I loved this story. Obviously, I didn't enjoy reading it from her point of view because this incident was so awful. However, I loved how brave she was just to tell her story. I think that throughout the whole book she was a pretty naive girl. However, the quote I decided to use was one that didn't occur in the last third, but in the middle somewhere. It is just when she is meeting Mumtaz and she has her first experience with the old man. She runs away from him. "'There is a mistake,' I tell her. 'I'm here to work as a maid for a rich lady.'
'Is that what you were told?'" (51%).
Of course, without proper education, it would be hard to know what was really going on here. The grunting noises she heard earlier were sex noises that I am sure many of us Drake students could identify that noise. Naive could even be the wrong word for her because she is just uneducated. However, it does appear that she is a little naive.
My favorite part of the book was to see her transformation. In the beginning of the book, she refused to do "this disgraceful thing" but by the end, she was not the new girl anymore and was determined to pay off Mumtaz's debt.
I agree Sophie. She was brought up at the average pace of someone in her village and then thrown into a huge city to be a prostitute no less. This caused her to grow up and learn about mature topics in a very short period of time. Not only did everyone else lie to her about where she was going, but also her own step father didn't even tell her the truth. This is even more proof for how little respect men have for women in that part of the world. I mean, just the fact that she was sold into prostitution in the first place is terrible! She still decides to work and earn the money she promised for her family (she doesn't know that Mumtaz is cheating her yet) but is also shocked when Monica returns to the happiness house after she was allowed to go home. "'When they heard I was coming,' she says, 'they met me outside the village and begged me not to come back and disgrace them.' 'Did you get to see your daughter?' I say. Monica cannot meet my eyes. 'They told her I was dead'" This broke my heart. This broke my heart, and I think this told Lakshmi just how badly thought of she was becoming and that she had no way to stop it.
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