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  • The Weed - An Appraisal

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    Dr. Hasinus Sultan
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    The story "The Weed" by Amrita Pritam deals with superstitions in rural Indian society, particularly regarding a weed. It focuses on the character Angoori, a newlywed who was subjected to an arranged marriage at a young age without choice or prior knowledge of her husband. Angoori comes from a society where women are denied education, and superstition holds that reading is a sin for village women. By the end of the story, Angoori is vulnerable to the allure of the weed, though her affection for another suggests an instinctive protest against the oppressive marriage system that forced her into an elderly widower's home against her will.

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    THE WEED_AN APPRAISAL

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    The story "The Weed" by Amrita Pritam deals with superstitions in rural Indian society, particularly regarding a weed. It focuses on the character Angoori, a newlywed who was subjected to an arranged marriage at a young age without choice or prior knowledge of her husband. Angoori comes from a society where women are denied education, and superstition holds that reading is a sin for village women. By the end of the story, Angoori is vulnerable to the allure of the weed, though her affection for another suggests an instinctive protest against the oppressive marriage system that forced her into an elderly widower's home against her will.

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    5K views1 page

    The Weed - An Appraisal

    Uploaded by

    Dr. Hasinus Sultan
    The story "The Weed" by Amrita Pritam deals with superstitions in rural Indian society, particularly regarding a weed. It focuses on the character Angoori, a newlywed who was subjected to an arranged marriage at a young age without choice or prior knowledge of her husband. Angoori comes from a society where women are denied education, and superstition holds that reading is a sin for village women. By the end of the story, Angoori is vulnerable to the allure of the weed, though her affection for another suggests an instinctive protest against the oppressive marriage system that forced her into an elderly widower's home against her will.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
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    THE WEED: AN APPRAISAL

    Originally written in Punjabi, ‘The Weed’ is a compelling short story by Amrita Pritam.
    It deals in the main with the superstition associated with the weed in a rural Indian society. While
    dealing with the popular superstition attached to the weed, the writer has thrown interesting
    sidelights on the scourge of gender discrimination rooted deep in that very society.
    Angoori, who is known to the writer as a newly wed bride, is the principal character of
    the story. It is through Angoori’s conversation with the writer that the different aspects of the
    society in question come to the surface. Angoori lives in a society where child marriage is still a
    painful reality. She herself had to enter her conjugal life at a very tender age. What is more, she
    had no chance at all to see her would-be husband since hers was an arranged marriage. In her
    society, love-marriage is still looked askance at, and love is said to be the sinful result of the
    effect the weed on the simple village girls.
    Angoori comes from a society where education is the exclusive prerogative of the men
    folk. As a member of her own community, Angoori had no opportunity to read and write. But that
    is not all. Superstition has it that reading for village women is a sin. Angoori also laps this
    superstition up without any question. Thus, she is socialized in such a society as has never taught
    her to inquire whether what is said to be true is really so.
    Towards the end of the story, Angoori is also seen vulnerable to the charm of the weed.
    But her natural affection for Ram Tara is in truth her instinctive protest against the prevailing
    marriage system of her society. In an essentially male-dominated society, she was compelled to
    marry the aged widower Prabhati, who was much less than a match for her.
    To conclude, the title of the story ‘The Weed’ as such means a plant of no utility growing
    lavishly in an unwanted place. But, in Amrita Pritam’s story, it is something that suppresses the
    rational faculty of the naïve villagers. The weed that charms Angoori appears to be the magical
    figment of her imagination. To our mind, however, it is only a misnomer for her flesh and blood –
    her basic human weaknesses.

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