Confessional Elements In Kamala Das's Poetry

CONFESSIONAL ELEMENT IN KAMALA DAS’S POETRY
Dr. Dibyajyoti Likharu
Assistant Professor, Deptt. of English
Howraghat College, Karbi- Anglong, Assam
Email: [e-mail]

ABSTRACT:
Kamala Das is one of prominent literary figure in Indian writing in English. Her poetic output is contained in four volumes of poems which include “Summer in Calcutta”, “The Descendants”, “The Old Playhouse and Other Poems” and “Stranger Time”. Problems of women are the central theme in most of her poems. Kamala Das’s poetry mainly deals with love, its betrayal and the consequent anguish. With regard to her sexual matters all her readers sympathetically responded to her frankness. All of her early poetry reflected fierce originality, bold images, exploration of female sexuality and intensely personal note. This research paper is an attempt to explore the confessional elements in her poetry.
Keywords: Patriarchy, Women, Problems, Love, Betrayal, Anguish etc.

So, it won’t be an exaggeration to label her poems as the poetry of protest. Kamala Das was severely wounded by the patriarchal set up of the society ever since from her childhood which lead to her unhappy and dissatisfied life. She is even marred off at the age of thirteen to a cousin who was a very busy employee could not provide time to his wife. She exposes her displeasure about her parents in her book My Story, where she describes her “father was an autocrat” (91) and her mother “vague and indifferent” (20). She was considered by her parents “a burden and responsibility and she was given in marriage to a relative when she was only a school girl (82). Hence her parents compelled her to become a premature wife as well as mother. In one of her important poem she describes all such activities