Postcolonial Feminist Theory: An Overview - Igcollege.org

Proceedings of National Seminar on Postmodern Literary Theory and Literature , Jan. 27-28, 2012, Nanded‘Silence! The Court is in Session’ through Feministic PerspectiveProf. Dnyaneshwar S. ChavanV.V.M’s S.G.Patil College of Arts,Commerce and Science, Sakri (Dhule)Alexander Dumas, French Dramatist, first coined the term Feminism in 1872.Later this term is used with various layers of meaning. The concept stands for a belief that womenshould have the same right, power & opportunity that men have. This concept became an impetusbehind what we call today “Woman Empowerment”. Socially woman is considered as weak soshe is dominated by men. The whole society is based upon the system of Patriarchy. Men notonly looked at woman from this point of view but also forced woman to look at themselves fromthe male point of view. This is what said by Simone de Beauvoir differently. She has said in herfamous book, ‘The Second Sex’ that woman’s idea of herself as inferior to man and dependent onhim springs from her realization that ‘the world is masculine on the whole, those who fashionedit, ruled it and still dominate it are men’. She further insists that one is not born but ‘becomes’woman. In patriarchy, power is equated with aggression and masculinity; weakness withcompassion and feminity. Women are supposed to bear male oppression silently and meekly.Where they fail to do so, they are considered as `loud’ hysterical, crazy and punished.This research paper is a humble attempt to study the drama ‘Silence! The Court is inSession’ by Vijay Tendulkar through feministic perspective.Actually society consists of men and women and literature is considered as ‘mirror ofsociety’. It should be natural that a major portion of society who is exploited through many agesshould have been seen in the literature with her pains but reality is very different. In Indiancontext after independence some sort of writing is seen in favor of women and this has been doneby women writers like Kamala Das, Kiran Desai, Anita Desai, Kamala Markandaya, Shobha De,Imtiaz Dharkar etc. Very few male writers depicted the real picture of women exploitation andVijay Tendulkar is one of them. Vijay Tendulkar is a prominent Marathi playwright. His playsare different in form and content which has power to question on social individual tensions andcomplexities of human character.The ‘Silence! the Court is in Session’ is a play about the difficulty of a youngwoman, who is a victim of the male dominated society. Tendulkar has criticized the folliesprevailing in the society. The original name of the drama in Marathi is Shantata! court chalu Ahe(1967). It was translated in English by Priya Adarkar. The action of the play revolves around thecentral character Ms. Leela Benare. She is a school teacher as well as depicted as rebellious357 PLTL-2012: ISBN 978-81-920120-0-1