There are many problems in the world today. One important problem is ‘repression of the individual’ – especially among women. Some solutions can be found in literature and film since arts tend to reflect and comment on society. A claim that Satyajit Ray (1964) argues in Charulata is also one Rabindranath Tagore first (1901) argued in Nashtanir (The Broken Home): The woman, as an individual needs to be relieved from suppression the society or a household imposes. This claim is also applicable to contemporary Indian society as there are many persons still trapped in this social web: unable to break out of the roles they have been provided with, which in extreme cases may even lead to emotional or physical death[1]. These trappings stop societies and individuals from reaching their potential; also they create conditions that are not very humane or even necessary for a society to be run. Ray and Tagore argue this through the protagonist, Charulata, who is confined in her role of a household wife thrust upon her by the society. They imply that the solution is to not play that role, but also show how hard it is to not live according to social/household norms. Charulatta/Nashtanir is an unfulfilled love story between a woman and her husband’s cousin that never takes off in explicit terms due to the rigid nature of social norms these characters are ruled by. It ends by bursting the bubble of the happy married life that Bhupati, the husband, thought he had and bringing the ugly reality society so meticulously tries to cover up to the forefront.
In Nashtanir (1901) Tagore writes ‘…emerging she reassumed her worldly mask and rejoined the routine flow of daily life’ (Tagore, 49). This shows that Charu’s real persona is not worthy of the world and that it does not even matter to the society she lives in. What is important is that she has a mask that represents everything that society expects from a woman in her place. Her suppressed nature is present because that seems to be a safe way to ‘survive’ in the society and that is exactly what Charu does: survive, not live. Living does not seem to be a priority for the society and that is not good because if as humans we do not live, then what is the point of simply surviving, simply going through life as a corpse with feelings stuffed at the bottom because they are too ugly, too complicated to be allowed on the surface? This is why individual suppression needs to be eliminated, because humans deserve a chance to experience living not survival.
How can the woman break away from this tightly woven network? One solution could be to become self-sufficient. Charu does this by developing original content and style for her writing and getting her work published. Though she does this primarily to show that her superiority over Manda and to prove her literary worth to Amol, it also, for a short while, makes her independent. The screen shot (01:14:07) below shows the transition between conceptualizing an idea and seeing it in print. The image shows the untapped potential Charu had, which was probably repressed because of her living in a highly patriarchal society; it shows her potential flowing out because she decides to rise up to the challenges she faces in maintaining her relationship with Amol.
Getting published on her own is the proof of her individuality and her being someone who can depend on herself. When applied to the modern context her published writing is symbolic of a job or a profession, which could be one solution to empowering the individual: by working to sustain oneself so that one does not have to depend on the society and hence is not required to follow the same rules as the dependants. However, one could argue that she’s not getting paid for her writing and hence it doesn’t translate into a job. But, Charu getting published and getting appreciated by the critics shows potential for her as a professional writer and even earning money from her art. Also the critics recognize her as an individual not as someone’s wife or daughter, but as her. This recognition has the power to inspire strength in the individual to become self-sufficient though in this case it does not.
Disappointingly, Charu does not seem interested in pursuing her writing career and becoming independent, perhaps because she has been in this patriarchal system for too long and hence cannot really conceive of a world where she breaks away from the norms in order to live as an individual. At the end of the story we see her trying to return to her previous state of being a dutiful wife, sticking to her assigned role, because the last time she broke away from it hurt her too much as shown in the screenshot below (01:58:37).
Her dreaming of a compassionate relationship hurt her because for the first time in a very long time she felt emotions, which should have been reserved for her husband, and her feelings for another man went against the rules of society. She was finally living and the society punished her for it. Her independence and happiness with Amol was only an illusion of her stepping out of the emptiness and loneliness in her life. She was back again in her isolation as soon as the society, in this case exemplified by Bhupati and to some extent also by Amol who happens to be both a victim and an offender, realized that she was feeling desires she was not supposed to. Even though both Charu and Bhupati are hurt, Charu is the one who urges Bhupati to come back inside. We see her with her hand stretched out, almost in the way of a beggar who has no other option. According to Bhupati she is the one who made the mistake of loving someone else, not he who left her to live on her own, leaving her without a partner to have an intimate relationship with. Therefore she is the one who has to urge him to come back to their life before this disruption. At the end Charu is not able to leave the society nor her household. She is trapped, which is the opposite of what Ray and Tagore want us think what her condition should be: they want us to empathize with Charu and realize the tragic nature of her cage and thus want us to help her out of it.
