Poll I: Night & Women- a justified comparison?

Poll I: Nights and women- a justified comparison?
Voting closes on 18-06-2017. Please read the article and choose your option in the poll at the end of it.

Literature and poesy, if had to depend on just two pillars, simile and metaphor would have been those two. Not many of you will be agreeing with me, but I personally fail to imagine literature without these. Jean Paul Sartre, in his remarkable book –‘What is literature?’, very aptly distinguishes an artist from a poet, stating that when a flower is before both of them, one will be deeply moved by the curves and color of it, while the other one, though looking at the same flower, is thinking beyond its physical allure and something else in his mind. Now think about it. When this second person’s thoughts will start taking the form of words, I guess there’s no doubt that his piece will have any lack of similes and metaphors. I mean to say, that when these two literary devices are the basis of comparison between poets and artists, then we can say, that they’re the core of literature.

No comparison in literature can be stated as ‘unfair’ only because it has been viewed from an angle that is completely different from that of the writer. If you compare your lover’s face to the moon, and I point out the zero resemblance in the color, then undoubtedly I’ll be proved insane!

Let’s come to the book Gora. 2 friends converse about the men-women equality. Remember that this is a part of story that was written before independence in India

A: If we could view our nation’s women outside our domestic needs, we would perceive our nation in its beauty and wholeness. We will see an image of the nation easy to die for. At least we would never behave mistakenly as if the women of our country are nowhere to be found. Our entire nation’s growth remains stunted because we imprison the women of our country in their routine of cooking and grinding, regarding them reductively as merely the female sex.

B: Just as day and night are the two halves of time, so are men and women the two halves of human society. In normal social situations, woman remains invisible like the night, all her actions concealed and private. We exclude the night from our work time. But that doesn’t halt any of the night’s profound operations. Behind the veil of rest, the night secretly heals our losses, and nurtures us. But in abnormal social situations, night is turned into day, with machines operated by the light of gas lamps, nightlong revelry by the lamplight- but what’s the result? The night’s natural, private processes are destroyed, fatigue sets in, there’s no restoration of injury or loss, and people become overwrought. Similarly, if we drag women into the public workplace, it disrupts their private activities, ruining social health and peace, driving society into a kind of frenzy. This frenzy might be mistaken for power, but it is only the power to destroy.

I was genuinely convinced with B, but not even unconvinced with A. This is such a philosophy that drops me into a weird dilemma. I was initially with A until I read B. And then- Uhh I’m not sure. What would you say?

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