“Gadis Pantai” by Pramoedya Ananta Toer
This is a brilliant depiction of a 14 year-old teenager from the poor side of the town, a fisherman’s daughter who is forcefully betrothed to a local rich and powerful nobleman. The story is set in a feudalistic Javanese society during the Dutch occupation era in early 20th century, where “little kings” were given by the Dutch overlord enough power to rule on behalf of the Dutch and abuse their own people.
The book describes how the unnamed Girl from the Coast gets so scared at the beginning, enduring the pain of separation from her parents and from her old life that she was perfectly content with, who now has to live in a very rigid place where she – the main lady of the house – cannot even walk into certain areas in the mansion and is constantly undermined by the people in the household (due to her status as a poor villager).
Indeed, the story is a contrast between both worlds, between the poor and rich, the raw and the artificial, about how the poor people at the coast are more free than the rich people living inside the mansion with all the restrictions and societal hierarchies, with the book has this general criticism towards feodalism and injustice.
And as the story progresses, slowly but sure The Girl from the Coast begins to learn the way of life as a rich madam, mainly by befriending her old handmaiden who has tons of fascinating stories to tell. And gradually this pure innocent simpleton from the coast learns about power, about survivorship as a disposable concubine (and not a worthy wife from a fellow rich noble family), about how and why people are more afraid of his skinny and soft husband than the more muscular and rough men in her poor village. And over all we get to learn about the struggles of the common people and the cruelty of living in a local kingdom that serve the Dutch during the colonial era.
The book did not specify where the mansion is located, however, or where the fishing village is. But the author, Pramoedya, describes the Girl from the Coast as having a unique physical description of small eyes (like a Chinese descent), living near the northern coast somewhere in Java, which is unmistakenly a tale from Lasem. Lasem is a unique ancient port town from the Majapahit era (13th-16th century), a place where admiral Zheng He arrived in the archipelago and spread Islam (through 7 voyages between 1405-1433), with his men then settled and assimilated with the locals (hence the Chinese-looking offsprings in the area).
And here’s the twist: this book is a novelization of the story of Pramoedya’s own grandmother from his mother’s side. It’s supposed to be a trilogy of his family’s history, with part 1 telling the story about Pramoedya’s grandmother, part 2 telling the story of his parent’s generation within the context of nationalist uprising against the Dutch colonial ruler, and part 3 is supposed to be the story of Pramoedya’s generation alongside the struggles of Indonesia’s independence.
But only part 1 was ever published as a book (this book), with the scripts of part 2 and part 3 were confiscated by “political vandalism” and disappeared without a trace. This will forever be my grail search, the 2 lost and unpublished manuscripts.
And it shows in the way that this book (supposedly part 1) ended. It looks like the catastrophic end of the story but crucially a beginning of something bigger to come, something to build on from the ground up now everything has fallen apart. And imagine if the Girl from the Coast didn’t make that last minute life-altering decision at the very last scene in the book? Pramoedya could possibly never be born and we would never know his brilliant writings.
THE CHAOS THEORY 