Female psychology in Mahasweta devi’s short stories

Introduction :
Mahasweta Devi has been a prominent figure in Bangla Literature. Often considered to
be a spokes person of tribal and dalit communities, she is also concerned with the peripheral
existence of women of Bengal within social, political and economic nexus. Woman has always
been dominated by man, be it in matters of socio-economic autonomy or cultural rights. In her
stories, Devi examines socio-economic and political factors responsible to create caste, class
and gender discrimination and exploitation of the marginalized. Devi’s stories speak of this
unspeakable truth of women’s misery and their power for enduring and resistance. Mahasweta
gives voice to the characters. She speaks the ‘unspeakable’ truth of these characters.

“I think a creative writer should have a social conscience. I have a duty towards society…. I ask
myself this question a thousand times: Have I done what I could have done?”
- (Mahasweta Devi’s interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak).

Less of a feminist and more of a humanist, Mahasweta claims that a woman should be judged
as a human and not from the point of view of gender, race, caste and class. Mahasweta Devi’s
stories expose all sorts of exploitations and oppressions that prevail in the post-independent
Feudal society. She takes to task all those exploiting agencies who are responsible for the
existence of the neo-colonial situation in the country. Women are born free, but everywhere
they are found in chains in our society. They are considered as inferior human beings and are
always looked down upon. For ages, they have been crushed under the grinding stone of a
male-dominated society. A woman is not as free and secure as a man. She has been a victim of
both physical and psychological affliction. She is considered frail and fragile. Since ancient
times, man has acquired and occupied the superior status, leaving the woman as the inferior in
the society.

As a social activist with an acute sense of Indian history Mahasweta devi has
interrogated into the intersection of a politics ,gender and class . She is incessantly engaged in
portraying the inner lives of the tribel communities and landless labourers in her novels and
short stories. Her powerful and hunting tales and exploitation and struggle offer us a rich site of
feminist discourse.
Objectives of the study :
The following is the main objectives of the present study-
1. To understand the mindset of the female characters.
2. To understand the female identities in a male-dominated society.
3. To understand how to overcome the oppression of a predominately patriarchal
society.
Methodology :
My research is based on descriptive and analytical method, with the help of primary
source I use “The breast stories” and for secondary sources I use the internet, ebooks and also
some library resources.

Analysis :
Mahasweta Devi explicates the problems of women and the misery they undergo in a
male-dominated society and presents them in her works. In her works she has dealt with the
plight of women and their subordination. Her writing has little to do with the insignificant
everyday eccentricities of the privileged; she avoids the needless or the unnecessary. In her
matter-of-fact no-rhetoric writing one sees no romanticism in the plight of women who are
most directly and drastically affected by the patriarchy. Her characters are from the bottom of
the socio-economic class; they are real, multi-dimensional, and well-formed.

As Devy Ganesh remarks about Mahasweta Devi:

she has a strange ability to communicate with the silenced, her best speech reserved for
those to whom no one has spoken. She is taken as a rare creative writer in bringing the
challenging stories from the unheard groups. Mahasweta’s story represents a feminist literary
appropriation. With her book, Breast Stories, Mahasweta Devi, as an Indian intellectual, came
to be known for her feminist position. The stories, written by Mahasweta Devi, represent the
real context of female existence. The voiceless figure of the female has her own consciousness
that grows along with her stories.

Breast Stories is a refreshing book for those who want to dive into Indian feminist
fiction. Although it was originally written in Bengali, Breast Stories was translated into English
by the feminist critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in 1997. Mahasweta Devi’s The Breast Trilogy is a
compilation of three short stories, ‘Draupadi’, ‘Breast Giver’ and ‘Behind the Bodice’, which were
published under the title Breast Stories.  Mahasweta finely weaves the stories with a common
thread ‘the breast’ but within each story this erotic object has multiple significances. These
powerful stories draw attention to the systemic oppression that women face each day.

Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Draupadi’ the short story that first appeared in Agnigarbha, a
collection of loosely connected short political narratives. In the introduction Mahasweta makes
her objective clear: “life is not mathematics and the human being is not made for the sake of
politics. I want a change in the present social system and do not believe in mere party politics.”
Here an attempt will be made to explore into Devi’s venture of rewriting an episode from the
great epic, the Mahabharata. As a feminist response to the myth of Draupadi, she reinvents a
cultural history and shows how this deconstructs the representation of women in cultures,
images and stereotypes .significantly enough, the politics of interpretation has most often been
the politics of gender.
Mahasweta Devi is horrified by the game of politics that tries to break the spirit of men and
women who fight for emancipation from slavery on behalf of their caste and clan. Hence, she
embarks on a project of presenting the shocking realities that happen behind the socio
economic and political iron curtains, through her most powerful work Draupadi. The female
protagonist, Draupadi, who is a tribal insurgent, gets captured during her outrageous tribal
uprisings against the government. After her capture, she is beguiled for giving information
about her companions. Because of her dedication, she is subjected to third degree in police
custody; till the government officer Senanayak gives orders to "Make her. Do the needful,” She
is brutally subjected to gang rape through the endless silent suffering night. After this barbaric
act of violating the female honor Draupadi proceeds daringly towards Senanayak and, she
confronts her exploiters naked and bleeding, thereby making the rapists shameful of how to
face this unexpected situation, and the reader distressed and sorry for their cruelty.
Rape is a weapon used on a woman on any pretext. If there is an enmity between two
men or between two communities, between two nations it is brought down upon the women.
Women in a society, specially Indian society, is considered to have certain values and honor and
if one wants to take revenge upon that community and that particular society it is the women
folk that need to be attacked and destroyed physically and mentally so that the society is
shamed. Draupadi becomes the medium through which the nature of women’s exploitation
within the patriarchal structure of family and society is explored.
The name Dopdi is actually a rural or tribal version, a mis-pronounced version of the
name Draupadi. The character of Draupadi in the Mahabharata and that of Dopdi of
Mahasweta devi are so different, and yet there is a meeting point where both try to fight
against the injustice meted out to them in their own manner. Draupadi is a queen, royal,
beautiful, and she has five husbands although married to one. In the stort story Dopdi on the
other hand is a poor tribal woman, wronged all through by the feudalistic power in the society.
In the Mahabharata it is God himself (Lord Krishna) who comes to save Draupadi from the
humiliation, but there is no God to save Dopdi.
In our society, the discourse of ‘shame’ is created around a woman by patriarchy. A
raped woman is further looked down upon as having lost her ‘honour’. Dopdi refuses to follow
the social code. she is expected to be ashamed and feel humiliated. Dopdi subverts this
discourse of shame and refuses to be judged according to male standards and male gaze. She
blows up the falsely constructed ‘truth’ with laughter. It can be understood in the Nietzschean
dictum of “God is Dead” and consequently the upholding of individualism in values and
rejection of absolute values. In a similar vein, Sartre (one of the key figures in the philosophy
of Existentialism) says, “Since I have abolished God, the father, there must be somebody to
invent values…Life has no significance a priori. Before you were alive, life was nothing, it is up to
you to give it a significance and value is nothing but that significance you are choosing”. In
existential terms, Dopdi can be categorised as being-for-itself as she is always creating herself.
For Sartre, being-for-itself is an ever questioning hollow projected towards future possibilities.
Dopdi ‘makes’ herself into ‘something’ instead of ‘being’ something. For Dopdi ‘being-for-itself’
is basically freedom made manifest because she is able to transcend her raped physical self,
thus emerging victorious.
Mahasweta Devi attacks the silence that surrounds the social-political-cultural issues,
and through her narrative on "Jashoda", focusses on the experience of motherhood and on the
exploitation of women. Overcoming the oppression of men and society to gain equality is a
major theme in Breast-Giver. The protagonist, Jashoda, is a marginalized Brahmin woman. After
her husband is crippled in an accident, she is forced to work as a wet-nurse for the wealthy
Haldar family. She adopts the profession of wet nurse to support her family when her husband
Kangalicharan gets crippled in an accident. To support her family she feeds twenty children.
Though this new employment forces her to be repeatedly pregnant, yet it gives her social and
political significance in the form of a Mother of the world. In the present story breast is the
source of food and livelihood for Jashoda's family. Haldar household was using Jashoda's body.
Jashoda is paid to breastfeed the many children of her master and mistress. Her abundant milk
becomes a vehicle of income for her husband and family. Just because a woman works outside
the home to earn a living doesn’t mean that she cares any less about the goings on in her
household and family. A working woman needs to continue to be strong for her family even
though she may not be present some of the time and it is known that women can be both
nurturing and powerful at the same time. Jashoda also has to overcome the oppression of a
predominately patriarchal society, which is an important ideal in feminist theory. Jashoda
overcomes being ‘other’ in many ways. The society in which Jashoda lives holds men in a higher
