How are women oppressed in Dattani’s Bravely Fought the Queen and how do they fight back?

In an interview conducted by Erin. B. Mee on August 27, 1996, after the staging of Bravely Fought the
Queen, Dattani stated, “It's not that I have done something new, but I've done something unpredictable,
and I have shattered a lot of images”. As he said rightfully, Bravely Fought the Queen provides the stage
on which the myth of an ideal Indian joint family is shattered and its unspoken realities are addressed.

While the first act of the play is a projection of the world of ‘Women’ taking care of their ailing mother-
in-law, Baa, the second act portrays the “masculine” world of work where the ‘men’ are brought under
the limelight along with their unscrupulous and self-indulgent behavior which keep assaulting the
women psychologically. The final act, ‘Free for All’, finally provides a territory which the men and the
women can share. With ‘free’ flow of words, accusations and truths, the dirty linen of the Trivedi family
is finally washed before the audience and the oppression of the men towards the objectified women,
exposed.

The perceptions of the husbands, Jiten and Nitin towards their wives, are evidently the echo of the
androcentric conception of the ‘other’, as propounded by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The world inhabited
by Alka and Dolly, to quote Rita Felski, reiterates "the sovereignty of the phallus" and the obliteration of
the female ‘other’. The already disrupted peace in the lives of these women is aggravated by the
prejudiced attitude of Baa towards her daughters-in-law and the way in which she instigates her sons
against them. Much like the bonsai gifted to Dolly by Lalitha, the women are molded by the patriarchy to
fit into a particular shape. Their spirits are curbed as bonsai is pruned so that their growth can be
arrested. The bonsai is also a microcosmic image of the exploited and incommodious life of the women.
It finds almost a replica in Daksha, the crippled child of Dolly and Jiten, whose condition is a
consequence of Jiten’s physical maltreatment of Dolly while she was conceiving. Baa herself has been a
prey to the physical assaults of her husband, now dead, and being familiar to such patriarchal
dominance, she considers it a common experience which every woman must undergo. Thus, she herself
desires to view the reflection of her husband in her sons while provoking them to beat or denounce
their wives for being the daughters of a "whore." On the other hand, Alka’s oppression in the hands of
men begins right from the time she is at her mother’s house. She needs to pass through layers of
epiphanies in order to discover that her marriage was a well crafted plan, made to conceal her
husband’s homosexual identity: a plan hatched by her own brother who is also her husband’s partner.

Contrastingly, the second act exhibits the world of men: a world of smoke, booze and illicit liaisons,
where materialistic achievements matter a lot more than relationships. We find Nitin talking about
getting rid of his wife so that he can successfully inherit his mother’s legacy. The audience witnesses the
brothers and owners of Re Va Tee, a company of undergarments for women, failing repeatedly in their
campaigns of advertising their products. This is perhaps because in all their campaigns, women are mere
manifestations of objects catering to men in fulfilling their wishes that are sensual and phallus-centric.
The "otherness" constructed in this case is analogous to the colonizer's attitude towards the colonized,
as evident in Jiten’s words:
"Men would want their women dressed up like that. And they have the buying power. Yes! So there's
no point in asking a group or screwed-up women what they think of it. They'll pretend to feel offended.”

Jiten feels insecure before a self-opinionated woman and so habitually dismisses her comments as
gibberish. This also explains his loathing of Alka who is more outspoken than Dolly. To him, women are
objects to be plundered and possessed. This explains why the second act ends with Sridhar, the
company manager, being asked to bring a prostitute for him.

The play's title, "Bravely Fought the Queen," is significant in the culmination of women's resistance to
male orthodoxy. The title is a translation of the lines put down by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan in her
poem, ‘Jhansi ki Rani’- “Khoob ladi mardaani who toh Jhansi wali rani thi” (Bravely fought the manly
queen). When the women try to interpret the significance of the title, Alka reflects the mindset of her
contemporary society which acknowledges a woman’s bravery only if she is "Brave enough to qualify as
a man…" However, Lalitha rejects a woman’s masculine disguise and demands equality. If we talk about
women fighting back against oppression, we must bring into account Naina Devi, who, while "married
into royalty," gave up a queen's life to "sing love songs sung by whores," We find Dolly, who cannot
muster the courage to be dressed as the queen in the ball, ironically playing Naina Devi’s ‘thumris’: a
representation of liberation and defying the stereotyped gender roles. The playwright also introduces
Kanhaiya, the cook, the namesake of none other than Lord Krishna, the eternal fantasy of women kind,
by means of whom the dreadful reality can be escaped. In the play, Dolly fantasizes the cook or perhaps
indulges in physical intimacy with him, as a protest against the impositions laid upon her by her fate. In
the final act, when Dolly raises her voice against Jiten's merciless actions, she not only compels him to
admit his guilt, but also brings to the forefront Baa's immoral contributions in it.

On the other hand, Alka, the downright sister, who, in the eyes of the society, has never been "an ideal
housewife", unlike Dolly, does not hesitate to dress up as the Rani of Jhansi and her liberating dance in
the rain washes off her face mask. In other words, the mask of being in an ideal marital alliance falls off
and she is now ready to live her life on her own terms which begins with her carefree dance in the rain-
an action which an obedient housewife is not well suited to perform. She, thus, undermines what
Chandra Mohanty describes as the powerlessness of the "third world woman"

Through the washing away of masks of hypocrisy and the ascension of his queens, Dattani showcases
the intricate fabric of a transitional society. He could perhaps foresee a societal canvas getting painted
with glimmers of hope such that no beggar woman is run over, no woman is forced to marry against her
will, no woman is kicked at while bearing a child in her womb and no Daksha is born crippled.