POLARITY IN FEMALE PSYCHE:
BURROWING IN THE MYSTERY
in
“Silence the Court is in Session”
Hemang Desai
“The conscious mind is based upon and
results from an
unconscious psyche which is prior to
consciousness and
continues to function together with or despite
consciousness”1
The dictum from C.G. Jung’s well
known book “The Integration of the Personality” furnished the punctilious
reader with a satisfactory answer to the apparently weird behavioral in the
character of Benare, the heroine of Vijay Tendulkar’s well- acclaimed play
“Silence the Court is in Session”, whose exhibition of diametrically diverse
and discordant demeanor prompts the audience to doubt the bona fide of her
predicament. But as a matter of fact, the apparent dichotomy actuating Benare to
indulge in reactive contradictions is itself an inevitable corollary of the age
old conditioning of every women’s psyche into the matrix of lopsided patriarchal
discourse, as a result of which patriarchal mode of cerebration has sunk into
her unconscious, indubitably shaping her reactions and conscious responses to a
particular situation in a determinate fashion, even if she wished them to be
otherwise. In his play, Vijay Tendulkar has unerringly presented a microcosm of
the generic reality of female psyche by dramatizing the cognitive dissonance
overtaking a native and gregarious girl, who quite naturally displays a train
of polar, emotional and behavioral
reactions, as diverse as remonstration and supplication, fulmination and
succumbing, repugnance and unctuousness, reprobation and acquiescence, when she
is subpoenaed as a convict in the chauvinistic
court of law in contravention of the moral code meant strictly for women and
entrenched by sanctimonious tradition redolent of male chicanery.
The opening of the play witnesses the
apparition of a bold and a desperate Benare, who with a view to cozen the
docile villager Samant in a prospective romance (and
perhaps marriage) quite uninhibitedly makes audacious and amatory overtures to
him. This and many other examples reiterate the fact of Benare’s being
inconsistent, freaky and illogical in her behaviour. Several initial
performances of the play were ensued by a hue and cry against the sudden
reversal in the attitude of the protagonist, from that of precocious brashness
at the beginning to servile submission at the end. The accommodation of
characteristics like meekness, flaccidity and flippancy to the vignette of
Benare who, in the first half of the play, is a law unto her self and who by
the dint of her unyielding self-assurance and intellectual articulation
vanquishes every barb at her kudos, appears a bit improbable and incompatible
with aesthetic coherence and virtuosity of characterization. The fact which
keeps on nettling the credibility of the audience is the total failure of
Benare to put up a brave front and to exhibit tenacious resoluteness to give
birth to her offspring, though illegitimate in the face cacophony of the
votaries of habitudes and customs. This seems a plausible objection a t a surface
examination in as much as until the end of the second act, Benare etches an
image of being a maverick woman, single-handedly turning her litigants’ flank
by the sleight of her truculence and intelligence, which are both unusual and
impressive. Her reclusive immiscibility outsmarting eloquence and the way of
repudiating the rapier-thrusts of her assailants evinces and establishes her
intellectual superiority over others. But from the end of the second act her
intractability and determination are suddenly mollified into docility and courteous
subservience to her encroachers, leading her to mutely accept the invalidity of
verdict on her, for the perpetration of the unpardonable crime. The sentence
meted out to her is savage: the infant in her womb must be destroyed: she must
lose her teaching job, her only source of livelihood.2 That Benare
silently obeys the verdict is expressed symbolically by Tendulkar in the
narration of her condition at the end of the play.
“Benare
feebly stirs a little. Then gives up the effort. The bright green-cloth parrot
is near her” (78)
The
green cloth parrot is a symbol of the foetus taking human shape in her womb.
But she would be losing in the due course of time in deference to the
enjoinment of the fustian value-holders of society. An average reader does not
have a right to disdain the lack of charisma and unflinching steadfastness in
Benare, but a verily perceptive reader
would, in act, sympathize with Benare and felicitate Tendulkar for his acuity
in the cognition as well as effectual rendering of Benare’s psyche in
particular and that of womankind in general. Quoting Betty Friedan
here would definitely throw explanatory light on the problem.
