Ice Candy Man: Theme of War and Patriarchy

1. By: Maria Aleem
&
Anam Sultana
CONCEPT OF
WAR AND
PATRIARCHY
IN ICE CANDY
MAN

2. FEMINISM

3. • Feminism is a cultural, political and
intellectual movement.
• It recognizes the fact of oppression of
women
• It is the belief and aim that women should
have the same rights and opportunities as
men
• Themes explored in feminism include
discrimination, stereotyping,
objectification, oppression and patriarchy.

4. Simon de Beauvoir says:
“Man is defined as a human
being and a woman as a female –
whenever she behaves as a human
being, she is said to imitate male.”

5. In her novel The Pakistani Bride, Sidhwa
depicts poignantly the exploitation of
women in patriarchal society as,
“Women the world over, through the
ages, asked to be murdered, raped,
exploited, enslaved, to get
importunately impregnated, beaten
up, bullied and disinherited. It was an
immutable Law of nature.” (Page,
226).

7. ICE CANDY MAN

8. • significant testament of a gynocentric view
of reality
• feminine psyche and experiences are
presented with a unique freshness
• Sidhwa turns the female protagonists into
the moral center
• male characters either remain passive or
indulge in violence.
• The female characters in Ice candy-Man
pulsate with a will and life of their own.

9. Theme of Patriarchy
• Ice-Candy-Man was published in America
under the title of Cracking India in 1991
• potent voice among the modern feminist
writers
• The only Parsee woman to write on the
theme of partition
• focuses attention on the rapidly changing
scenario in her Parsee polity and culture

10. • Deals with the partition crisis, the
Parsee milieu, and the problems of
Asian women and theme of
marriage.
• This novel highlights feminist
concerns about women’s issues,
particularly their experience of
victimization and suppression
within patriarchal societies

11. • Its protagonists are mostly women
and each of them represents a way
of life that either colludes with the
premises of patriarchy or else
challenges the patriarchal
repressiveness in the most
unassuming manner.

12. CHARACTERIZATION

13. • Ice-Candy-man presents female psyche
• The female characters are aware and
very much confident of their
individuality like Lenny, her ayah
Shanta, her mother and god mother
• In a patriarchal society all the good
qualities are associated with males and
all the weakness is with female but in
Ice Candy man all the strong qualities
are associated with female

14. Lenny

15. • Lenny, the narrator in Ice-Candy-Man
is also the center of the novel,
retaining her independent identity in
diverse situations.
• Lenny is the daughter of a Parsee
gentleman and she suffers from a limp
in one leg. She lives in a close and
compressed world.

16. • She is a keen observer. Her physical
movement is restricted due to her
infirmity. It is only her Hindu Ayah
Shanta who is her true companion.
When Shanta is abducted, she feels
herself Ayahless and alone in the
world.

18. • The lameness of the narrator –
protagonist is suggestive of handicap, a
woman creative writer faces, but when she
decides to wield the pen, because writing
is an intellectual exercise, is considered a
male bastion, outside the routine of
women ; submissive domesticity. Her
recuperation symbolizes the over –
coming of the constraint on the
intellectual activity of writing by Bapsi
Sidhwa

19. • By making Lenny the narrator of the
novel, the novelist lends weight and
validity to the feminine perspective on the
nature of surrounding reality.
• In the novel Lenny’s cousin remains
cousin throughout the novel without any
identity. It shows equality of gender.
Lenny is strong enough and wise that she
doesn’t allow him to take advantage of her
disability who wanted to manipulate her
sexually but could not.

