A study of The New Woman in Tendulkar’s Silence!

The Court is in
Session
Wungreiyon Moinao

Amongst the movement originated during the Victorian era, The New Woman that came
toward the end of the period is a notable one that changed the feminist worldview. The term was
coined by Sarah Grand, an Irish writer, in her seminal article ‘The New Aspect of the Woman
Question’ published by North American Review in 1894. The term was however popularized by
Henry James through his fictional characters like Daisy Miller and Isabel Archer. In the words of
Grand the new woman is
a little above him, and he never even thought of looking up to where she has been
sitting apart in silent contemplation all these years, thinking and thinking, until at
last she solved the problem and proclaimed for herself what was wrong with
Home-is-the-Woman's-Sphere, and prescribed the remedy (271).
Jean Matthews also defines the new woman as "young, well educated, probably a college
graduate, independent of spirit, highly competent, and physically strong and fearless" (13). The
groundwork for the movement was however laid in the writings of earlier centuries in the likes of
Jeremy Bentham and Mary Wollstonecraft. The basic tenets of the movement posits woman as
an independent being grasping the liberty to choose a life of her own. She is a radical character
not conforming to the patriarchal dictates and has a strong disbelief in the social institution of
marriage.
In drama the new woman had already emerged arguably in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s
House (1879) in the character of Nora. She leaves her husband and children in order to
understand herself. Her departure is an overt dismissal of patriarchal control and also the
institution of marriage which is an unconventional act for a woman to indulge into.
Approximately after almost a century later an Indian version of the new woman emerged in
Tendulkar’s Silence! The Court is in Session (1967) in the character of Leela Benare. Tendulkar
present his female characters in different shades but all of them share the same plight,
exploitation under the domineering patriarchal society. Manik and Rama in Gidhade, Lakshmi in
Sakharam Binder and Kamala in Kamala can be clubbed together in the category of ‘True
Woman’. It is the conventional conceptualization of woman as angelic, modest, coy and
obedient. Slightly standing in deviation from the concept of ‘True Woman’ are the characters of
Sarita in Kamala and Champa in Sakharam Binder. Sarita is an educated woman who
unwillingly submits to her husband only with the realization that if marriage is to work, she has
to see herself in the role of a slave whose sole purpose is to please her master (husband) while
Champa is a willful woman who leaves her husband only to be caught up again in the shackle of
another man (patriarchy). But Leela Benare is an unconventionally high spirited woman who
does not conform to norms of patriarchal society. Living in a society that sanctions the highest
restriction on woman, she dares to dream of freedom. She isolates herself from the characters
mentioned above in lieu of her spirited nature and love for freedom. Benare cannot be judged
from the purview of traditional Indian woman because she is the new woman. She is an Indian
Nora.
Leela Benare is an unmarried school teacher. She is sexually alive and she needs to fulfill
her desires and for that she is not ashamed of her instinct. She is conscientious in her work and
commands the love and respect of all her pupils. She is also an enlightened activist being a
member of the amateur theatre group called “The sonar Moti Tenement (Bombay) progressive
Association”. The other members of this amateur theatre are the Kashikars, Balu Rokde,
Sukhatme, Ponkshe, Karnik, professor Damle and Rawte, who all belong to the urban middle
class of Bombay.