“There
was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our life as woman and the
image to which we were trying to conform, the image that I came to call the
feminine mystique”3
In
her proclivity to take every odious humiliation lying down, Benare conform to
the image of feminine mystique. Her initial assumption of unyielding frame of
mind and her hardliner responses are nothing but the subversive protests of the
weak and the marginalized. In fact her personality has been shaped by her
feminine experiences in the patriarchal society and more importantly by the
experiences of her predecessors of the same species, which has inculcated in
her a sense of inevitable conformity to the patriarchal discourse. The reason
for apparent contrariness in her lies in her unconscious which is incessantly
functioning and conditioning her responses. Her adoption of flirtatious posture
has got explanation in her inveterate belief that maternity outside wedlock is
deemed abysmal from the social standpoint and that it can be legitimized only
by trapping a man in the bond of espousal, irrespective of her lowbrow ness and
crudity. Her state of mind is dissected and analyzed with mathematical accuracy
by Tendulkar in her soliloquy in the third act where she says that her son,
“…must
have a mother…a father to call his own – a house to be looked after…he must
have a good name.” (75)
Thus
what rouses Benare to beg for alms of marriage to Samant
and the other men present, as is sworn by them during the trial, is not
actually concupiscence or footloose waywardness but her motherly sensitivity
and her anxiety for the well- being of her offspring, her consciousness that a
little lisping bud of unlawful maternity would never be conceded effervescence
in the garden of insensate rocks. On the other hand, her instantaneous
withdrawal springs from her intrinsic fear of undergoing caustic castigation,
in case her infringement gets publicized prior to or after her marriage. Here Tendulkar
has, with masterly skill, used the dramatic technique of split personality,
which has enabled him to show the schism yawning between the rifted heart
of Benare, one half of which is fraught
with abhorrence of her wrongdoers and the other conversely ingratiating the
same entities for succor. The oscillation of rebellious and
relinquishing feelings in Benare’s heart instantiate the pathetic condition of
woman in male-oriented and male-dominated society.
Let us peep into the past of her life
in order to gauge the forces and factors, which contributed to the formation of
her present self. Benare is portrayed as an epicurean, possessing an uncompromising
independence of spirit and natural alacrity for the fullness of living. We get
an idea of her modus vivendi
when we hear her statements like,
“We
should laugh, we should play, we should sing…shouldn’t have any false modesty
or dignity. Or care for anyone! I mean it. When your life is over do you think
anyone will give a bit of theirs?” (8)
The
gravest of the grave crime that she is said to have committed is that she has
indiscreetly ventured into pure love twice, formerly without endeavouring to
know the name of their relationship and later without caring to give the
relationship a name. In fact, if we get down to the bed-rock of her
temperament, we would realize that the stretch pf her life following her age of
recognition was punctuated by a ceaseless hungering for a cozy and love-laden
life, enshrouded by tepidity of emotion, mutual understanding and wholesome
affection. Her fantastic desire is verbalized in her comment upon the
relationship of the Kashikars,
“…they
are both so full of life! I mean Mr. Kashikar buys
garlands for Mrs. Kashikar. Mrs. Kashikar
buys readymade bush shirts for Mr. Kashikar… it
really makes one feel nice to see it.” (12)
This
spontaneous joie de vivre drove her to get enmeshed in liaison with a maternal
uncle who came close to her in the prime of her unfolding youth. Extolling her
blossoming pulchritude to the sky and giving her fervid love. She recalls her naiveté:
“How
was I to know that if you feel like breaking yourself into bits and melting
into one with someone-if you feel that just being with him gave a whole meaning
to life- and if he was your uncle, it was a sin! Why,
I was hardly fourteen!” (74)
she insisted on marriage so that she
could live her “beautiful dreams openly”. But how can this be
carried out in a blindly conservative society when her brave man turned tail
and ran away. Out of sheer disconcertation she attempted to embrace death in
order to obviate the stigma gradually ravaging her conscience, but the luring
arms of life once again beckoned her. Life instinct preponderated over death
wish and it did not take her resurgent spirit long to sway her once again into
an appreciably sacrosanct love relationship tantamount to worship of her
‘intellectual god’, Prof. Damle. She offered her body
on the altar of her worship but much to her chagrin her lord took the offering
and went his way after inseminating budding life in her.
