Mahesh Elkunchwar’s plays are an attempt to constantly question the rigid rules laid down by the society controlling various aspects of life. As a socially conscious human being and a talented artist, he tries to find meaning through the chaos called life. Every play that he has written is a testimony to this endeavor. Sonata tells the story of three women of urban, upper middle class background, marks a significant shift in his selection of characters from those of The Wada Trilogy. He has moved into the posh areas of the city of Mumbai from the dry villages of the Vidarba district of Maharashtra. The three women Aruna, Dolon and Subhadra belong to an upper middle class educated and a financially secured background. They, except for Subhadra, are living a life without any apparent commitments and so are not burdened by the emotional baggage such relations entail. On the surface it all looks good and happy. But as the play progresses we understand that there is more to than what meets the eye. They could be representatives of the modern Indian women who have broken the age old shackles of customs and traditions. They do not live by the rules of the society. They do not have to put up with the chauvinistic men-folk. They are not worried about money. They all earn well so they can burn money on perfumes, dresses, and food etc. But their relationship is not without flaws. They constantly bicker and find fault with each other and make hurting and judgmental comments, especially Aruna and Dolon. Subhadra’s presence brings about a parley between Aruna and Dolon. But the respite is only temporary. Samik Banhyopadhyay says, “With Subhadra’s exit, Aruna and Dolon lose their moment of triumph and glory. They can cling to their lost privile... ... middle of paper ... ...go to your college, I to my bank. The night is over.” (286) It is the music of the Sonata which lingers as the stage becomes dark leaving Dolon sitting on the sofa, Aruna standing near her desk, both staring into the darkness, and thus ends another evening. Works Cited 1. Elkunchwar, Mahesh. Collected Plays of Mahesh Elkunchwar. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010. 2. Sree, S. Prasanna, ed. Indian Women Writing in English: New Perspectives. First ed. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2005. Print. 3. Konar, Ankur. "Cultural 'Scape' and Social Space: Reflection of Fragmentation in Elkunchwar's Sonata." Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal1.1 (2012): 1-5. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. 4. Hans, Anjali. "Feminism as a Literary Movement in India." International Research Journal of Applied and Basic Sciences 4.7 (2013): 1762-767. Www.irjabs.com. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
A modern play that demonstrates the transgression of a woman from the conflict she experience is in “The Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote this particular work while living in Italy, which became a cornerstone in ‘realism’. It also brings ...
Many stories talk about relationships, especially the ones between man and woman as couple. In some of them, generally the most popular ones, these relationships are presented in a rosy, sentimental and cliché way. In others, they are presented using a much deeper, realistic and complicated tone; much more of how they are in real life. But not matter in what style the author presents its work, the base of every love story is the role each member of that relationship assumes in it. A role, that sometimes, internal forces will determinate them, such as: ideas, beliefs, interests, etc. or in order cases external, such as society. In the story “The Storm” by American writer Kate Chopin and the play A Doll’s house by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen I am going to examine those roles, giving a special focus to the woman´s, because in both works, it is non-traditional, different and somewhat shocking, besides having a feminist point of view.
Against the backdrop of a brand-new liberalized world, Kapur sketches out Shagun’s boredom, Raman’s hurt and the confusion of their children, Roohi and Arjun, who are batted back and forth between parents and across chapters. The two new partners in the equation, boss man Ashok and divorcee Ishita, struggle to woo their step kids while supporting
Despite growing up amidst a language deemed as “broken” and “fractured”, Amy Tan’s love for language allowed her to embrace the variations of English that surrounded her. In her short essay “Mother Tongue”, Tan discusses the internal conflict she had with the English learned from her mother to that of the English in her education. Sharing her experiences as an adolescent posing to be her mother for respect, Tan develops a frustration at the difficulty of not being taken seriously due to one’s inability to speak the way society expects. Disallowing others to prove their misconceptions of her, Tan exerted herself in excelling at English throughout school. She felt a need to rebel against the proverbial view that writing is not a strong suit of someone who grew up learning English in an immigrant family. Attempting to prove her mastery of the English language, Tan discovered her writing did not show who she truly was. She was an Asian-American, not just Asian, not just American, but that she belonged in both demographics. Disregarding the idea that her mother’s English could be something of a social deficit, a learning limitation, Tan expanded and cultivated her writing style to incorporate both the language she learned in school, as well as the variation of it spoken by her mother. Tan learned that in order to satisfy herself, she needed to acknowledge both of her “Englishes” (Tan 128).
