The Henna Artist

“My ladies had changed nothing but the reasons for their pretense. If I had learned anything from them, it was this: only a fool lives in water and remains an enemy of the crocodile.”

Lakshmi notes that her clients now scorn the British, whom they used to admire. Throughout the novel, Jaipur socialites are depicted as superficial status-seekers. While they curry favor with those in power, Lakshmi is doing exactly the same thing by currying favor with them.

“I wanted more, always, for what my hands could accomplish, what my wits could achieve—more than my parents had thought possible.”

This passage develops the theme of The Role of Women in Traditional Society. Lakshmi is well aware of her own ambitious nature. Unlike everyone else in her world, she takes her aspirations seriously. Sadly, her parents believed the Indian tradition that no woman is capable of a self-directed life.

“To an Indian man, a son—or daughter—was proof of his virility. It meant he could take his proud and rightful place in the legions of men who would carry the next generation forward.”

Lakshmi notes the reason why Indian men insist that their wives bear many children. This attempt to shore up a flagging masculine identity has disastrous consequences for the generation that these men are so proud to father. Their wives suffer from the burden of multiple pregnancies while their too-numerous children starve. This reinforces Lakshmi’s conviction in Motherhood as a Personal Choice.

“But our father was fervent in his beliefs; I admired him for that. He was committed to his ideals. Unfortunately, high ideals came with a price.”

Lakshmi recalls that her father lost his teaching post for standing up to the British during the colonial era. The repercussions have made her doubly cautious of standing up to her rich clientele. For a woman who prides herself on independence, Lakshmi is willing to grovel to maintain it.

“How can I say no to these women, bheti? Their land is dry. Their granaries are committed to the zamindar for taxes. They cannot feed the little ones waiting for them at home. They have no one else to turn to.”

Lakshmi’s mother-in-law explains why she makes abortifacients to end pregnancies. Her words succinctly describe the plight of women forced to have unwanted children in a culture that values big families but gives no thought to how to support them. This female perspective on the situation contrasts strongly with an earlier quote about male virility.

“It pleased me that my sister’s beauty had not gone unnoticed by one of my favorite customers. But I worried. Would her curiosity go unchecked? Her impulsiveness? I shook my head; I was being far too Victorian.”

Lakshmi fails to fully realize the irony of her behavior. She found her own upbringing so stifling that she ran away from it. After Radha does the same thing, Lakshmi plays the traditional role of the strait-laced big sister and tries to make her sister conform to social expectations.

“We could so easily be replaced, but Sheela would always be the princess of this kingdom. I’d never had to teach Malik that; he understood the nuances of class and caste instinctively. He would never have compromised us.”

Lakshmi makes this comment after stopping Radha from hurling a rock at Sheela. The henna artist’s words reveal how precarious her livelihood is. Within the social order of Jaipur, her future success depends on pleasing the wealthy. That includes accepting insults from spoiled girls like Sheela.

“In India, individual shame did not exist. Humiliation spread, as easily as oil on wax paper, to the entire family, even to distant cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews. The rumormongers made sure of that.”

This quote helps the reader to understand Lakshmi’s obsession with her house. Through it, she hopes to make amends to her parents for the shame they suffered after her flight. The destructive power of gossip is also highlighted here. A sin might be forgotten if it wasn’t continuously being stoked by fresh rumors.

“My reputation relied on Parvati Singh’s word. Without her approval, I would get no work for henna, mandala designs or marriage commissions.”

Like the preceding quote, this one highlights the importance of word-of-mouth in Indian culture. It can ruin or make a reputation. Lakshmi is paranoid about losing hers because it depends on maintaining the goodwill of a single woman. This goodwill is retracted after Radha’s affair with Parvati’s son.

“I hadn’t tried to get to know her. Not really. To be close to her made me feel my guilt more acutely, and I hadn’t wanted that.”

This quote illuminates an entirely different explanation for Lakshmi’s brusque behavior toward her little sister. Radha is a living reminder that Lakshmi exposed her parents to shame and humiliation when she left Ajar. Her little sister is the embodiment of her guilt. The price of self-determination for a woman in Indian culture is very high indeed.

“The dowager maharani seemed to have found a sanctuary within her narrow confines. The poor weren’t the only ones imprisoned by their caste.”

While the novel doesn’t talk about the caste system in India very often, this comment indicates yet another way in which women are restricted. Lakshmi assumes that the maharanis of the palace possessed immense power. However, she finds the dowager to be just as limited in her options as Lakshmi herself.

“I couldn’t believe she was still mad at me about not being able to go to the palace. It was infuriating. I was the older sister, the provider. I set the rules, and she should obey them without question, like a good younger sister should.”

Lakshmi sounds like a traditionalist in this quote. Once again, she fails to recognize the irony of her own attitude. She fought for the right to choose her own future, yet now she wants to enforce unquestioning obedience on Radha.

“I realized that cotton root bark could change a woman’s life: she could choose for herself. That was what I wanted: a life that could fulfill me in a way that children wouldn’t.”

