Ideological Representation of Labour in Selected Assamese Novels from the 1950s to the 1980s

Abstract

Man is the main focus of the novelistic representation and man’s essence is free, creative labour. Therefore a novel, ideally, has to represent creative labour or its opposite, alienated labour. So to remain faithful to its primary task of representing the human essence, a novel should take labour as its point of entry while not denying representational justice to other processes of the over-determined social reality. This applies more particularly to the labour-oriented novels. The five selected Assamese novels are generally taken for labour-oriented novels but close analysis reveals that creative and alienated labour are not adequately represented and the point of entry of each of them is also not adequately based on labour. This inadequacy of representation of labour is caused by the mainstream Assamese middle-class ideology. The artist’s faithful dedication to her art sometimes enables her to transcend her class ideology but such transcendence of ideology by art could not be noticed in the selected novels. Each of them somewhat addresses the interlinked issues of labour, alienated labour, exploitation, and struggle, but ultimately dilutes these issues, deviates from them, diverts them, and suppresses them only to serve the ideology of the mainstream Assamese middle class.