Concurrent with the theme of difficult daughters in this novel, is that of education and marriage. Her father, uncle and teacher made sure that this step into modernity was prudent and innocuous. Her head remained modestly bent over her work. No questions, no assertions. The hardly implicit message here underscores the incipient irony of this situation.
Female education is acceptable by ale mentors.
Education was seen to be only another means to an end, i.e., marriage. Manju Kapur uses this plot device to skillfully introduce historical accounts of the satyagraha movement and the important role played by women in supporting and furling the revolutionary and patriotic cause of the freedom fighters. Kapur s descriptive scenes of the Punjabi Women s Student Conference on the rainy cold January day in Lahore, are brilliant and inspiring, and the atmosphere authentically imagined from newspaper accounts of similar conventions. The idealism and zeal of the women speakers, Virmati s fiery roommate, Swarn Lata among them, are electrifying even at this historic distance, and provide a positive contrast to the ways in which the limitations on female development imposed by patriarchal family structure have been internalized by Virmati and prevent her from desiring radical change. Kapur is most successful in not creating stereotypes and one-dimensional characters, nor does she seek to allegorize the fate of a few by the history of a many.