20. Shanta (Ayah)

21. A major part of the novel’s discussion is cent
red on Lenny’s Ayah Shanta. She is a Hindu
girl of eighteen and everything about her is
also eighteen years old. Though she is
employed with considerate masters, her
condition is that of an unprotected girl
whom everybody treats only as a sex object.
Looking at Ayah, Lenny also becomes
conscious of her sexuality.( pg. #3)

22. • Ayah is a flame of sensuous pleasure
• She is fully aware of her sexual charm and
uses it without any inhibition to fulfill her
desires.
• She is so powerful that no admirer can
afford her anger.
• Flirtatious but aware that no one can
advantage of her
• Loyal to the family she serves and
extremely protective of Lenny

23. • Later on she is abducted, raped and
became the mistress of Ice candy man
who makes her a dancing girl and forces
her to change her religion
• Ayah remains firm and decisive and gets
away as soon as she gets a chance.

25. • Lenny’s mother , faithful and submissive
• Lenny’s mother and aunt play heroic role
of fighting for the lives and properties of
Hindus (ref to Train to Pakistan)
• God mother, whose character is very
close to protagonist, has extreme love for
ayah, deals with ice candy man and
rescues her.

26. Theme of War
• It is worth noting that Bapsi Sidhwa
herself was a young girl in Lahore in the
years leading up to Partition and witnessed
the historical events of the time.
• Through the first-person account of a
seven-year old girl, Lenny, we feel the
unease and insecurity experienced by this
ethnic and religious minority group –the
Parsis. (69)

27. • different communities and religions lived
in peace and harmony socially, culturally
and religiously. people belonging to
different communities interact with each
other on a normal, human level and live
like friends. (p. 19)

29. • Sidhwa uses Hindu Ayah Shanta as a
symbol for India. Sidhwa makes the
Muslim protagonist, Ice Candy Man,
disgrace, shame, humiliate and ruin Shanta
(India). Led by Ice Candy Man, the
Muslims abduct and manhandle Ayah
(India) while she is in a condition of
shock and trauma at the hands of her one
time lover (183).

30. • Sidhwa associates Partition with evil and
destruction. (135)

31. Ice Candy Man depicts the greatest migration
in the human history as a result and price of
the Partition. Sidhwa is sad that as a result of
population exchange, Lahore is stripped off
its diversity and variety in addition to the
emotional vacuum created by this
phenomenon (175).

33. Sidhwa projects yet another price of Partition
in the form of train massacres. She presents
the train massacres as the most horrible
association of the Partition of India for
dwellers in Punjab. The Muslim protagonist
of Ice Candy Man is expecting relatives from
Gurdaspur, instead he meets with mutilated
bodies and the bags full of breasts cut off
from Muslim women (149).

34. She uses the fire as symbol. Both Hindus and
Muslims in equal proportion contribute to the
fires of Partition. The fires ignited by the Partition
spare nothing, the buildings, the human beings,
the history, the heritage, the relationships, the
humanity and human values; all are eaten up and
consumed by the fires of the Partition. Either part
(India and Pakistan), is left poor and stripped off
its past. She portrays the Partition as a human
tragedy on an unprecedented level and proportion
(p. 137, 139).

35. Conclusion
The analysis of the political leadership during
the Partition days by Sidhwa is subjective and
at times seems even prejudiced. Despite it,
the final message of the novel is clear and
unambiguous. It rejects the two nation theory
and suggests that religious, social and cultural
differences are artificially created and
exploited by unscrupulous people. She also
suggests that power should be used for the
good of the people and to suppress the evil.

37. Sidhwa is conscious of the collective loss
suffered by the Hindus and the Muslims in
the form of their lives, homes, dreams and
above all hopes for future, as a price of the
Partition.

38. In her interview with Julie Rajan, she
comments on the main theme of Ice-Candy-
Man:
I was just attempting to write the story of
what religious hatred and violence can do
to people and how close evil is to the
nature of man. Under normal
circumstances people can be quite
ordinary and harmless; but once the mob
mentality takes over, evil surfaces. Evil is
very close to the surface of man.

39. In this novel, Sidhwa projects through
Lenny’s mother that women should have a
purpose in life besides domesticity which
should be developed by them to the best of
their abilities.
Hence, the novel ends on a positive
note. Women strive to come out of their
plight and finally move forward from their
degraded and tormented state to start their
lives a fresh.

40. Thank You