regard than women. The men are the providers for the family, as well as the heads of the
household. Jashoda reverses these traditional patriarchal norms. She becomes a leader, and
she goes to work outside the home to provide food for her family. In this way, she becomes
equal to or greater than her husband and the other men of society. She takes on responsibilities
that are usually left for the man of the house to fulfill. She and her husband become equals
when you consider the work done at home which is traditionally the work of the woman.
Jashoda becomes a "Milk mother" for the Haldar family and dies suffering alone in silence due
to breast cancer. In spite of so many children, she receives a lonely cremation by the hospital
staff. Thus Mahasweta Devi shows how the "Milk mother" pays a heavy price for her ignorance
and dies of severe pain.
The last story of the Mahasweta Devi’s Breast series entitled Behind the Bodice is based
on the song of a Bollywood movie, Khalnayak. In “Behind the Bodice”, Gangor crowd comes to
Jharoa for work. Upin, a photographer takes her photo when she is feeding a baby. He uses
Gangor to make money and fame. Upin gets obsessed with the idea of Gangor’s breasts and
thinks that they are endangered. His photography makes her the ‘object’ of police’s attention.
Policemen gang rape her. Knowing this, her people ostracise her. She has no option but to take
to prostitution. She pays the price for Upin’s senseless obsession. In the end, she takes off her
bodice to reveal the horror of tragedy perpetuated to her by policemen. In placeof enticing
breasts now remain the torn and bitten breasts. However, breast once an object of eroticism is
used in the end to scare Upin who she thinks is responsible for her pitiable condition.
In the end where Gangor’s gives a satiric smile to Upin to make him realise the havoc his
thoughtless photography has caused in her life. His photography makes Gangor an object of
sexual desire for local police who catch her and gang rape her. She becomes an object of
patriarchal gaze. Now Gangor takes charge of the situation as Upin is rightfully made aware of
the way he has ruined her body and life. Gangor who was earlier an object for Upin’s
photography no longer remains so. On the contrary, Upin stands terrified and shocked like an
object of Gangor’s piercing satire.
The concept of ‘gaze’ as defined by Sartre usually involves two persons, their relation
being governed by power. If a person is in a position of power, the ‘other’ person he ‘sees’
appears as a mere being in-itself, a phenomenon of nature, not different from all the inanimate
bodies he perceives around himself. But when the ‘other’ person assumes the state of power, it
is through his ‘gaze’ that he reveals himself as a being-for-itself, a subject, a consciousness, a
free project, able to transcend itself and all given data towards its own possibilities.
On the the other hand in the story Draupadi , Dopdi resists being a passive being-in-
itself in the later part of the sequence. She by her gaze, changes Senanayak into a being-in-
itself, thus limiting his future possibilities, at least for this particular moment. He is changed
from a free project into a solidified object. He is congealed by Dopdi into an object which is
unable to move in the last scene and stands like an obedient, terrified child before her larger
than life manifestation. Dopdi refuses to be judged or being looked at by male gaze. She reverts
the gaze by throwing challenge to the whole paradigm which supports patriarchy. She refuses
to be evaluated by Senanayak’s or patriarchal ‘gaze’ requiring a raped woman to feel guity.
According to Sartre, “by its very nature, shame is an acknowledgment that I am as the other
one sees me”. Dopdi refuses to be taken in by this discourse and refuses to be ‘seen’ by
Senanayak. She does not allow herself to be pictured as the ‘other’ and becomes a being-for-
itself i.e. the controller of the surrounding factors, determining them but not being determined
in return. In the first phase, the relation due to gaze is that of the oppressor (Senanayak) and
the oppressed (Dopdi). But, later, in the narrative, the scales are turned upside down and now
Senanayak is being ‘seen’ by blood shot eyes of Dopdi. Now, Senanayak is turned into an object
of ‘gaze’. Though Dopdi is the ‘other’ in the story, she refuses to concede Senanayak the
existential priority.
Conclusion:
This paper has brought out a part of the vision to suggest an alternative outlook on the
marginalized position of Indian women in the patriarchal domain. Her stories are the basics for
justifying localized figures where the female becomes the means of social and familial savior.
She puts the female within them with their strength and modes of existence. Her stories have
not only been the part, but also the agent for bringing the change. Alter explains: Her
characters are generally drawn from the impoverished or exploited classes and their struggle
for justice takes on mythological overtones. Every individual and thing is different with one
another in a specific perspective in this universe. So discrimination is not unjust if it would be
the basis of stratification of person and things but when it is unjust –when it discriminates
people on the basis of cast, class, creed, religion, color and gender and give a vertical division of
society, and distinguishes individuals’ ups and downs on the ladder of hierarchy based
patriarchal social system where lower is always dominated by upper. In other words, where
differences lead to discrimination, discrimination provides a platform of oppression and
exploitation. Here discrimination is morally wrong and socially unacceptable because it leads to
social injustice.

References:

1.Debī, Mahā śvetā . Breast Stories. 1997.

2. Rupturing the Episteme: A Sartrean Interpretation of Protagonists in ...
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21 Jan. 2022.
3. Mahashweta Devi’s Draupadi: A Feministic Approach.
https://www.allresearchjournal.com/archives/2019/vol5issue10/PartE/7-6-108-517.pdf.
Accessed 21 Jan. 2022.
4. Mahasweta Devi - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahasweta_Devi. Accessed
21 Jan. 2022.