“He
didn’t want my mind or my devotion, he didn’t care about them. He wasn’t a god.
He was a man. For whom everything was of the body, for the body. That’s all.”
(75)
Thus Damle
turns out to be a lascivious wolf, masqueraded as human being whose squall of
desire washes away the honour and self-respect of poor Benare. And it is in
appreciation her silent suffering and her demure reluctance to fabricate
spurious stories to make circumstances operate in her favour and of her firm
resolve to sanguinely walk down the thoroughfare of future that she is saddled
with inordinate penance. The irony of her life is that in spite of despising
her body she could not reject it and in spite of loving it she couldn’t accept
it. It would definitely strike the mind of the discretionary that in bith the cases, Benare, a woman, is held responsible for
the conjointly perpetrated act of social trespass, while male counter-parts are
allowed to get away scot-free and further gallivant with impunity. The
submissive stance that she has adopted is the result of the age-old
conditioning which women have interminably undergone and which has now assumed statutory
gravity in that, now the women have indubitably come to believe in the
axiomatic significance gender-based hierarchy and hegemony.
Right from the post-Vedic age women
have been undergoing unremitting persuasion to fish out her wellbeing under the
tutelage of men, the mascots of their life, capable of charting out the itinerary
of their definite salvation, as is echoed in the verse an Indian woman would
recite at the first step of Saptapadi. The sage Manu
has also commoditized the status of women, imparting her secondary importance
on the score of her utility to the male which ultimately boils down to
procreation and bringing up children.
“Procreation,
upbringing the progeny and following the rituals if life, are directly
contingent upon women.”4 (Manusmriti 9/27)
Even
a sapient like Kalidasa and his followers have
bestowed upon women the status of a minor who is constantly required to magnify
the competence and massage the ego of men at the same time diminishing her
skills and dissatisfaction with her status. In Abhijnanasakuntala, the
didacticism of Kanva is revealing.
“…Do
not comport in obstinate manner towards your husband, in a fit of anger, even
if he insults you…”5 (Abhijnanasakuntala 4/20)
Thus the line of demarcation between
a woman and a marionette disappeared in the course of several ages and they
became supplementary appendages to the lives of men, chock-a-block with
activity, goals and destinations all of which became ignis fatuus for the woman. Deprived of the
right of autonomy and self-governance, of scopes and opportunities for
development, she came to discover the significance of her life in cultivating
herself, pursuant to the expectations, aspirations and decrees of men. All the
above-quote injunctions and many more have egregiously steered the woman to
deem the unconscionable effigy caved out for her role as definitive and
irrevocably correct. The impression has been so deeply engraved upon her mind
that she literally fails to give her desire for remonstration a sharp edge of
action even after taking umbrage at patriarchal discriminations: in fact it
quite unwittingly casts her into the mould, congruent with masculine criteria.
As result of the impersonation of female psyche, the quintessential nature of
the woman still borders on tenterhooks. Elizabeth Cady rightly remarked,
“Thus
far women have been mere echoes of men. Our laws and constitution, our creeds
and codes and customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true
woman is yet a dream of future.”6
Works Cited:
1. Jung Carl G., The Integration of the Personality, Lowe and Brudon
Printers Ltd.,
2. Mehta Kumud, Quoted in
Introduction of Silence! The court is in
session, OUP:
3. Friedan Betty, the feminine Mystique, Penguine Books, Harmondsworth, 1971
4. Manu, Manusmriti, rev. ed. 1993, Shri Hariharan
Pustakalaya
5. Kalidasa, Abhijnanasakuntala, ed. by M.R.
Kale, Motilal Banarasidas
Publishers,
6. Cady
Published in “Reflections” Jan-July issue, 2003.