Character Sketch - Rosie

Character Sketch  - Rosie

A Fascinating Personality

Rosie is one of those butterfly-type of women who frequently appear in the novels of Narayan. She is the heroine of the novel. She has a charming and fascinating-personality. Raju falls in love with her at first sight and says, "she was not very glamorous, if that is what you expect, but she did have a figure, a slight and slender one, beautifully fashioned, eyes that sparkled, a complexion, not white, but dusky, which made her only half visible as if you saw her through a film of tender coconut juice." Her arrival at Malgudi, with her husband Marco, plays havoc with the life and career of Raju, the popular Railway guide'.

As a Wife

Born in a family of dancing girls, she knew who her mother was but not her father. She is given a college education and is an M.A. in Economics. She is flattered that a man like Marco should wish to marry her, and is devoted to him in spite of his impotence and priggishness. But her inherited feeling for dance cannot be suppressed, and when she gets a chance to perfect the art, she seizes it. Her giving way to Raju is understandable. She might have resisted the physical urge if her husband had been the least kind and considerate but his inhuman coldness, Raju's evident admiration and the opportunity so conveniently provided by her husband, result in what seems a foregone conclusion. But basically Rosie is a 'good' girl. She is amazed that her husband does not throttle her for her infidelity, and is deeply grateful to him for it.

Her Passion for Dancing

When that husband throws her out and she has no other place to go to, she comes to Raju. More than the attraction of sex is the desire to perfect her art and realise herself fully in her god-given gift. She does not take long to achieve eminence. When Raju wants her to give performances she is not unwilling. But with fame come unceasing demands on her time and energy. She has to fall into a routine and go round and round like a bull yoked to an oil-crusher. Her weariness of it all is like that of any film star. She is being exploited but sticks it out.

When she finds that her husband has produced a masterpiece, she cuts out his picture from Bombay’s The Illustrated Weekly and puts it on her dressing mirror. She is surprised by Raju's behaviour in the matter of the book, and later by the forgery. But she does not walk out on him. To get him out of the mess into which he has got, she dances day and night and is willing to go round like a parrot in a cage, or a performing monkey.

Her Extraordinary Vitality

Raju exploits Rosie for his own advantage and narrow, selfish ends. He says, "I had monopoly of her and nobody had anything to do with her...She was my property." And a little later,... "I did not like to see her enjoy other people's company. I liked to keep her in a citadel." Raju takes all the credit for her success, and is of the view that she would not be able to do without him. But he is soon disillusioned. She rises to new heights of popularity and stardom without her. He is amazed at her extraordinary vitality. He realises that neither he nor her husband matters at all to her. 'The fact is that she lives entirely for her art, and those wito enter her life must either become the willing instruments of her passion or suffer rejection. She leave her husband because he takes no interest in her art, but is contemptuous of it. He regards it as 'monkey tricks' or 'street arcobits'. She falls for Raju because he appreciates and admires her art and helps her in her single-minded pursuit of it.

Her Essential Sanity and Wisdom

According to Narasimaiah, she is the only character in the novel who changes and grows and recovers from folly as the novel progresses. To quote his own words, "It is strange that Rosie is completely free from Narayan's ironic handling. Considering she was a highly educated woman, a Master of Arts and a married woman at that, and in the Hindu society, too, and considering, above all, that Narayan is operating within the framework of traditional Hindu society whose code of conduct he largely endorses, it is curious that Rosie's departure from that code invites no adverse comment from the novelist, no, not so much as an insinuating or ironic gesture. It is not that Rosie could not have provided opportunities for the exercise of Narayan's comic gifts but he leaves her alone as outside their orbit. For one who doesn't make his sympathies for any of his characters so obvious Narayan stands steadfastly by Rosie. In fact she is the one character in the novel who seems to offer a singular example of recovering from folly as the novel progresses. In fact she has always been dignified, noble and the very picture of ideal womanhood in spite of her loss of chastity-there is enough atonement for it and that is what matters. And significantly, this has been achieved by as serious a treatment of the character as any novelist in the tragic mode may have done. This seems to be true of almost all the women characters of Narayan - they are not many, though, all his novels taken together. But especially in the way he takes care to preserve Rosie from inner taint Narayan seems to be affirming what has been hailed in the Indian tradition as the Feminine Principle in life."