However, it is not always very easy to understand how certain acts may reinforce the trap of society. Even the simple act of helping Charu stand up as shown in the screenshot (01:49:01) below can be seen as an example of how society reiterates the cage. Society poses as a beneficiary, in this case represented by Bhupati, who is interested in helping her, but is also the reason why she needs or thinks she needs his help to stand up. Society creates a relationship of dependence that places her in need of help she would not have otherwise needed. Society seduces the her into thinking that it is there for her benefit, that she needs it. Society does not always attack, it sometimes brainwashes too so that the individual internalizes the social values and does not question them. However, no matter how much this suppression is sugar coated, it is still there and it is harmful, maybe not in small cases where not much is at stake, but these small cases add up when the stakes are high into a powerful suppressive force and that is sometimes too late. Therefore, one must start weeding out these small gestures and weak forces of suppression in order to make a difference.
In this way, suppression seeps in the very way of living in India. Women are told to wear only Indian cloths such as saris and suits because they “reflect a woman’s culture and tradition and thus reduce the possibility of rape.”(Mail Online, 2014) One may say that clothing is not a big deal and even if a certain type of clothing imposed it should not harm women. However, this is done not only to regulate their clothing, but also to physically limit their mobility and ability. Because of the way saris are designed, they prove certain activities, for example riding a motorbike, very difficult. Saris in this way prevent women from undertaking roles that have traditionally been played by men. One may argue that some women like wearing saris and that it is not suppression, which is okay when women consciously chose to wear saris, but problematic when they are doing it because of what is ‘expected of them’ or because they are forced to do so implicitly or explicitly. These clothing regulations also represents the amount of control society has over women that it directs even this seemingly simple and unimportant act of covering oneself. These small suppressive acts lead to more violent and big actions, because once the society thinks it is okay to tell a woman what to wear, it is a smaller leap to tell her whom to marry, and from here a smaller leap to eliminate her from society if she does not cooperate.
An important tool for repressing women is the threat of honour killing: murdering one’s own people/family because they do not follow the same ideology. This threat is very real in the Indian society. Just recently there was a case about middle–class, educated parents killing their own daughter because she married someone of a different caste (BBC News, 2014). This shocking filicide shows the extremity of lengths people would go to in order to protect social and household norms. What is even more disturbing is the fact that the neighbours either had nothing to say or defended the parents; defended the murderers. Though nothing this extreme happens in Charulatta or Nashtanir, one can look at them to find inspiration for preventing such incidents. One way is creating empathy in people. Ray and Tagore both highlight the life of a women in times when feminism was not something people considered to be that important – in Tagore’s time because they were concerned with breaking free from the British, in Ray’s time because they were concerned with rebuilding India. They create empathy among the audience and the readers for Charu, and by extension women, by showing the hardships she goes through even when the society considers her to be well off. They try to create a place for the woman, for the individual by showing the perpetual battle she faces from the society and the household she lives in. They do not present empathy as a solution per se, but it is one they are trying to implement through the production and publication of this story. They are trying to get the society to empathise with its victim in order for the society to adapt itself in a way that is not as suppressive.
In conclusion, we need to encourage the society to empathize with women and thus not restrain and suppress them. We need to weed out even the small instances of patriarchy because they reinforce a very suffocating structure for women. For example, the initials of names of the three main characters form the first letters of the alphabet: A, B, and C. A is usually considered to be the top denotation and one would probably expect the protagonist get it. However, being a female, she does not get A, instead she gets the letter with the least important denotation in this case: C. So A goes to the next most important character: Amol. There is a notion of patriarchy even in the naming of the characters, showing how ingrained it is in the society. We should encourage and empower women to take up jobs so that they do not have to depend on someone who could exploit and suppress them for their survival. In the end, these all are just possible solutions and they all will not work in all cases. But, if they succeed in improving the life of even one person they are worth pursuing – because if humans won’t help humans then who will?