The amateur drama- troupe arrives at one village to perform an awareness play on the
social and current issues. The play is titled ‘Mock Trial of Lyndon B. Johnson’ and is about a
trial in which they will present a case against President Johnson for producing atomic weapons.
One member of the group, Rawte, is sick and does not turn up. In the absence of Rawte, they
decide to take a local man, Samant the active boy of the village who is in the charge of the hall,
for his role. Since he has never seen a court, they decide to perform a court scene so that Samant
gets acquainted with the procedure of the court. So they all agree for the enactment of the
imaginary case against someone. Sukhatme proposes that Miss Benare will be the accused and
all the members agree. She has to perform the role of woman who is indicted of infanticide. Mr.
Kashikar played the role of the judge. Leela is accused by the Judge of the ‘Mock Law Court’as:
“Prisoner Miss Benare under section No. 302 of the Indian Penal Code, you are accused of the
crime of Infanticide (foeticide). Are you guilty or not guilty of a fore mentioned crime…?
(Silence 25)”
The mock trial symbolically brings out how patriarchy scans and judges the life of a
woman in society. It seems as if to point out how women is standing in trial everyday of her life
defending her innocence and justify her worldview. It is during the course of this mock-trial that
Miss Benare’s private life is exposed and publically pried upon, revealing her illicit love affair
with professor Damle, a married man with a family, which has resulted in her pregnancy.
Professor Damle is significantly absent at the trial denoting his total withdrawal of responsibility,
either social or moral, for the whole situation into which he had landed Miss Benare. During the
trial he is summoned merely as a witness while Benare remains the prime accused as the unwed
mother of his illegitimate child.
Leela Benare has suffered enough humiliation and exploitation under patriarchy. It was
during her early teens that her uncle (mother’s brother) took advantage of her innocence and
molested her emotionally. Growing up in a strict traditional Indian family, the flirtatious
advancement of her uncle was all that gave meaning to her life and beguiled her to believe its
love:
… Its true, I did commit a sin I was in love with my mother’s brother. But in our
strict house, in the prime of my unfolding youth, he was the one who came close
to me. He praised my bloom every day. He gave me love …. How was I to know
that if you felt like breaking yourself into bits and melting into one with someone-
if you felt that just being with him give a whole meaning to life- and if he was
uncle, it was a sin! Why, I was hardly fourteen! I didn’t even know what sin
was… (Tendulkar 117).
Similarly as she come of age, her heart was again ripped apart by one Prof. Damle who only
wanted her for physical pleasure. Not only did he use her to satisfy his lust but also allowed
himself to be deified. He enjoys the manner in which the young woman gives respect and look
up to him as a knowledgeable professor. She thought it was love this time but again end up
realizing the treacherous side of man. Her feeling toward Prof. Damle is not love as she realizes
later “…its worship! But it was the same mistake. I offered up my body on the altar of my
worship. And my intellectual god took my body on the altar of my worship. And my intellectual
god took the offering – and went away (Tendulkar 118).” Such act of worship for man has been
there in the history all along and for Sarah Grand it is an act of demeaning the women by
themselves allowing the man to “set himself up as a sort of a god and required us to worship him,
and, to our eternal shame be it said, we did so. The truth has all along been in us, but we have
cared more for man than for truth, and so the whole human race has suffered (272).”
Having such a tainted history in her past the society now smears upon her as immoral
and with a judgmental attitude point finger at her for its own undoing because it was the society
who brought such plight to the woman in the first place. Benare admits she was naïve and
ignorant. She allowed the men to use her ignorance for her own outcome and getting the blame
upon herself. All this time she has granted the men much liberty to let them dictate her life
having the best faith in them. In this similar vein, Grander also pens down the general plight of
woman in the following lines:
We have allowed him to arrange the whole social system and manage or manage
it all these ages without ever seriously examining his work with a view to
considering whether his abilities and his motives were sufficiently good to
qualify him for the task. We have listened without a smile to his preachments,
about our place in life and all we are good for, on the text that"there is no
understanding a woman." We have endured most poignant misery for his sins, and
screened him when we should have exposed him and had him punished. We have
allowed him to exact all things of us, and have been content to accept the little he
grudgingly gave us in return… He narrowed our outlook on life so that our view
of it should be all distorted, and then declared that our mistaken impression of it
proved us to be senseless creatures (Grand 271-2).
Patriarchy has tried to shield Leela Benare in within its frame work. The door that locks
her in within the four walls of the hall during the mock trial is symbolic of how patriarchy tries
to contain and control her within its norms. However she realizes that her life resides only within
her decisions and not in the dictates of the society. Therefore Benare determines not to be cowed
down by such restrictive boundary and limit her life to the patriarchal norm just as Nora in A
Doll’s House defied the social institution of marriage in order to discover herself. Ibsen’s
portrayal of Nora opens with a character of the conventional housewife. She is referred by her
husband, Torvald, as little squirrel and little lark. She is treated as his doll and Nora perfectly
seems to enjoy her life until she comes to the point where she realizes that her husband’s love is
superficial and she is just a doll in his playroom and nothing else. Initially these women
characters whimsically play along within the social norms but eventually they come to their self
awakening that they are mere bodies to be enjoyed and dolls to be pampered without having a
true sense of love. From their self awakening moment, they forge a new path outside the frame
work of patriarchy and towards self realization.

The play is about a tussle between two parallel worldviews where one tries to dominate
the other as they constantly try to mark out the space of their own existence. One can also deduce
that life for the woman is like a trial in a courtroom where she has to defend the innocence and
relevance of her worldview to the judge of patriarchy, as the judge constantly bring out its
accusation against Benare and forces its worldview upon her. Patriarchy questions her every
intention and behavior even to the point of her status in remaining as a single:
Sukhatme: All right. Let’s call her a woman then. But, why isn’t she married?
Can you explain that?
Mrs Kashikar: What else? That’s what happens these days when you get
everything without marrying. They just want comfort. They couldn’t care less
about responsibility! Let me tell you- in my time, even if a girl was snub-nosed,
sallow, hunchbacked, or anything whatever, she- could- still- get married! It’s the
sly new fashion of women earning that makes everything go wrong. That’s how
promiscuity has spread throughout our society (Silence 99-100).
In a society that sanctions child marriage, it is unconventional for a woman of thirty two years to
remain single and have a life free of responsibilities. But Benare does not confine herself to the
social obligation and remains single. She can remain so because she is financially sustainable.
Just as Virginia Woolf opines, this economic stability empowers Benare not to depend her life on
any man. She can choose to live the life she wants. Benare is one such character who is freeing
herself from the bondage of tradition. She asserts her identity and independence in the most
unconventional words: “My life is my own- I haven’t sold it to anyone for a job! My will is my
own. My wishes are my own. No one can kill those-no one! I’ll do what I like with myself and
my life! (Tendulkar 58).” Of his female characters, Tendulkar has to say,

