Secret Daughter

This text is an except of “Secret Doughter” by Shilpi SOMAYA GOWDA. The idea for her first novel is due to her work in an Indian orphanage. Her novel was translated into 19 languages.

In his text, there are 3 different characters: Kavita, her husband Jasu and the midwife. We can see also the presence of Kavita’s newborn in the room where the scene take place and the name of Kavita’s sister, Rupa in the text.

The paratext we means that the scene takes place in an abandoned hut. We don’t know in which country but since we study about India, we can deduce that the country is India. We see that Kavita birth in an abandoned hut : explicitly, if she birth in an abandoned hut, she’s probably poor.

The first sentence introduces already the tone of the atmosphere (“No one heard my prayers”); This sentence allows to understand that will arrive something terrible in continuation of this text.

In the beginning, we can see the distress of Kavita when she supplicates the midwife to not tell to someone that she just gave a birth, as she was shame about it or she’s scared about what might happen to her child (“Don’t tell anyone. […] No one, you hear ?”).

When her Husband arrives, he’s very joyful and he believes that he has a boy. So Jasu is pressing to see his child, to see his “little prince” (“his eyes gleaming, “playfully with his hands”, “my little prince […] let me see him!”). There is a miserstanding on the sex of the baby. The reaction of Kavita strengthens the heavy atmosphere because she feels uncomfortable and in danger for her child (“stiffens”, “clutches the baby to her chest”). Its side, Jasu has a aggressive comportment and his tone become shouting (“blackness cloud his eyes”, “shouts”) and he attack Kativa when he say “Another girl? What is the matter with you?”; From this sentence, we understand what’s the problem : it’s about the sex of the baby. Apriorism, Kativa don’t care about the sex of the newborn but contrarily, not Jusa. His furious about Kativa to give his a girl.

Kavita opposes Jusa and refuses to give up her child to Jusa (“I will not let you to take her”). She knows at this moment if he takes her, she never ever see her child. She doesn’t want to lost her. But she’s not afraid by his husband and Jusa was bewilderment because it was the first time what his wife speak with defiance to someone, let alone him (She has never spoken to anyone, let alone her husband, with such defiance”). Kativa is determined.

But the Jasu’s reason to abandon his child is not due to him but to his poor situation and the dowry tradition in India (with this passage we can confirm the country). In the dowry tradition, the family of the wife-to-be gives a “dowry” or gift to the future husband’s family on marriage. The gift is supposedly given as compensation to the groom’s parents for the cost educating of their son. If after the marriage the woman’s family does not keep its promise, the bride is subject to torture, and sometimes even killed. Jasu explain, certainly again, that they can’t have a girl because they are a poor family, they can’t give a dowry, so they can’t to have a girl and need a boy to help us in the fields (“we can’t keep this baby. We need a boy to help us in the fields. […] we can hardly afford one child […]. My cousin’s daughter is […] still not married,

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