Home and Confinement in Tagore: a Feministic Appraisal
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KCG-Portal of Journals Continuous Issue-45 | June– July 2020 Home and Confinement in Tagore: A Feministic Appraisal Abstract The writer who fights for the socio-political rights of women is termed feminist. It’s true that male authors have a subtle feminine sensibility that emerges out of their humane attitude towards the needs and desires of the women, co-inhabitants of the planet and great writers transcend the barriers of race, gender or class to achieve a greater artistic effect and to realize the role of literature. Critics argue that Tagore was a landlord occupying his authoritative place over the boat Padma as he ruled over peasants and workers of his vast feudal estate. He’s also termed a feminist for raising alarm against issues of dowry, child marriage and love or arranged marriage etc. His love and concern towards the females of his family – sisters-in-law, wife, mother and daughters could have shaped this finer sensibility which he internalised and relocated as an artistic empathy towards the women of his country. There are easily discernible instances of cultural practices followed by Brahmins or other communities of Bengal in his works yet such descriptions cannot belittle the greatness of an author of his stature. The present paper aims to underline that he was a true mahrishi who believed in granting equality to both the sexes. He lays bare the threads that weave men-women relationships. Pained to witness the maltreatment meted out to women, he paved the stage for reform in a unique way through his writings. Tagore’s short stories have been analyzed for the purpose of this paper. The study is limited in ignoring certain other aspects presented through his poetry, novels, letters and essays. The paper makes a thematic analysis of the content and omits the scrutiny of certain natural symbols like river, rain, light, shadow and local flora. Keywords: Feminine, oppression, subjugation, nationalist, difference, domesticity. An author has an essentialist purpose of showcasing the world in its reality and to give vent to some dominant impulses shaped by his/her ideology. With every progressive author, the ideology is in a state of flux. The propositions get continually modified with the ripening years of an author and few even deviate significantly from the views held dear earlier. Great works are produced when the conscious effort, subconscious impulses and unconscious collective wisdom stored in deeper labyrinths float together at one surface level to lend unity and harmony to a work of art. Great artists have a sensibility too refined to be cast in narrow moulds of race, religion, caste or gender. Their human endeavour enriched with superb imagination and subtle observations transcends the physical boundaries of time and space to make their experience universal and eternal regardless of the mortal confines of biological or cultural segregations. Feminists or the people with political repercussions to secure certain rights for the biologically determined and socio-culturally established woman in the rubrics of gender stereotypes strove hard to read between the lines and therefore undermined the aesthetics in the oeuvre of great litterateurs. With the advent of Millet’s Sexual Politics and with an upsurge in psycho-analytical re-readings of literature, many masters fell from high pedestal for misogynist or sexist portrayals and their gendered narratives lost the sacred spaces on the literary shelves not for their path 1 | P a g e KCG-Portal of Journals breaking efforts or figurative language but for [mis]representation of women in line with the demands of patriarchal culture or an audience of educated gentlemen. The colonial powers in Europe that boasted of one shelf worthier than the whole of oriental literature put together; that promoted the study of English - - the superior dialect of masters to rule over natives under the garb of enlightenment and that which tailored the tongue of natives to spit out venom against indigenous culture or equipped their minds for a comparative outlook, propagated the idea of hierarchical superiority of men and relegated a lower derogatory status to women. The use of native women bodies to heap insults on their laborious or chivalrous men, to subdue their masculinity to hard labour for the fear of shame, to suppress any uprising of revolt that can uproot their honour was an easy weapon with the rulers and whipped bloody scars on their bodies that went much deeper than epidermis. Whatever be the mode of oppression, it took different course in varied cultures and climes inspired by the nationalist discourse and fuelled by the cultural idiom. This branching off into Black, Lesbian, Third World or Eco-feministic discourse put a serious jolt on the main tenets of feminism and the conservative demands of separate identities and individual solutions created wider rifts among the theorists. Amidst this chaos, the aesthetic beauty of classics, offers ointment to