Gender Studies - Page 10

Mahesh Dattani’s Dance Like a Man: A Depiction of the Trials and Tribulations of an Androgynous Personality

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Chhavi1 & Rajiv Bhushan2

 1National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur, Hostel- b NIT Jamshedpur – 831014, choudharychhavi06@gmail.com, 0000-0002-2044-0172

2National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur, Associate Professor Department of HSSM Jamshedpur – 831014 India, rbhushan.hum@nitjsr.ac.in, 0000-0002-3646-2181

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s11n2

Abstract

Mahesh Dattani is one of the leading Indian dramatists who responded to the problems of sexuality on the canvass of Indian theatre. He examined various facets of subjugation and marginalization rampant in Indian society. His plays focus on the sub-urban Hindu family and its trifle with gender and alternate sexuality. His plots revolve around the damaging implications of patriarchal constructs and his characters strive for liberty and self-satisfaction beneath hegemonic masculinity, compulsive heteronormativity and prejudiced cultural domain. Regarding his famous play Dance Like a Man, this paper critically examines the existing socio-cultural domain which practices politics of exclusion of androgynous identities behind the façade of peacefully cohabiting heterosexual Indian family and shows how Dattani, has remarkably countered the presentation of the polarized association of gender roles with conventional practice through performance of his protagonist. Set against the backdrop of patriarchal mindset, this paper delineates that the victim of patriarchal norms is not a woman but a man, who has traits of androgyny. It gives a brief account to highlight the significance of androgyny and portrays how androgyny is directly proportional to creativity. It elucidates how androgynous men undergo searing experiences of stigma and social untouchability in a traditional setup and how patriarchal norms reinforce dominant powers of society to stunt the growth of their personality.

Keywords: Androgyny, Creativity, Exclusion, Hegemonic masculinity, Patriarchal norms.

Redefined Families and Subsystems: Reading Kinship and Hierarchical Structures in Select Hijra Autobiographies

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Tanupriya

Assistant Professor, Department of Languages, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Christ (Deemed to be University), Delhi NCR, E-mail: tanupriya@christuniversity.in

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s11n1

Abstract

Hijras or transwomen in India are gendered identities, but their identities cannot be reduced to the conceptual framework and analysis of ‘sex’, ‘gender’ and ‘sexuality’. Being the minority in India, transgender lives intersect with caste, class, kinship and hierarchy. The study locates these intersections within the scope of the select hijra autobiographies; The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story by A. Revathi and I am Vidya by Vidya. The study looks at the notions of ‘family’ which are traditionally woven in heteronormative and patriarchal setups. It examines the gharanas system or subsystems in hijra communities that redefines the structures and hierarchies of the family, and designating the fellow elder hijras with the relation of mata (mother) and cela (disciple), thus forming a kinship which is located beyond the caste, class and religious structures. The emphasis is to study how families are inserted in heteronormative perspectives and argues a redefining of the notion of ‘family’,and to establish and recognize the newer perspectives on ‘family’ which lies outside the traditional setup.

Keywords: Caste, Class, Family, Subsystems

Understanding the Gender Biases in Modern and Pre-modern Times through Mricchakatika and Utsav

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Prabha Shankar Dwivedi1 and Priyanka Tripathi2

1Assistant Professor of English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati. prabhas.dwivedi@iittp.ac.in

2Associate Professor of English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Patna. priyankatripathi@iitp.ac.in

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.17c

Abstract

Gender Bias is a phenomenon that strengthens in India as a result of personal values and perception, traditionally assigned roles on the basis of sex and regressive ideologies deeply entrenched in patriarchy. Vasantasen? is the protagonist of the M?cchaka?ika of ??draka, a classical Indian masterpiece written in c. 350 BCE which was later adapted into a Hindi film–Utsav (1985) written and directed by Girish Karnad. Despite being an adaptation, in its filmy avatar, Karnad denies Vasantasen? love and respect due to her profession and resorts to endorsing the conventional whereas in the original text she is a respectable woman. The article offers a comparative study of the treatment given to courtesans in general and reflects upon their complex realities by comparing the treatment of an Indian courtesan of two historically apart periods.