Nothing has more of an effect to the controversial conversation of women’s liberation than literature. The subtle cues from Cosmopolitan emphasizing femininity: beauty, sensuality, appreciating the female body… Self-help guidebooks persisting the woman to let go and just be free for once. It is liberating for the woman to see such medias to act upon what they were thinking and to even go beyond that. Talks of
Whereas the relationship between Maha and Harb is one of passion and love, Ihsan and Nadia are the complete opposite. Nadia hates how Ihsan looks at her as a woman always and never a person. She struggles to prove her capability of being an individual and forming an identity of her own that is separate and goes beyond Mrs. Natour. She proves that she can ‘think and feel’ for herself and by herself. In the West where we have women out on the streets rallying for equality between men and women, fighting in the armies, present in the workforce, these victories may seem minute. However if one pays close attention to social structures and social norms in different cultures one can realize that this challenging and questioning is as important and holds as much weight as getting equal wages for women in America.
Most of the Indian women living in an orthodox and conservative family feel inhibited to raise their voice against aggressive dominance of the male person of the society owing to their inferiority complex and rigid code of conduct imposed on them. Their ambitions, desires, sense and sensibility are faithfully expressed in Nair’s novels. Her novels show how such women in spite of being highly educated undergo psychological suffering due to inferiority complex and dead sense of inhibitions. She not only limits her writing to upper class urban people, but also picks up characters from all stratum of society. Her theme is not only restricted to domestic problems, but it is variegated in nature. Besides, her novels represent what is authentically Indian or native.
According to nature all human beings should write in the same way, but according to culture women are forced to write in a different way. And this difference “must be sought ( in Miller´s words) in the body of her writing and not the writing of her body” ( Showalter:252)
Recent years have witnessed a large number of Indian English fiction writers who have stunned the literary world with their works. The topics dealt with are contemporary and populist and the English is functional, communicative and unpretentious. Novels have always served as a guide, a beacon in a conflicting, chaotic world and continue to do so. A careful study of Indian English fiction writers show that there are two kinds of writers who contribute to the genre of novels: The first group of writers include those who are global Indians, the diasporic writers, who are Indians by birth but have lived abroad, so they see Indian problems and reality objectively. The second group of writers are those born and brought up in India, exposed to the attitudes, morale and values of the society. Hence their works focus on the various social problems of India like the plight of women, unemployment, poverty, class discrimination, social dogmas, rigid religious norms, inter caste marriages, breakdown of relationships etc.
In this chapter Mahasweta Devi’s anthology of short stories entitled Breast Stories to analyze representations of violence and oppression against women in name of gender. In her Breast Stories, Devi twice evokes female characters from ancient Hindu mythology, envisions them as subalterns in the imagined historical context and, creates a link with the female protagonists of her short stories. As the title suggests, Breast Stories is a trilogy of short stories; it has been translated and analyzed by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak and, in Spivak’s view, the ‘breast’ of a woman in these stories becomes the instrument of a brutal condemnation of patriarchy. Indeed, breast can be construed as the motif for violence in the three short stories “Draupadi,” “Breast-Giver,” and “Behind the Bodice,”
Ramamoorthy, P. “My Life is My Own: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s Women” Feminism and Recent Fiction in English Ed. Sushila Singh. New Delhi: Prestige, 1991.
In contemporary society, feminism is emerging as a theory of social construct. In literature it is often challenging to discover female characters that go beyond the limits of marginalized female stereotypes and roles as a means to transgress beyond societal norms. Women are characterized as subordinate objects, amid the dominant patriarchal nature entrenched amid the epic. In The Ramayana, women are portrayed as powerless objects that succumb to the manipulation of men as the text portrays a false empowerment of women, which ultimately succumb to common archetypes accustomed to women in literature; implementing a hierarchy of gender that institutionalizes male dominance amid female inferiority. The women of The Ramayana struggle to oppose the systemic patriarchy and pursue a pathway towards attaining dynamic elements of power, that enable their ability to embody autonomous authority. In Valmiki’s The Ramayana, while women appear to be empowered, ultimately they are feeble instruments utilized to fulfill the desires of men.
Women have often been called upon to make sacrifices and suppress their personal desires.They have often been left on the margins of the social set-up as far as their personal desires and fufilment of those desires is concerned. Women are not a minority in our society but their “lives, experiences and values have been treated as marginal” and men’s experiences have been assumed to be central to society. One also needs to contest the often stated view that in India women have always enjoyed a place of respect and dignity, that they have been respected as ‘devis.’ It needs to be seen that “the respect and privileges which accompany the position of a ‘devi’ are not only anti-individualistic,” they are also anti-humanistic and “deny women a personhood”.
Mahesh Dattani writes on the burning issues that beset the post-independence Indian society, whether it is communal discord, politics and crime, growing homosexuality or the gender bias. He uses stage to condemn many of the drawbacks prevailing in society. His plays depict marginalized groups of society, people who are considered misfits in a society where stereotyped attitudes and notions reign supreme. His plays have varied content and varied appeal.
Garg in ‘Hari Bindi’ discusses the story of a common woman and made it extraordinary by the active force she was experiencing in herself to live her life. The husband of the protagonist symbolises the power and control of patriarchy that had restricted her life in such a way