References
BBC News. (2014). Bhawna Yadav: Small dreams of Delhi 'honour killing' victim. Retrieved 3 December 2014, from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30141719
Mail Online. (2014). Legalisation of prostitution will help women in India. Retrieved 3 December 2014, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/article-2798508/legalisation-prostitution-help-protect-vulnerable-women-india.html
Ray, S. (Producer/Director). (1964). Charulata [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=853uBAau884
Ray, S. (Trans.). (2014). Three novellas. Rabindranath Tagore. (1901). Delhi, India: Oxford University Press. (pages 1-58).
[1] Honor Killing
In Nashtanir (1901) Tagore writes ‘…emerging she reassumed her worldly mask and rejoined the routine flow of daily life’ (Tagore, 49). This shows that Charu’s real persona is not worthy of the world and that it does not even matter to the society she lives in. What is important is that she has a mask that represents everything that society expects from a woman in her place. Her suppressed nature is present because that seems to be a safe way to ‘survive’ in the society and that is exactly what Charu does: survive, not live. Living does not seem to be a priority for the society and that is not good because if as humans we do not live, then what is the point of simply surviving, simply going through life as a corpse with feelings stuffed at the bottom because they are too ugly, too complicated to be allowed on the surface? This is why individual suppression needs to be eliminated, because humans deserve a chance to experience living not survival.
How can the woman break away from this tightly woven network? One solution could be to become self-sufficient. Charu does this by developing original content and style for her writing and getting her work published. Though she does this primarily to show that her superiority over Manda and to prove her literary worth to Amol, it also, for a short while, makes her independent. The screen shot (01:14:07) below shows the transition between conceptualizing an idea and seeing it in print. The image shows the untapped potential Charu had, which was probably repressed because of her living in a highly patriarchal society; it shows her potential flowing out because she decides to rise up to the challenges she faces in maintaining her relationship with Amol.
Getting published on her own is the proof of her individuality and her being someone who can depend on herself. When applied to the modern context her published writing is symbolic of a job or a profession, which could be one solution to empowering the individual: by working to sustain oneself so that one does not have to depend on the society and hence is not required to follow the same rules as the dependants. However, one could argue that she’s not getting paid for her writing and hence it doesn’t translate into a job. But, Charu getting published and getting appreciated by the critics shows potential for her as a professional writer and even earning money from her art. Also the critics recognize her as an individual not as someone’s wife or daughter, but as her. This recognition has the power to inspire strength in the individual to become self-sufficient though in this case it does not.
Disappointingly, Charu does not seem interested in pursuing her writing career and becoming independent, perhaps because she has been in this patriarchal system for too long and hence cannot really conceive of a world where she breaks away from the norms in order to live as an individual. At the end of the story we see her trying to return to her previous state of being a dutiful wife, sticking to her assigned role, because the last time she broke away from it hurt her too much as shown in the screenshot below (01:58:37).
Her dreaming of a compassionate relationship hurt her because for the first time in a very long time she felt emotions, which should have been reserved for her husband, and her feelings for another man went against the rules of society. She was finally living and the society punished her for it. Her independence and happiness with Amol was only an illusion of her stepping out of the emptiness and loneliness in her life. She was back again in her isolation as soon as the society, in this case exemplified by Bhupati and to some extent also by Amol who happens to be both a victim and an offender, realized that she was feeling desires she was not supposed to. Even though both Charu and Bhupati are hurt, Charu is the one who urges Bhupati to come back inside. We see her with her hand stretched out, almost in the way of a beggar who has no other option. According to Bhupati she is the one who made the mistake of loving someone else, not he who left her to live on her own, leaving her without a partner to have an intimate relationship with. Therefore she is the one who has to urge him to come back to their life before this disruption. At the end Charu is not able to leave the society nor her household. She is trapped, which is the opposite of what Ray and Tagore want us think what her condition should be: they want us to empathize with Charu and realize the tragic nature of her cage and thus want us to help her out of it.
