Stripping off the fairytale facade of women

The first glimpse of womanhood a girl child invariably experiences is physical beauty and rivalry with other girls. Most of the fairytales revolve around perfect beauty, rivalry between sisters or friends on the basis of that beauty, and the tussling with one another over who gets the richest and the most powerful husband.

Women are all about physical beauty- perfect cheekbones, eyebrows, lips, hair, and slimness. This is all too evident, be it in fairytales of Hans Christian Anderson, the Grimm brothers and others, or literature written by other male authors.

Cinderella would never have received such attention without her beauty and the ugliness of her stepsisters. Pitching one woman against the other and making them compete in beauty pageants on a daily basis, set on the race of getting the ‘best husband’ or waiting for Prince Charming to rescue from her distress, have been pretty much the same story for a woman, from children’s tales to novels and poetry over the centuries.

Fairy and folk tales in Bangla also have the ‘stereotype’ of the ‘beautiful princess’, the powerful king with several wives, and how a beautiful wife gets more attention. The witch is invariably a lonely elderly woman, bitter and spiteful to the extreme.

Women’s lives in men’s literature are all about what the man as a ‘person’ wants to see in a woman. This version of women characters are almost the same across the globe. Only the colours, shapes and presentation vary according to various cultures and contexts.

On the other hand, the journey for female authors has never been smooth. In this men’s paradise, women were not welcome as litterateurs or authors. And in this part of the world, women authors stepped into the realm of Bengali literature late. There is discourse, however, over the fact that there might be one female mystic poet named ‘Kukkuripa’ among the poets who wrote Charyapad, the first Bangla verses found ever.

In a society hostile to women’s basic needs- let alone freedom or emancipation- Bengali women struggled to address their distress and disparity within the households.

Therefore, the first challenge for the Bengali female authors was to address the disparities and misery in and outside the family. The first ever Bengali novelist was Swarnakumari Devi, elder sister of Rabindranath Tagore. Born to an aristocratic and educated family, she had access to education at the time. She had great influence on Rabindranath Tagore and his later creations.

Notably, Rabindranath Tagore in many of his short stories, novels and poetry, explored how women were exploited at the time by the society and sought a solution to that. Among the contemporary authors, Rabindranath Tagore was significantly vocal and aware of women rights and social oppression against them.

Dowry and violence against women were the most common phenomena at the time. In his short stories like ‘Kalyani’, ‘Dena Paona’, and ‘Haimanti’ he introduced the readers to the dark side of oppression and the stigma women faced in their daily lives. He also introduced bold women characters, inspired from the women in his own family, such as Sucharita from his novel ‘Gora’, Binodini from ‘Chokher Bali’, Labanya from ‘Shesher Kabita’ and many others.

Interestingly, when male writers were exploring various facets of philosophy, human civilisation, science, history and other branches of knowledge, female authors were busy addressing and seeking their rights within the family.

Unlike the west, Bengali society did not enter into the phase of giving women access to rights, decision making and public spheres in the beginning of twentieth century.

Although being respected as ‘Jagaddhatri’ (nurturer of the earth) and Annapurna (provider of food) in Hinduism or as mothers’ beneath of whose feet lies heaven, women within both Hindu and Muslim families were suppressed to the lowest of levels.

To be locked in traditional domesticity, women were born and meant to be ‘wives’, even if a ten-year-old girl had to marry a man who was on his deathbed.
We see the dilemma in ‘Meyer Biye’ by Sarabala Dasi and ‘Sekele Katha’ by Nistarini Devi. A woman’s life can only be ‘complete’ by the institution of marriage, no matter how and at what cost!

It is not only in Bengali society, but in western society as well that marriage has been the most desirable thing in a women’s life. Take ‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen for instance. The social pressure on women to get married was the focus of the plot. The novel opens with the famous lines, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,” The rest of the novel is about several single women all out to capture men in possession of great fortunes.

The popular classic has been redefined by a Pakistani author Soniah Kamal. The new novel is called ‘Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan: Unmarriageable’. It had been a discourse over the years whether marriage or traditional domesticity is truly desired or enjoyed by women or it is only imposed by the patriarchal society.

There had been distinct discriminations against women in private sphere in Bengali society, normalising by the patriarchal society itself.

We can easily assume the propensity from the trilogy of Ashapurna Devi –Pratham Pratishruti, Subarnolata and Bakul Katha.

The conflict between wife and mother-in-law is a consequence of the natural human tendency to take possession of the ‘powerful’, a type of survival strategy. A contemporary society that was against women normal mobility created such rivalry between two women.

Most of the male writers depict the role of women as ‘homemakers’, a role cherished by women themselves. Mary Wollstonecraft and even later feminists like Virginia Wolf challenged the idea. The debate of ‘public’ and ‘private’ came to discussion in the emergence of second wave feminism and reflected in writings of feminist critique or common female authors.

‘Sultana’s Dream’, by the pioneer of Bengali women’s emancipation Begum Rokeya, can be a perfect example of the dichotomy. Recognition of women’s household duties also became a burning issue at the time.

Women’s coming out in the public sphere led the way to their participation in politics and decision making. Besides domestic work, they became politically aware and active participants in decision making inside the home or in public affairs.

This political awareness and interpretations of various political events was reflected in women authors’ works as well. Selina Hossain, Jahanara Imam, Anwara Syed Haque, Sufia Kamal and so many Bangali writers proved this through their works. Take for instance ‘Juddha’ by Selina Hossain, or Ila Mitra’s ‘Jabanbandi’.

Russian writer Elena Chizhova’s ‘The Time of Women’ is a story about women from three generations. The author described the socio-economic structure of contemporary society of Soviet Union during the Revolution and World War II through the lens of women.

However, there has been a remarkable shift from the authors in early 20s to late twentieth century authors in terms of addressing women issues. The late 20s female writers were ‘New Era Women’. Apart from the basic and private sphere disparities, they recognised other issues such as violence against women, income disparities, social taboo and stigma, sexuality, and ensuring their participation in everything that is ‘mainstream’.

Again, authors like Kayleen Schaefer in ‘Text Me When You Get Home’ portray female characters having strong bonds rejecting the notion that women are predisposed to hate each other. Another novel is ‘The Animators’ by Kayle Rae Whittaker, a story of two college friends who became successful in their careers as well.

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, Bengali writers also became vocal about the de facto discrimination as well as breaking the barriers of uttering the unutterable, such as menstruation, female body parts, rape and other social taboos without censoring the words. Shaoli Mitra’s ‘Anrita’, Bangladeshi writer Shahnaz Munni’s ‘Sundar Saheber Saban’, Aditi Falguni’s ‘Soubhagyer Rajani’ and many other female writers wrote on issues that were only faced by women.

The life of women in male and female authors’ writings is no new topic. The debate will go on. But it is to be remembered that, a woman’s life described by a male is assumed, not lived by the person. He is an ‘outsider’. It is the woman who knows how it feels to be secluded, discriminated, exploited and suppressed because of her gender. It is the woman who can write it the best, in no uncertain terms of living truth.

*Farjana Liakat can be reached at [email protected]