As I’ve been reading further into The Hungry Tide, I’ve started to notice a recurring theme surrounding marriage. All three marriages we have seen so far in the narrative (Piya’s parents, Fokir and Moyna, and Nilima and Nirmal) have been extremely rocky, even that of Nilima and Nirmal, who supposedly loved each other deeply. It seems as though Ghosh is trying to make a statement about marriage, and I wonder if it partly has to do with geography, as Fokir and Nirmal become dissatisfied upon moving to the Sundarbans for their wives. I was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts on this?
Marriage in The Hungry Tide
I would be nitpicky and point out that while it’s Nilima who is keeping them in the tide country, it’s Nirmal getting in trouble politically that forced them to move there in the first place. So I would say…. movement without agency is a part of it, certainly, but it’s more like… Nirmal and Nilima are divided over ideology (sticking to your ideals but only in theory versus the question of putting things into practice and trying to help people but compromising for the sake of it), and Piya’s parents are divided over a sort of ideology too (assimilating versus looking back), and if you think about it this goes for Fokir and Moyna (education versus traditionalism? something more complicated than that?). So… I think geography is involved but only in the sense that a million things at once are, and of course “this is because of ideology” is broad – by that definition, any division can be over ideology. But… something about the immense variability and complexity of the world, and how that splits people fundamentally sometimes, even when (like Nirmal and Nilima) they’re united by the drive to make the world a better place.