Name: Padmavathi Chariththiram (The Story of Padmavathi)
Author: A. Madhavaiya
Year: 1898
First published Jul 31, 2024. Updated Aug 3, 2024.
When the modern literature was introduced into the Tamil mileau, it was not short stories but novels that caught the eye and the hand of Tamil writers. There were three major novels written before the start of the 20th century – Pratapa Mudhaliyar Chariththiram (பிரதாப முதலியார் சரித்திரம்) in 1879, Kamalambal Chariththiram (கமலாம்பாள் சரித்திரம்) in 1893, and Padmavathi Chariththiram (பத்மாவதி சரித்திரம்) in 1898, following the naming convention of English novels such as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography.
Padmavathi Chariththiram was written by A. Madhavaiya, published in three parts with the third one unfinished. While the name of the novel mentions Padmavathi as the main character who is a woman, it is actually Narayanan, the man, who can be considered the protagonist. The first part of the novel tells the childhood and teen years of Narayanan, the second part, his initial marriage life, and the final part starts describing the love life of his friend and widower, Gopalan. In an afternote by the author’s son, the complications in Gopalan’s second marriage would be resolved by the titular character Padmavathi but the author died before finishing the novel.
The novel starts with a bang, a huge event, where the major character, Narayanan, is established as noble and truthful through his behavior in the courts where he refuses to lie to save his father from going to prison. We are then introduced to various characters through Narayanan – his friend, Gopalan, and his lover and wife, Padmavathi. Narayanan is the face of a new generation of the time who tries to talk about child marriage abolishment, women rights, and widow remarriage, through the modern English law and education. His decisions are influenced by the morals of both Tamil and English literature. He climbs the ropes from being in a poor family in a village to studying school in another village to moving to the city of Madras (Chennai) for higher education and job, all through education.
Two generations of characters are presented in the novel. The parent generation has a number of characters including Narayanan’s mother, Gopalan’s father, and Padmavathi’s parents. While both Narayanan’s mother and Gopalan’s father have lost their spouses, the widow could not remarry but the widower could. Padmavathi’s parents bear a new child after their daughter get married. The younger generation faces a number of issues owing to changes in their mentality. People force Gopalan to get his daughter married immediately after she reaches the age of ten which was the custom of the time in Brahmin households, while he wishes her daughter to grow up a few years after her first menstrual period before getting her married. Narayanan and Padmavathi get non-Brahmin household workers which were unheard of at that time.
Madhavaiya excels in excavating the finer nature of human mind through the two couples – Narayanan and Padmavathi, and Gopalan and Kalyani. The former couple are in immense love from their childhood and they get married before Padmavathi reaches puberty. Padmavathi lives in her parents’ home as was the custom. Narayanan cannot control his libido and he almost seeks sex workers. But he prevents himself doing it by thinking that he would be ashamed not in front of his wife but in front of Savithri, who is the elder sister of Gopalan, whom he had met in Gopalan’s home during his visit. Narayanan almost worships Savithri for her beauty and intelligence and she is her first crush and epitome of womanhood. In the case of Gopalan and Kalyani, Gopalan feels that their characteristics do not match for a happy marriage, and he eventually has a relationship with a sex worker. When the couple meet after a long time and when Gopalan wants to be reunited, Kalyani asks if the rules are the same for a woman if it had happened the other way around.
The novel does have its shortcoming of the author coming to the front of the page and telling morals through his own voice. And the characters too, often, very often, quote poetry in their natural conversation to make a point and that makes it very artificial. The importance of this novel lies in the fact that it is one of the first trio of novels ever in Tamil literature. When the old Tamil literature was always about kings and mythological characters, it would take a huge step to tell stories about characters that you meet in real life. A contemporary of Subramaniya Bharathi, A. Madhavaiya tried to do the same in prose as the former did in poetry, poking the staleness and inequality in the then Tamil society.