Keywords: Gender Bias; Courtesan; Film Adaptation; Patriarchy; Culture

The ‘Beshya’ and the ‘Bahu’: Re-Reading Fakir Mohan Senapati’s “Patent Medicine”

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P. Dalai1 & Dhriti Ray Dalai2

1Associate Professor, Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University, India. ORCID: 0000-0002-6497-6091. Email: p.dalai10@bhu.ac.in

2Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University, India. ORCID: 0000-0002-7066-7578. Email: dhriti.dalai10@bhu.ac.in

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.07

Abstract

Similar to the peasantry, the tribal, the working women, the housewives, and all of those of the 19th century who engaged the attention of subaltern historians and Marxists, the prostitutes too merit critical attention and space in literary discourse. A number of Bengali texts throughout the 19th century had contributed in disseminating the image of the prostitute as the other of the good woman. We, in the course of this paper, focus instead on the early twentieth century and on Fakir Mohan Senapati and his epochal story, “Patent Medicine” that typified this societal understanding in the Bengal province, of which, Orissa was a part. The paper undertakes a hermeneutical attempt to unravel the unexplored aspects of sexuality, feudalism, patriarchy, domesticity and toxic masculinity.

Keywords: Patent Medicine, Prostitutes, Patriarchy, Odia Literature, Bengal Province, Feminism, Gyno-space,Toxic Masculinity

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Negotiating Masculine Circles: Female Agency in Aphra Behn’s Work

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Arifa Ghani Rahman
Associate Professor, Department of English and Humanities, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. ORCID: 0000-0003-1165-2541. Email: arifa.rahman@ulab.edu.bd

 Volume 12, Number 4, July-September, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n4.03

Abstract

In her works, Aphra Behn examines the possibilities of female agency in a patriarchal world. This paper begins by contextualizing Behn’s work within the male literary tradition in which she wrote to understand the place of female agency. Her play The Rover is closely examined to show this agency in heterosexual relationships and its connection to money and parental/patriarchal authority. The paper also analyzes the interrelationship between subjects and objects of desire. The use of masks in the play as instruments that accord temporary liberation or empowerment is discussed, and the paper questions whether female agency in Behn’s world is real or merely assumed. A poem is also examined to reinforce the conclusion which suggests that, despite empowerment in various forms, female agency is ultimately only temporary. However, the paper also questions whether Behn had ulterior motives in presenting female agency as unsustainable.

Keywords: Female agency, Empowerment, Objects of desire, Masks, Masculine

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Postcolonial Queer Dimension of Travel in the Goopi-Bagha Trilogy of Films

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Koushik Mondal

Ph.D, Independent Researcher. ORCID: 0000-0002-9003-3433. Email: itsme.onlykoushik@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.41

 Abstract

European genre of travel writing is guided by an “ethnographic impulse” which constructed India as an exotic space. Neglecting the country’s vast complex and liberal culture, the European travel narratives about India focused on certain negative aspects like ignorance, women subordination, casteism, and religious conflict to construct India as a primitive and exotic space, an excuse for colonialism. In contrast to these the British presented themselves as civilised, rational, masculine and enterprising. Resisting these definitive absolutes, postcolonial travel writers challenge the construction of India in terms of exotic barbarity. Goopi-Bagha trilogy (Satyajit Ray’s Goopi Gyne Bagha Byne (Adventures of Goopi and Bagha, 1969), Hirak Rajar Deshe (The Kingdom of Diamond, 1980) and his son Sandip Ray’s Goopi Bagha Phire  Elo (The Return of Goopi and Bagha, 1992)), though primarily children’s fantasy films, uses the motif of travel to challenge the Orientalising gaze of the European travel narratives. The scholastic seriousness of the realistic genre is parodied in a carnivalesque spirit through the fantastic mode of children’s films. The films not only question the ‘ethnographic impulse’ of constructing India as irrational and uncivilised but also dismiss the tropes of exoticism exposing India’s complex and rich culture and focusing on its scenic beauty. While European travel narratives are the story of exploitation of nature, of discovery and conquest, in these films the two friends Goopi, Bagha travel only to enjoy and wonder at nature’s unconquerable spirit. Presenting two lower caste effeminate men in the guise of travellers, the films unsettle the masculine aura of adventure, associated with this imperial genre. Travel provides them not only the opportunity to enjoy nature and express a concern for the marginalised, but also the scope to move beyond the carceral gaze of heteronormativity and enjoy their homoeroticism. Thus travel becomes the means to unsettle the heteronormative paradigm of knowledge and relation which was consolidated by the British colonisers in India through mediums like travel literature. Using the destabilising effect of postcolonial queer theory, this paper explores how the films not only resist the Oriental construction of India as an ‘exotic other’, but also how the motif of travel is used to contest the ideas of colonial modernity, of power and marginality.