the wounds ripped apart by different knives each claiming its separate share. Before feminism could assume disparate shapes and niches, the cultural regeneration from the colonial past of oppression was exercised by the reformists and the nationalists. Indian cultural enigma kept the woman within four walls of the house for whom liberation was a distant reality. Burdened by social evils and barbarous customs, she was rather objectified as a commodity readily available for exchange. Polygamy further accentuated her subjugation. In the pre-independence era, Indian women were never conscious of their rights and were not even provocative at their subjugation at the hands of the society. The behaviour was attributed to the sacred figurines in religious texts- - pure embodiments of chastity, virginity, sacrifice and meek obedience. The society cared to nurture this ethos at a tender age through its institutions of family and marriage. Going abroad for higher education especially in medicine and law was an exclusive right for affluent men whose wives and mothers devoted themselves entirely to the educational pursuits of their husband curbing all impediments and then bore the alienated selves on their return from foreign lands with all their idiosyncrasies and hatred of local customs and traditions. This all was accentuated by the fact that during nationalistic revival of Indian classics, utmost care was taken to present a model of ideal femininity to Indian women that was based on classical heroines—the embodiments of virtues. It was an attempt to discourage them from following western ways. In Calcutta, during the establishment of playhouses and revival of puranic culture in 18th century, many playwrights composed and popularised works where chastity was the supreme ornament for women. We must not ignore at the same time that women had a secondary place in works that magnanimously outlaid the heroic adventures of pious and brave kings or mythic figures. Parineeta, Viraj Bahu, Binodini were later additions making up the world of ordinary women in Bengal. Over the backdrop of national upheaval amidst cultural hybridity, thinkers like Gandhi, Vivekananda, Bankim Chander, Tagore, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and others were struggling to ameliorate the condition of women. Tagore, as Bose, A (1983), reflects was rarely didactic in his stories. He wrote tales centred on ideas, used words like a lyricist and was sensitive to what remained unsaid. She continues to point out that his were not ‘sob stories’ but were meant to explore social evils. Certainly, Tagore was a writer par excellence. Extremely naturalist, he sings with nature and praises earth in all its beauty and reflected on the agonies arising out of social fabric out of polemics of race, class and caste divisions. Nourishing his mother tongue and people like the waters of the beloved rivers of his motherland, he only exposed the truths deposited at 2 | P a g e KCG-Portal of Journals the bottom in the silt over a long history of oppression and subjugation and brought to the shores dead and decayed customs of orthodoxy to ensure rejuvenation into tender bamboo shoots under favourable conditions and circumstances. Morris, P (1993) quotes Anne Stevenson that ‘a good writer’s imagination should be bi-sexual or trans-sexual’ (94). Tagore is a living testimony to that. His consciousness is not masculine or feminine but humane pained at the seething tales of injustice and oppression. It’s believed that the ‘images of women in male-authored texts may offer an evidence of a failure of power and of areas of insecurity in men’s control of representation’ (Morris, 16). While highlighting the flaws or the negative portrayals by Spenser, Milton, Dickens, Shakespeare etc., she stresses that such ‘opposition and difference’ being the basis of ‘gender identity’ also ‘encourages the impulses in both sexes for hierarchy, competitiveness, aggression and domination’ (6). Rabindranath, well versed in Western classics and ancient texts felt the liberating impulse of the west but felt contentment in the great pull of Indian thought, its spiritual healing powers and above all philanthropy and all-encompassing tolerance. In his essay ‘Women and Home’, he tries to bridge the dichotomy between the sexes created by Western thought while assigning separate functions to both and demanding sacrifice and extreme filial adoration from the woman. Being critical of the men of his age, the blind followers of material pursuits like their colonial masters changing their lifestyles from a rustic one in close proximity with nature to the bourgeoisie urban life marvelling over hotels, pipes, guns and gambling clubs, he believed that ‘the material ambition of man has assumed such colossal proportions that home is in danger of losing its centre of gravity for him’ (scroll.in). Therefore, the responsibility of establishing this filial harmony rests with the woman who should react and rebel for restoration of peace and not assume equality with men like her western counterparts.