Lakshmi’s view is controversial, not only within traditional Indian culture but in some segments of Western society as well. The novel explains the reasoning behind contraceptives and abortion within the overpopulated country of India. The decision to abort a fetus isn’t taken lightly, but in the restrictive world of Indian culture, it may be a woman’s only option for achieving self-determination.

“I could not forgive the younger Hari, the one who had felt he owned me, who left me with lasting scars. I had changed, grown stronger. Was it so hard to believe Hari had changed, too, and grown softer?”

In the juxtaposition of the words “stronger” and “softer,” Lakshmi is effecting a role reversal. Men are traditionally viewed as strong, while women are soft. By breaking with tradition, Lakshmi has assumed stereotypical masculine qualities, while Hari has adopted feminine qualities. Both have grown as a result of these changes.

“I had not fully grasped how naive Radha was, how much of a secret fantasy life she had. How little I understood her feelings. How little I wanted to understand them.”

This quote echoes an earlier statement in which Lakshmi distances herself from Radha to avoid being reminded of her family’s shame. It also displays the Indian attitude toward the Western ideal of romantic love. To Lakshmi and everyone else in her circle, romance is a fantasy. Marriages are economic transactions brokered to consolidate the wealth of families.

“As much as I would like it to be different for you, it’s not. You must think about money—how to pay rent, how to afford a new pair of shoes, food. As your sister has always done.” 

Kanta is trying to reason with Radha when the girl accuses her elders of depriving her of choice. She wants to keep the baby, while Lakshmi and Kanta discourage her. Radha fails to see that keeping the baby will deprive her of a better future for herself. Her material survival may well depend on deferring motherhood for several years.

“Was I looking at the real Samir in the mirror, the one who cared more about his social status than the lessons he was teaching—or not teaching—his son?”

Radha’s pregnancy brings the sexual double standard of Indian culture to the forefront. Samir is a womanizer, and Lakshmi has enabled his behavior by selling him contraceptive sachets for his lady friends. Samir’s son sees no reason not to imitate his father. For the first time, Lakshmi sees the problem because her sister is the one who needs an abortifacient and will bear the burden of shame for an illegitimate child.

“I rose from the bench, consumed with loathing for him and for myself. What light work I had made of infidelity, for him and his friends to cheat on their wives for ten years!”

Lakshmi is reproaching herself for enabling Samir’s multiple affairs. She seems to suggest that contraception should serve a higher purpose. It is meant to relieve poor women from the burden of too many children; it is not meant as a convenient alternative to men’s fidelity in marriage.

“Oh, if not for Radha! Nothing in my life had been the same since her arrival. She had been my personal monsoon, wrecking years of trust the ladies had invested in me, destroying a reputation it had taken so long to build.”

Like a monsoon, Radha has brought cataclysmic changes to Lakshmi’s life. However, Lakshmi fails to see that those changes, while upsetting at the time, have a positive result. Pandering to the upper-class men and women of Jaipur does not serve a higher purpose. It is only when Lakshmi’s status quo is disrupted that a better life becomes possible for both sisters.

“I had thought at least a portion of your clientele would think the accusations too ridiculous to believe. I was wrong. People are more gullible, and less compassionate, than any of us want to believe, don’t you agree?”

Parvati offers this heartless observation after deliberately wrecking Lakshmi’s reputation among the Jaipur social elite. She cynically manipulates gossip to gain revenge against the henna artist. Rather than punishing either her husband or her son, Parvati blames the women who cooperated in their bad behavior. Once again, the sexual double standard prevails.

“I thought of Pitaji and of my fellow Indians, how they felt about the British after independence. Accustomed to subservience, they were more comfortable reverting to that role, however humiliating, as I seemed to be now.”

More than once in the novel, Lakshmi draws a parallel between her own self-defeating behavior and that of her countrymen. On a personal and collective level, India suffers from an identity crisis. Freedom of choice can be an unfamiliar right to exercise.

“But I’d seen what Radha hadn’t: desperate women begging my saas to rid them of their burdens. Where she saw joy, I saw hardship. Where she saw love, I saw responsibility, obligation.”

Radha romanticizes the notion of motherhood, which is why she blames Lakshmi for depriving her of the choice to keep the baby. Her older sister has seen the downside of the experience. Women who are burdened with children are not free to chart their own futures. Lakshmi is hoping to enable her sister’s future choices by preventing her from making the bad choice of keeping the baby.

“Yet, what had the house brought me but debt, anxiety, sleepless nights? Did I need it to announce my arrival in the world of the successful, as I once had? Success was ephemeral—and fluid—as I’d found out the hard way. It came. It went. It changed you from the outside, but not from the inside.”

This comment amounts to an epiphany for Lakshmi. Throughout the story, her one goal has been to build the house that will prove her success and expunge the guilt she feels for having left her family. In reality, the house has only increased her woes. Selling the house represents her true liberation.