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Farmer's Wife

The poem 'The Farmer's Wife' by Volga explores the emotional turmoil of a farmer's widow after her husband's suicide due to debt. It highlights her cynical attitude towards his act, viewing it as cowardice, and emphasizes the plight of women left behind in such situations, who must shoulder the burdens of survival and family care. The poem critiques societal norms regarding gender roles and calls for attention to the struggles of farmers' families, particularly the widows who face dire circumstances after such tragedies.

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Nithya Arunkumar
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7 views5 pages

Farmer's Wife

The poem 'The Farmer's Wife' by Volga explores the emotional turmoil of a farmer's widow after her husband's suicide due to debt. It highlights her cynical attitude towards his act, viewing it as cowardice, and emphasizes the plight of women left behind in such situations, who must shoulder the burdens of survival and family care. The poem critiques societal norms regarding gender roles and calls for attention to the struggles of farmers' families, particularly the widows who face dire circumstances after such tragedies.

Uploaded by

Nithya Arunkumar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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THE FARMER'S WIFE

Many times the tone suggests the attitude of the


speaker. What kind of attitudes are suggested by the
words 'virtuous', 'poor sinner', 'he is but a man', 'what of
this?', Why is this?'
A well known Telugu writer P Lalita Kumari whose pen
name is Volga has been successful in bringing out the
plight of a farmer’s family after he committed suicide.
The poem reflects on the Farmer’s wife lamenting over
the death of her husband.The attitude of the speaker is
cynical. She cannot accept her husband's act of
cowardice. She uses the word 'virtuous' ironically. She
mocks at the possibility of all praising the farmer as a
man of dignity who couldn't bear the idea of taking
loans from others. It is customary for all of us to praise
the dead and so the farmer would get nothing but
sympathy. However, the speaker considers his act
cowardly. She says ironically that she will be taken as a
'poor sinner' because she is still alive when her virtuous
husband has become a martyr.
She is justifiably angry that the 'man' of the house has
turned out to be a coward. The man who abused her
because of his advantage of being 'but a man' in a
patriarchal society, has left her behind to do the work of
a man, that is, earning a living for the sake of the four
children. The woman rightly points out that the farmer
should have had the strength of character to ask the
questions, 'What of this?' and 'Why is this?' and fought
against the odds in life to come out of difficulty. But he
showed no such courage and left his family behind in
dire straits to fend for themselves.

Question 2.
What kind of questions does the poem raise about the
plight of farmers' widows? Do you think that these
questions are only addressed to the speaker's dead
husband?
Answer:
The poem 'The Farmer's Wife' by the Volga takes up the
contemporary problem of many a farmer committing
suicide unable to repay the debt taken. It takes a
refreshingly different angle of perceiving the problem
from the farmer's wife's angle. The poem is an eye-
opener because generally when we hear or read about
the acts of suicide, we think only about the tragic plight
of the farmer who was pushed into the act of
committing suicide.
While it is true that the state of the farmer deserves our
sympathy, it is equally true that not many of us view the
problem from the angle of the family that is left behind.
The fact remains that the family would continue to be in
the state of insolvency and such a family would be in
the worst state of affairs because the so-called 'man of
the
house' is dead and the family still has no source of
income. The widow of the farmer or any other person
who is left behind to shoulder the onus is in a very
pitiable condition indeed! Hence, the aim of the poem is
not to single out one case of suicide,but to throw light
on a social problem which needs government
intervention to be resolved.
Question 3.
What series of contrasts does the speaker draw
between herself and her husband?
Answer:
The speaker says that her husband was virtuous, but
she is a sinner, and he is dead while she is alive. There
is irony in this series of contrasts because the farmer,
unable to bear the shame, committed suicide without
wondering what would be the plight of his wife, left
behind to face the creditors.
Question 4.
What expressions in the poem bring out the contrast
between the speaker and her husband's plight? What
difference does this indicate? Answer:
Being a man, the farmer was not used to being
subservient to others. He could not bear the idea of
bending his head or stretching his hand in front of the
creditors. But, being a woman, the farmer's wife was
used to obedience and harsh treatment and could pull
on even when insulted and deprived. Moreover, being a
woman, her motherly instinct made it impossible for her
to leave her children behind at the mercy of fate.
Though the prospect of bringing up four children in the
face of stark poverty is daunting, she faces the
challenge and doesn't take recourse to the easier
escape route of suicide. Thus we see that the difference
between the man and the woman lies in the way men
and women are generally treated in society and the way
in which men treat women at home. But the saving
grace is the fact that the injustice meted out to women
in society and at home makes them strong and gives
them the courage to 'embrace life and struggle for life.
Question 6.
What memories of her husband trouble her now?
OR
How does the farmer's wife lament over the death of her
husband?
OR
What are the memories of her husband that haunt the
farmer's wife?
Answer:
The woman was ill-treated by her husband in his
drunken state. He had abused her both physically and
verbally when he was alive. But all this was accepted by
the woman because society had made her believe that a
man had the right to rule over his wife and even abuse
her when displeased as he was the master who went out
into the world while she was to deal with family
problems. But this idea of the man gets beaten when
the farmer is unable to withstand the pressure and
commits suicide. Now, the woman has to shoulder the
responsibility of both work and home. Naturally, the
woman has all negative memories of the man who did
no justice to her when alive and did a greater injustice
to her by embracing death. The poet wants to point out
that while all of us sympathise with the man who was
driven to commit suicide, the plight of the woman who
has to fend for herself is worse than that of the man
who is dead and thereby free of all problems.

Question 7.
What does the phrase 'harvest of my womb' suggest?
Why is their plight compared to 'worm-eaten cotton
pod'?
Answer:
The phrase 'harvest of my womb' refers to the four
children the woman has borne. Just as the field
produces the crop and has the harvest, the woman has
produced children. If she, like her husband, takes the
easier way out by committing suicide, the children will
be left behind like the 'worm-eaten cotton pod.' The
woman makes it clear that if the children do not have
the parent figure to nourish them they would be like the
unripe cotton pods. They cannot reach their mature
stage of growth. The poet deliberately uses the simile
which compares the orphaned children to worm- eaten
cotton pod because it was in cotton-growing areas that
the highest number of farmers.
8.To what condition had her husband's act of committing
suicide pushed her?
Answer:
Her husband's act of committing suicide has pushed her
to a state which is worse than death. The woman uses
the word 'death blow' to show that the death blow of
poison which put an end to the farmer's life is easier
than the death blow that the wife has to experience in
terms of money, dignity and complexity of bringing up
the children without any support. suicide.

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