The Indian Woman is emerging from the traditional stronghold and finds rather
confusing. She has learnt unless she asserts herself there is neither existence nor
 survival… Oh! this is not a western notion anymore. The modern woman finds it
intolerable when she is not recognized as an individual (Ramnarayan 174).

Benare has a care free attitude towards life. As evident in her conversation with
Sukhatme in the first act, life should be enjoyed. One should sing, dance and cherish the moment
at hand without having false ‘dignity or modesty’ because the life one gets is one’s own. The
conversation between Samant and Benare in the opening of the play show her as an outspoken
and extrovert individual. However her candid nature is misinterpreted by Samant as promiscuity.
This is not done explicitly but in a subtle manner through the stage direction. Samant appears shy
and embarrassed in their talks and often backs away when Benare comes close towards him
because he believes she is intelligent and sophisticated who does not have any moral obligation
but one who believes in epicurean principle. Samant veils himself within a false dignity to appear
as decent and ignorant lad who negates her behavior. But one cannot deny the fact that he is
attracted towards Benare and that a part of him wants her. This is playwright’s subtle expression
on the nature of typical Indian male psyche.

She enjoys a full life doing what she loves as a teacher. In fact she is more competent in
her profession than any of the male counterparts in their respective professions. She has the
audacity to playfully poke fun at everyone by giving a fitting nickname to each of the character.
Mr Kashikar is referred to as “Prime Objective” because of his hypocritical idealism and Mrs
Kashikar is nicknamed as “Hand-that-Rocks-the-Cradle” because she does not have a baby to
hold in her arm. Sukhatme is ridiculed as “an Expert on the Law” and Karnik as “Sci-en-tist!
Inter-failed”, Prof Damle is nicknamed as the intellectual who “runs away” from real life
problem. She has a character more interesting and dynamic than the male counterparts. Her
audacity and boldness to contend in the male domain is what separates Benare from other female
character and made her the target of patriarchy. It is because of this that she is picked as the
accused by the patriarchy, despite Mrs Kashikar’s offer, during the mock trial.

There are no hypocritical concealments of her character but boldly expresses what she
feels and desire even to the point of her sexuality. Her body is an element of contradiction
because she despises it and loves it at the same time. She despises it because the body is the
objective of man’s lust. She loves it because it is her own and gives her the sense of self. In her
own words it is the body “that once burnt and gave you a moment so beautiful, so blissful, so
near to heaven! Have you forgotten? It took you high, high, high, above yourself into a place like
paradise. Will you deny it?” (118). Similar to Victorian society, Indian patriarchy however finds
such expression outrageous because it is immoral for a woman to boldly talk about sexual desire
and experiences. The Victorian woman is expected to have the composure of Virgin Mary. She is
expected to be asexual and her sexual expression finds no relevance in the society. Even if she
does she is tagged as a whore. But modern psychologist and researcher have time and again
asserted that sexuality is innate in woman as it is in man. Freud has talked about this sexuality in
his psychoanalysis and Havelock Ellis on the ‘love right of woman’ in his book On Life and Sex
(1920).

Though the court has the power to enforce patriarchal rule and questions the deviation
from its worldview, Tendulkar empowers Benare with such resilient character who seek to
justify her worldview while at the same time bring out the hypocrisy of the established order. In
the eye of the society she is a fallen woman but she has endured the humiliation only to bounce
back to take a new path of freedom and independence. There is nothing short in her character to
call her Indian Nora.

Works Cited:

Deshpande, G.P. Remembering Tendulkar. Economic and Political Weekly, 43: 22 (May 31 -
Jun. 6, 2008)19-20. Jstor. Web. 3 May 2016

Matthews, Jean. Women's Struggle for Equality: The First Phase. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997.
Print

Maas, Vera Sonja. Facing the Complexities of women’ sexual desire. Indianapolis: Springer.
2007 Print

Madge, V.M., ed. Vijay Tendulkar’s Play: An Anthology of Recent Criticicm. New Delhi:
Pencraft International, 2007. Print

Ramnarayan, Gowri. “Interview: Vijay Tendulkar in conversation with Gowri Ramnarayan.”

Madge 169-177.

Tendulkar, Vijay. Five Plays. New Delhi:OUP, 1992. Print