SOURCE: Natarajan, Nalini. “Woman, Nation and Narration in Midnight's Children.” In Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader, edited by Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick, pp. 399-409. New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 1999.

In the following essay, Natarajan perceives the function of women in Midnight's Children to be a signifier for the changing social status quo of India.

In Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, the midnight of Indian independence is represented through refraction of the colors of the Indian flag onto national celebrations (extravagant ‘saffron rockets’ and ‘green sparkling rain’) and the bodies of women giving birth: ‘green-skinned’, ‘whites of eyes … shot with saffron’ (MC [Midnight's Children], 132).¹ We may note significant juxtapositions and identities: woman's pain with communal joy, human with national birth, woman's body as the national tricolor flag.

Gender and Nation

The scene illustrates the centrality of gender in the space of the social imaginary that constitutes ‘nation...