Placing Padma

Hello all! Jo V here. :) I have discovered in my wider reading some interesting perspectives on Padma.

Catherine Cundy sees Padma's role in Midnight's Children as representative of the varied technical and even cultural demands that writing the novel made on Salman Rushdie:

"On the one hand she can be seen as the exemplification of Roland Barthes's arguments on the role of the reader subsequent to the 'death' of the author...on the other, she provides a link back to the culture which Rushdie insits informs his work most strongly. Padma, taken on these terms, becomes a vocal and individualised member of the multitude which sits at the feet of the storyteller, hanging on his every word."

However, Nancy E Bathy argues that Padma's role as Saleem's "necessary ear" should not obscure her status as co-creator of the narrative. (An example I suppose would be Saleem's descriptions, upon Padma's insistence, of the "Purveyor of Dung" and the dung-filled city of Amristar. (p.33) According to Saleem's chronicle, Padma was "named after the lotus goddess, whose most common appellation amongst village folk is 'The One Who Possesses Dung'" (p.25) making this insistence personal.)

Cundy concludes that: "Padma's role within the text is clearly a symbolic one. She becomes critical of the process of construction and reconstitution of personal and national history in which text is engaged. She is not merely a symbol of the Indian storyteller's audience- it's capacity or credulity crystallised into a single identity - but a symbol also of a wider critical position in relation to the narrative mode itself... Padma serves to embody a critical skepticism about the narrative and to suggest a relationship of contestation between the text's form and context...It is through Padme's eyes that we are made aware of our own difficulties in dealing with the demands of the text."
So, in conclusion, Padma can perhaps be seen as much more than simply a convenient character - she appears alternately as a narrative foil, a Barthesian manifestation, a co-constructor of narrative and finally a symbolic advocate for the reader or the receptive public as a whole.

Hope you all had a nice weekend! :)

SOURCES:

Bathy, Nancy E, "The Art of Suspense: Rushdie's 1001 (Mid-)Nights" in Ariel, 18:3, p.54.

Cundy, Catherine, Salaman Rushdie, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1996, p.36.
Rushdie, Salaman, Midnight's Children, London, Jonathan Cape, 1984.