The Rape of Women in “Draupadi,” by Mahasweta Devi, and “Open It,” by Saadat Hasan Manto
Where there is war, there is the rape and abuse of women. From the Trojan War to the Middle East conflict, rape has been a tactic of war. Rape is commonly viewed by society as a symbol of female degradation, female submission, and the stripping of honor and humanity. In the stories “Draupadi,” by Mahasweta Devi, and “Open It,” by Saadat Hasan Manto, the rape of women is a common theme. In Manto’s “Open It,” a young girl, Sakina, is raped by young men of her community, while in Devi’s “Draupadi,” a tribal rebel is raped by authorities of the state. While the storylines of these pieces are rather similar, the portrayal of the rape and the reactions of the young women are exceedingly different. Both authors use the disrobing of garments to create a dramatic climax. However, the respective climaxes convey contrasting ideas about the rape and degradation of women. In “Draupadi,” the unveiling of garments reveals immense female power. In “Open It,” the disrobing of garments reveals helpless female submission. Despite these differences, however, both acts of disrobing result in a striking male reaction and symbolize the remarkable survival of these battered and abused women.
The circumstances of the rape and the personalities of the rape victims are very different in “Open It” and “Draupadi.” In Manto’s story, a father is desperately looking for his daughter, Sakina, in the midst of the chaos and disorder of Partition. He asks self appointed social workers of the community to help him find Sakina. When Sakina is approached by these men, her initial reaction is one of fright: “The moment she heard the truck, she began to run” (Manto 360). ...
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...r remarkable survival. Although society will always have preconceptions of rape and how a woman should and will react to being raped, it is apparent through “Draupadi” and “Open It” that being raped is a very personal experience. It is an experience unique to women that can yield very different reactions. Rape can make a woman, like it did Dopdi, or it can break a woman like it did Sakina. Because being raped is such a personal experience, a woman’s reaction to such a trauma should not and can not be judged. Whether a woman is strengthened or weakened through rape, it does not matter. What matters is that she survives.
Works Cited
Devi, Mahasweta. “Draupadi.” In Other Worlds. Ed. Chakravorty Spriak. New York and London: Routledge, 1987.
Manto Hasan, Saadat. “Open It.” Stories about the Partition of India. Ed. Alok Bhalla. New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1999.
The milestone judicial decision in Cole v Whitfield pronounced a pivotal moment in Australian jurisprudence in relation to the interpretation of s92 of the Australian constitution. This essay will critically analyse the constitutional interpretation approach utilised in Cole v Whitfield. This method will be compared with the interpretational methods exemplified in Commonwealth v Australian Capital Territory. Although within these two cases there appears to be a preference towards a particular interpretational method, each mode has both strengths and weaknesses. Accordingly, the merit of each should be employed in conjunction with one another, where the court deems fit, complementing each other. This may provide a holistic approach to interpreting the constitution.
The decision for Australia to adopt the Federal system was on the principle of which the State’s governments wanted to keep their power. For this reason there was the separation of powers between the newly formed Commonwealth government and the existing State governments. At a constitutional level, there are rulings in which the powers are separated, these rulings due to disputes have slightly changed since 1901. These changes all fell towards the one government, the Commonwealth (Federal) government. However this was not just a landslide event, the Constitution of Australia set up this imbalance of powers between the Commonwealth and State governments. We will explore this further in the points discussed later in this essay.
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A gynaecologist can easily perform an ultrasound and tell parents what gender to expect their child to be. Reasonably, parents have the choice to learn the gender or to keep it a surprise. However, For parents to know they are expecting a daughter by chance or for them to choose that they want a daughter are two different cases. There are a variety of methods that allow parents to choose the gender of their child. In some cases, there may be fear of passing down a sex-linked genetic disease and so a certain gender may be preferred to protect the child’s health. However, a contentious issue is whether or not gender selection for non-medical reasons is ethically defensible. There are three positions that one could take: gender selection can never, sometimes, or always be ethically defended. In this paper, I intend to argue that gender selection is always permissible.
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
"Did you see what she was wearing; no wonder he assumed she wanted it." Does this sound familiar to anyone? It does to me. This is just a glimpse of some words, and actions, that are only the tip of the ice-berg; we call 'rape culture'. A lot of people are unaware this sort of language, or behavior, even goes on. Even more people are aware of these types of things, yet they don’t find them inappropriate, or see anything wrong with a little harmless joking. The fact is rape culture affects our life, whether we acknowledge it or not. The term 'Rape Culture' should not be a part of our vocabulary; we, as a society, have allowed it, but that needs to be changed.
When you think of the “land down under” you don’t really think of the kind of government they have. I chose to write about the Australian government because I really don’t hear much about Australia. It currently has a pretty interesting story to tell when it comes to their government. I became a bit interested in Australian politics when I saw a political animated cartoon on the internet that depicted Kevin Rudd, the last Prime Minister, on a news television show and it was quite humorous. I am going to give a quick history lesson on Australia then go into how the government formed and came to be. Then I will talk about the Australian constitution, the Australian arms of government, their federal system, political parties and Australia’s current Prime Minister.
Malpani, A. Preconception gender selection. American journal of bioethics 1.4 01 Sep 2001: null. MIT Press. 03 Mar 2014.
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Rape Culture Many of the attitudes, beliefs, and mistaken ideas about rape have been with us for centuries. By looking at myths, such as “women ask for it,” and “it would do some women good to get raped,” from a historical perspective, leads us to better understanding how they evolved. Women are still seen as the property of men, and are protected as such. Men and women are still taught to occupy very different roles in today’s world.
In The Story of an Hour, the main character, Mrs. Louise Mallard, is a young woman with a heart condition who learns of her husband’s untimely death in a railroad disaster. Instinctively weeping as any woman is expected to do upon learning of her husband’s death, she retires to her room to be left alone so she may collect her thoughts. However, the thoughts she collects are somewhat unexpected. Louise is conflicted with the feelings and emotions that are “approaching to possess her...” (Chopin 338). Unexpectedly, joy and happiness consume her with the epiphany she is “free, free, free!” (Chopin 338). Louise becomes more alive with the realization she will no longer be oppressed by the marriage as many women of her day were, and hopes for a long life when only the day prior, “…she had thought with a shudder that life may ...
Rape is devastating to its victims. I feel as if this statement should stand alone, underlined and in bold typeface. It is crucial that we, as a society, come to a deep understanding and awareness of this message. For that reason, I will state it again:
Moorti, Sujata. "Cathartic Confessions or Emancipatory Texts? Rape Narratives on the Oprah Winfrey Show." Social Text 57 (1998): 83-102. J-STORr. Goshen College Good Library. 3 Nove. 2002.
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Mackey, Frank Misogynist. Cultural rape myths. Survivors Emerging. Retrieved November 18, 2004 from the World Wide Web: http://people.morehead-st.edu/students/ar/aeruck01/culturalrapemyths.html