However, it is not always very easy to understand how certain acts may reinforce the trap of society. Even the simple act of helping Charu stand up as shown in the screenshot (01:49:01) below can be seen as an example of how society reiterates the cage. Society poses as a beneficiary, in this case represented by Bhupati, who is interested in helping her, but is also the reason why she needs or thinks she needs his help to stand up. Society creates a relationship of dependence that places her in need of help she would not have otherwise needed. Society seduces the her into thinking that it is there for her benefit, that she needs it. Society does not always attack, it sometimes brainwashes too so that the individual internalizes the social values and does not question them. However, no matter how much this suppression is sugar coated, it is still there and it is harmful, maybe not in small cases where not much is at stake, but these small cases add up when the stakes are high into a powerful suppressive force and that is sometimes too late. Therefore, one must start weeding out these small gestures and weak forces of suppression in order to make a difference.
In this way, suppression seeps in the very way of living in India. Women are told to wear only Indian cloths such as saris and suits because they “reflect a woman’s culture and tradition and thus reduce the possibility of rape.”(Mail Online, 2014) One may say that clothing is not a big deal and even if a certain type of clothing imposed it should not harm women. However, this is done not only to regulate their clothing, but also to physically limit their mobility and ability. Because of the way saris are designed, they prove certain activities, for example riding a motorbike, very difficult. Saris in this way prevent women from undertaking roles that have traditionally been played by men. One may argue that some women like wearing saris and that it is not suppression, which is okay when women consciously chose to wear saris, but problematic when they are doing it because of what is ‘expected of them’ or because they are forced to do so implicitly or explicitly. These clothing regulations also represents the amount of control society has over women that it directs even this seemingly simple and unimportant act of covering oneself. These small suppressive acts lead to more violent and big actions, because once the society thinks it is okay to tell a woman what to wear, it is a smaller leap to tell her whom to marry, and from here a smaller leap to eliminate her from society if she does not cooperate.
An important tool for repressing women is the threat of honour killing: murdering one’s own people/family because they do not follow the same ideology. This threat is very real in the Indian society. Just recently there was a case about middle–class, educated parents killing their own daughter because she married someone of a different caste (BBC News, 2014). This shocking filicide shows the extremity of lengths people would go to in order to protect social and household norms. What is even more disturbing is the fact that the neighbours either had nothing to say or defended the parents; defended the murderers. Though nothing this extreme happens in Charulatta or Nashtanir, one can look at them to find inspiration for preventing such incidents. One way is creating empathy in people. Ray and Tagore both highlight the life of a women in times when feminism was not something people considered to be that important – in Tagore’s time because they were concerned with breaking free from the British, in Ray’s time because they were concerned with rebuilding India. They create empathy among the audience and the readers for Charu, and by extension women, by showing the hardships she goes through even when the society considers her to be well off. They try to create a place for the woman, for the individual by showing the perpetual battle she faces from the society and the household she lives in. They do not present empathy as a solution per se, but it is one they are trying to implement through the production and publication of this story. They are trying to get the society to empathise with its victim in order for the society to adapt itself in a way that is not as suppressive.
In conclusion, we need to encourage the society to empathize with women and thus not restrain and suppress them. We need to weed out even the small instances of patriarchy because they reinforce a very suffocating structure for women. For example, the initials of names of the three main characters form the first letters of the alphabet: A, B, and C. A is usually considered to be the top denotation and one would probably expect the protagonist get it. However, being a female, she does not get A, instead she gets the letter with the least important denotation in this case: C. So A goes to the next most important character: Amol. There is a notion of patriarchy even in the naming of the characters, showing how ingrained it is in the society. We should encourage and empower women to take up jobs so that they do not have to depend on someone who could exploit and suppress them for their survival. In the end, these all are just possible solutions and they all will not work in all cases. But, if they succeed in improving the life of even one person they are worth pursuing – because if humans won’t help humans then who will?
References
BBC News. (2014). Bhawna Yadav: Small dreams of Delhi 'honour killing' victim. Retrieved 3 December 2014, from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-30141719
Mail Online. (2014). Legalisation of prostitution will help women in India. Retrieved 3 December 2014, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/article-2798508/legalisation-prostitution-help-protect-vulnerable-women-india.html
Ray, S. (Producer/Director). (1964). Charulata [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=853uBAau884
Ray, S. (Trans.). (2014). Three novellas. Rabindranath Tagore. (1901). Delhi, India: Oxford University Press. (pages 1-58).
[1] Honor Killing
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