Keywords: Travel, Exoticism, Postcolonial, Masculine, Queer

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A Journey of Exploration and Reconstruction of the Feminine Self: Reading Shivya Nath’s The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World (2018)

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Akshita Chotia

Research Scholar, Department of English and Modern European Languages, Banasthali University, Rajasthan. Email: akshitasharma0023@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 3, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n3.34

Abstract

The contemporary philosophical, intellectual and literary plentitudes aver the fact that travel literature deals with the discourse of identity. Travel records our temporal and spatial progress. It throws light on how one is defined and identified. Many critical texts on travel writing have explored the transcendental world of the journey of the human self. Further, there have been some critical theorists from India as well who have also examined the uncanny nature of journey and therefore the journey in the outside world is represented as a metaphor of the journey of the internal world. In addition, there have been some Indian women writers who have explored the complex terrain of journey that a woman undertakes and through the process they explore themselves. The present paper intends to explore the journey from an existential crisis to the growth of the woman self in the book The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World (2018) by Shivya Nath. The vivid descriptions, moving encounters and the uplifting adventures of an Indian woman which are depicted in the book, map not only the world but also the human spirit. The study intends to apply the basic arguments of female bildungsroman and theory of self for understanding the process of growth and development as far as the life of the protagonist is concerned.

Keywords: identity crisis, exploration of the woman self, female bildungsroman, travel literature

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Women and Cultural Transformation: The Politics of Representation in the Novels of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay

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Sudip Roy Choudhury

Ph.D Research Scholar, Raiganj University, West Bengal, India. Orcid: 0000-0003-4833-7975. Email id: sudiproychoudhury60@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.07

 Abstract

This paper begins by arguing that Bankimchandra, a pioneering novelist and nationalist thinker of India, sought to contain the nineteenth century ‘woman question’ within his nationalist project of ‘cultural transformation’. But this nationalist ideal is based on a gendered differentiation of the nation-culture into spiritual and material which has a far reaching implication in terms of his novelistic re-presentation of the nineteenth century ‘woman question’ and the ‘hierarchical inclusion’ of women in the political space of the nation. Hence, by contextualizing the works of Bankimchandra in a time of colonial encounter the present paper aims to bring out the complexities and paradoxes inherent in Bankimchandra’s formation of the strategy of re-presentation of women and reform in several of his novels.

Keywords: Colonial encounter, cultural transformation, nationalist consciousness, gender, social reform.

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Gender Gap among the BPL Households of Tea Gardens and Villages of Dibrugarh District of Assam

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Bidisha Mahanta

Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, DoomDooma College. Email: sonmoni_mahanta@yahoo.co.in

 Volume 12, Number 1, January-March, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n1.26

Abstract

The present paper aims to analyse the status of gender gap among the BPL households of Panitola Block of Dibrugarh District of Assam. The target households are divided into two groups –village and tea gardens and then compared the gender gap status of the two groups using indicators like education, employment, political participation, household decision making and attitude towards unequal gender role. The study reveals that gender gap exists in areas like education and employment. However gaps in educational attainment and employment are more in village households as compared to tea garden households. In household decision making also gender gap exists and it is more prominent in tea garden. However in regard of political empowerment, not a single person of the study area is a member of even the Gaon Panchayat. So their political empowerment is analyzed through their participation in political process merely by casting vote. All the respondents from the study area show negative attitude towards unequal gender role and reported that they do not support wife beating and  treat both male and female child equally. From the study we have found that tea garden women are more empowered than village women as less gender gap prevails in tea garden as compared to village.

Keywords: BPL, Village, tea garden, Gender gap, Gender disparity

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