CLASS DISCUSSION 1: MERRY MAID AND GREAT INJUSTICE

Children born out of wedlock and pregnancies without marriage are growing concern in the country, but one area that is often neglected is the impact of it. Society rules the law and we will shock to see the fact that it just happen around us. We learned a lot from the two short stories,  A Great Injustice by Heah Chwee Sian and The Merry Maid by Jayakaran Mukundan, which portrayed the issue of two women that shared the same problem; pregnancy out of wedlock. Both characters, Ah Nya in The Great Injustice and Lakshmi in The Merry Maid, wanted to get rid of the babies, but in different ways. They were still young when they were having the problem and it was a big responsibility and a burden to rise up the children without the husband. In my point of view, both characters were not become the victims of anybody but their own mistake in taking action.

                Surely when adultery happened, the most tragic thing is getting pregnant. Sex is what they want but they never think of the consequences of their action. So, premarital sex leads to social problem. The first social problem is pregnancy out of wedlock as what happened to both characters of the stories. The second social problem is what they going to do with their pregnancy. For Ah Nya, when a woman tell her about a place where she can abort the baby, it was a dream come true for her.  She is more concern on how the child will go through his life rather than think to give the baby a life. For Lakshmi, she was not abort the baby but disposed her and put her at Johan’s house. What will happen if the baby were eaten by dogs or taken by irresponsible people? Not only that, Sakinah, Lakshmi’s daughter also faced the issue of her status as an adopted child. “ ... For years she asked about her adoption... because she looked different”.

                To err is human, but to make a big mistake in life will make us pay. In my opinion, even though both stories were written quite a time ago, the issues are still relevant and significant today. Men always escape, and the women burden with the later problem. The act is only one, but the consequences are endless, and the cruelty it brings is far from imagination. In a nutshell, premarital sex should be avoided, as it just brings disastrous to our life and ruin the society.