Examine the theme of gender and space in Shyam Selvudurai’s Funny Boy.

In Funny Boy, Selvadurai attempts to uncover the many social gender constructs that govern the private and public lives of individuals. It looks at the ways in which masculinity and femininity are defined in a social matrix and how these norms influence the identity and experiences of a wide spectrum of characters.

 

Gender and Space: Home

In the first section titled “Pigs Can’t Fly”, the young protagonist Arjie is forced to confront social gender stereotypes. His parents have joined their extended family for a monthly reunion at his grandparents’ house. At these occasions, all his cousins would get together and play two games – the boys usually played cricket in the field outside the house while the girls played ‘Bride-Bride’, a game where they enacted the many ceremonies associated with a wedding. As the narrator tells us, “Territorially, the area around my grandparents’ house was divided into two. The front garden, the road and the field that lay in front of the house belonged to the boys” (Selvadurai 3). As opposed to this, the second territory of the girls was “confined to the back garden and the kitchen porch” (Selvadurai 3). Already, one can see a gender-based spatial segregation at work. There are specific sections of the house designated for activities involving girls and boys. While girls remain within the household and play a typically domestic game, boys venture out and engage in physical activity.

 

This gendered division of domestic space prefigures a similar phenomenon which takes place at the national level. In other words, the domestic spatial segregation along gender lines mirrors the national segregation along ethnic lines that will tear apart the narrator’s and his family's lives. This draws our attention to how space is divided along gender and ethnic parameters, both at the microcosmic domestic and the macrocosmic national sphere. Gayatri Gopinath argues,

“the gendered specialization of the domestic sphere in the story mirrors and reiterates nationalist framings of space that posit the ‘inner’ as an atavistic space of spirituality and tradition, embodied by the figure of the ‘woman’, as opposed to the ‘outer’ male sphere of progress, politics, materiality and modernity” (170).

 

However, Arjie, has managed till now to transcend these boundaries as he has always been the most significant member of the Bride-Bride gang owing to the force of his imagination. It is the “free play of fantasy” (Selvadurai 3) which attracts Arjie to games played by his girl cousins which imitated adult domestic functions or enacted fairy stories. Arjie’s favorite game is called ‘Bride-Bride’ and he derives utmost pleasure from dressing up like a bride. Unfortunately though, his happiness is curtailed by the arrival of his cousin Tanuja who is very cross at being made the groom, the person with the least importance in the hierarchy of ‘Bride-Bride’. When her desire to play the bride is met with derision from her fellow cousins, she tells her mother who drags a sari-clad Arjie in front of the adults of the house. This revelation causes a stir in the family and becomes a source of embarrassment for Arjie’s parents as one of his uncle remarks sardonically to his father, “Ey Chelva! Looks like you have a funny one here” (Selvadurai 14).

 

Gender and Space: School

The other space where Arjie is forced to contend with ethnic and gender divisions is in his new school. In the section of the novel titled “The Best School of All”, Arjie’s father decides to change his school to Queen Victoria Academy because it will “force [him] to become a man”(Selvadurai 210). This educational institution is governed by an ethos of hyper-masculinity and young boys are expected to pattern their behavior according to dominant masculine stereotypes. The students refer to each other with their last names and ardent physical punishments are relatively common. Arjie’s elder brother, Diggy, advises him never to complain about the use of strict punishment since, “Once you come to Queen Victoria Academy, you are a man. Either you take it like a man or the other boys will look down on you” (Selvadurai 211).

 

It is within this ethos of hyper-masculinity that Arjie meets Soyza and their relationship will play an important role in the journey through which Arjie begins to accept his homosexuality. Soyza is described as a misfit in the Academy, he is often bullied by his classmates and is deemed an “ills and burden” student by Black Tie, the principal. There are also rumours about his alleged homosexuality due to which he has become the laughing stock of the whole school. At the same time, the school is also driven with ethnic and political tensions and anxieties. There are separate sections for Sinhalese and Tamil students and there is an ongoing tussle between the Principal, Mr. Abeysinghe (referred to as Black Tie by the students) and the Vice-Principal. Mr. Lokubandara, a “political appointee”. The struggle between them is coloured by the prevailing ethnic conflict and a debate about the future of the academy and by extension, the country. While Black Tie imagines a modern, multicultural academy where diverse communities will be given equal representation, Lokubandara is a firm believer of the grassroots Sinhala movement i.e. a return to the idea of Sri Lanka as a pure Sinhala nation. T Jazeel says that “essentially, this is a battle for which type of modernity is best for the Academy, thus linking the school to larger debates about appropriate geopolitical templates for the modern Sri Lanka nation-state” (242), when he talks about the turf war between Lokubandara and Black Tie aka Mr. Abeysinghe, the principal.

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