Critical Analysis:
Introduction:
The poem entitled “Love Poem For A Wife” appeared in Ramanujan's second anthology, ‘Relations; Poems.” It is an autobiographical and confessional poem like most of the poems of A. K. Ramanujan. The poem concludes with the problematic uncertainty, with which it begins, implying that the speaker's desire to enter another life is brought with disillusionment. The ironic twist at the end of the poem confirms the stasis underlying the relationship as also the persisting acrimony and jealousy that have been responsible for the speaker's own emotional aridity. The element of dramatic surprise, latent in self involuntary betrayal of its real feeling is a prominent feature of the poem.
The poet living in U.S.A. seeks emotional fulfilment in this poem. Family is the central metaphor in this poem. He stages a powerful psychic drama through a 'you and I' drama. There is crisscross of memories which adequately conveys the intensity of the poet's yearning for emotional fulfilment in family relationship. The family figures and relationship become the signs and symbols for the expressions of the poet's emotions.
An Account of Poet's Married Life:
The poem is an account of the speaker's married life and the reasons which have led to the failure of his marriage, particularly the worsening of the conjugal situation with the passing of the years. The poet broods over the emotional alienation with his wife, with whom he was married long ago. So, he could not find emotional fulfilment with his wife, which gives him pain. According to the poet the main cause of this alienation is that they could not share experiences since childhood onward. The early years of life are the formative years. Husband and wife cannot emotionally understand each other, unless they live together childhood onward.
Thought-Content:
The speaker (the poet) tells his wife that the reason for the disharmony, which has been a feature of their married life, is that they had not been familiar with each other as children and had therefore not, shared each other's experiences as children. The disharmony had deepened towards the end of their years for the same reason. The speaker's father has been dead for the past several years and, so far as the wife's father is concerned, the old man is no longer irritable but has softened in his temper. The speaker's meeting her father would therefore serve no purpose now. They had no knowledge of each other's family background and the nature of parents. When the cousins of the speaker and his wife happened to meet, they sat down to gossip, while sipping brandy and chewing cashew-nuts. At these meetings, the wife would suddenly become curious to know the details of her husband's past life, while the husband envied his wife for her village dog-ride and for having seven crazy aunts. He was sorry as he could not share these thrilling experiences with her. She wanted to know how the poet looked in childhood from the family album and from the anecdotes told to her by the members of his family. She formed the impression that the poet could achieve anything unique in life due to Fate or God's Providence; otherwise he was a born fool, not capable of doing anything great or unique. The knowledge of his wife's affair with a Muslim boy made the poet jealous and unhappy.
The poet then comes to the present and remembers how she and her brother James started a drag out fight regarding the location of a bathroom in their grandfather's house in Alleppey. In this discussion he and his sister-in-law were ignored.
The poet then goes on to say that sharing of childhood experience is essential for achieving emotional integration in material life. He ironically suggests two alternatives. First, people may follow the example of Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, who married her own brother and thus they shared each other's childhood experience. It was a common social practice in ancient Egypt. Secondly, they may follow the custom of child marriage.
Poet's Pining for Two Alternatives:
The poet says that his wife and he could have had a successful marriage if he had married his own sister because then he could have shared his childhood with her, while his marriage to his present wife had failed because he had not shared his childhood experiences with her. In this respect, the ancient Egyptians were wise because the ancient Egyptian heir to the throne were under traditional obligation to marry their sisters. Another way in which the speaker's marriage could have proved a success was that his mother had, during her pregnancy, given a promise to some other pregnant woman that, in case she gave birth to a son and the other woman gave birth to a daughter, the boy and girl would in due course be married to each other because in that way also the newly born boy and girl would have been to share their childhood experience by being brought up by their mothers in close proximity to each other.
