On Page 42: Midnight’s Children

[Source: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, 2006 Random House Trade Paperback Edition, 25th Anniversary Edition]

The more I get into Midnight’s Children, the more I realize that it does a lot of contextualizing each proceeding chapter with the current chapter. That being said, page 42 presents us with a moral and ideological argument. Reverend Mother values religion and her husband, Aadam Aziz values rationality. She is devoutly religious and he is described as being ‘racked by ambiguity.’

A compromise between husband and wife was made prior to their coming argument. Aadam yielded to Reverend Mother when she wanted to choose the religious instructor for their daughters’ education. It becomes a moment of importance when we find out Aadam “applies” his foot to the “stranglebearded wretch’s… fleshy parts.” The wretch being the hired religious instructor.

There is a cuddled cage feeling we get with Reverend Mother because earlier on in the book, she is hidden in her room and her father would only let doctors examine her through a sheet with holes in it. Not that her devoutness is a handicap, but it offers a stubborn quality to a character that only has agency through her role as wife or mother. No man in her life has given her room to explore herself.   

After the instructor is tossed out “Reverend Mother sailed into battle,” because she clearly felt this as a betrayal of her husband. She attacks Aadam in a personal cultural way by asking, “Would you eat pig… Would you spit on the Quran?” She gives Aadam no choice, but to have a very good reason and that he does. Aadam answers back:

“He was teaching them to hate, wife. He tells them to hate

Hindus and Buddhists and Jains and Sikhs and who knows

what other vegetarians. Will you have hateful children,

woman?”  

This scene plays out with their daughters watching from a short distance.

We feel for Reverend Mother. The one semblance of agency she had was once again pushed away by the man of the house. We feel for Aadam. He can’t have his children learning hate or passing hate on. The country (India) they live in is occupied with casts and religious tensions. The two are holding on to real identifiable feelings. On page 42, we get this tense argument that speaks to both the personal and the national within the story.