wife is the central pivot around which the author explores the issue of relationships between men and women. Although women in the story are clearly subordinate to men and men often engage in misogynistic commentary regarding the women in their lives, Narayan gives readers a subtle sense that, despite all this, women have more authority than is apparent at first glance. Narayan portrays a complex reality underneath the surface of his society’s patriarchal norms, suggesting that, regardless of the dictates of society, men and women forge their own relationships in accordance with their own personalities and priorities, and women, despite their subordinate status in society, nevertheless exercise power and authority.
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Answer:
A Horse and Two Goats Synopsis and Important Questions
Synopsis
‘A Horse and Two Goats’ is a short story written by R.K. Narayan set in one of the tiniest villages in India, Kritam. R.K. Narayan is most known for his early Indian writing in English. This short story has used the simplest of settings and displays an amusing story. Narayan has used the language barrier to craft situational comedy. It is a fun story with a lot of humour yet conveying a social message with aspects to the difference in the life of a villager and a foreigner.
Muni is the protagonist of the story. He used to be an affluent cattle grazer. He owned forty sheep and goats. He took them grazing every day a couple of miles from his house and brought them back at sunset. His fortunes declined, and presently, he is left with two goats. These goats are too skinny to either sell or eat. Muni’s wife gave him breakfast and lunch in the past, but that is history now. He has no children. The only source of income for him and his wife was the occasional jobs that his wife got at the Big House. The Big House was the only house in the village built with bricks and cement. Muni’s wife would either sweep or scrub or grind corn in the Big House and earn some money.
One day Muni managed to get six drumsticks. Triumphantly, he carried it to his wife hoping to eat it with sauce. His wife could not fulfil his desire as they did not have the necessary food items to prepare the sauce. Muni went to the local shop to get the food items on credit. He placed a request to the shopkeeper for the food items, but the shopkeeper paid no attention to him. On the contrary, Muni was humiliated by the shopkeeper and was not given any item after being reminded of the previous unpaid credit. Muni was dismal and returned. His wife asked him to fast till evening as she could not fetch him anything to eat.
The nostalgia of Muni’s past days hit him and he remembers the time when the famous butcher from the town used to come. They would chew betel leaves and tobacco or drink some bhang undisturbed by wives or well-wishers. As he reached the outskirts, he left his goats to graze and sat at the pedestal of the statue of a horse for the rest of the day. He sat there watching lorries and buses and felt connected to the larger world.