Humour, Wit and Irony:
This poem shows Ramanujan's gifts of humour, wit and irony. The title itself is ironical because it is not a love-poem which Ramanujan has written. The poem exposes the deficiencies, shortcomings, and faults of the woman whom he has married. The speaker does not praise himself by any means. He speaks about himself also in a disparaging tone, but his irony and wit are directed chiefly against his wife and against his wife's father. The speaker ridicules his wife for her talking a lot about her seven crazy aunts who probably did not exist at all. He ridicules her for having had dates with a Muslim boy and for coming home late at night and telling her father that there was nothing at all between them. Further he ridicules her for getting into a meaningless discussion with her brother James as to where precisely the bathroom was situated in her grandfather's house in Alleppey. He also ridicules her for having offered her family heirlooms and her husband's earnings to James if she lost the bet.
Poet's Wife's Father, the Subject of Mockery:
Poet's wife's father is also a subject laughing. This father used to wait for his daughter till late in the night because her daughter used to spend her evenings and nights with her boy-friends particularly with Muslim boy. Her father used to walk in the balcony to and fro under tension while waiting his daughter. He used to smoke many cigars to lessen the burden of tension. But now he says that there was no wickedness in remembering one's past misdeeds.
Speaker's Ridiculing Himself and His Father:
The speaker ridicules himself for the silly, sheepish look which appeared on his face when he showed his wife the picture of his father and mother on their wedding day. His father wore a turban and his mother wore silver rings on her toes. He also ridicules himself by saying that some time ago he had become a unique person and that this fact had been recorded by his late father in his diary.
He speaks about his father's noisy bathing in the course of which the father used to rub the soap on his back with a lot of zest and vigour. He also ridicules his father for the way in which he maintained a Smilesian diary.
Two Witty Turns for Justifying His Arguments:
The speaker presents two witty turns in order to justify his arguments. He points out two customs. At first he refers the custom founded by the ancient Egyptians. According to their custom the heir to the throne should marry his own sister because the marriage was then sure to prove successful because the prince and his sister would be able to share their childhood experiences. Secondly, he refers Hindu custom in which some Hindu mothers betrothed their sons and daughters even before they were born.
Presenting Extreme Need to Overcome the Alienation:
The nostalgia of the speaker in the poem for his wife's unshared childhood springs from his need to overcome the alienation which keeps them apart at the end of years. But the crisscross of memories, the enactment of the drama of another's past in one's own consciousness, only serves to accentuate the narrow limits in which the relationship appears to survive with its explosive insecurities and tensions.
Poet's Impeding the Intended Development of Theme:
The intended development of the theme is artfully thwarted by the speaker when, in the course of his attempt to guess the causes of his emotional separation from his wife, he mentions her quarrels with him about family matters and involving relatives on both sides—his family album; her ancestral home; his father; her father; her brother; his sister-in-law; his sheep mouth look while showing her the picture of his parents on their wedding-day; her love-affair with a Muslim boy etc.
Nostalgia in the Poem:
This is personal, autobiographical, and partially nostalgic poem. In it, the speaker attributes the increasing unhappiness of his married life with his wife to their unshared childhood. There is a bit of nostalgia in the lines in which the poet says that his wife cannot meet his father who has been dead for some years, and that he cannot meet her father who has lately lost ill-temper and mellowed. He then recalls the occasions when his wife used suddenly to grow nostalgic for his past, and he used to envy her village dog-ride and the mythology of her seven crazy aunts. Towards the end of the poem he, somewhat wistfully, says that Egyptians did the right thing by making it obligatory for the heirs to the throne to marry their sisters, adding that the Hindu custom of betrothing boys and girls even before they are born is not a bad one.
Felicities of Word and Phrase:
Ramanujan has received much praise for his craftsmanship, and rightly so. He is certainly one of the greatest masters of the English language among the Indo-Anglian poets. He ranks very high among the Indo-Anglian poets for his use of the English language to express himself. He has shown a rare originality in the use of words, and he has shown an extraordinary talent for phrase-making. In this poem we have the following phrases which impress us greatly: the wife's father has 'gone irrevocable in age'; the wife and her brother start 'one of your old drag- out fights'; and 'Sister-in-law and I were blank cut-outs fitted to our respective slots in a poet room'.