Question- Attempt an essay on Tendulkar's delineation of women in his play, silence! The court is in Session.

Answer - 

Remarkable women character of Vijay Tendulkar's plays. Vijay Tendulkar, the great Marathi play wright, has introduced several remarkable women characters in his plays. Some of the noteworthly female figures in his plays are Leela Benare in silence: The court is in session, Princess Vijaya in Encounter in umbugland, Rama in the vultures, Lakshmi and Champa in Sakharam Binder, and Sarita and Kamala in Kamala. All these women characters represent the Indian women who has long been under suppression and cruel domination of man, but is emerging as a new woman in modern times. Refering to this N.S. Dharan points out that in Tendulkar's plays, generally, women are the centre. It is around women most of the action revolves. The roles Tendulkar's female protagonists play over shadow those played by the men figuring in them. It is Leela Benare in Silence and Sarita in Kamala. Who play the leading roles in these plays, which present a world apparently, dominated by male chauvinists. It is mainly because of the presence of these women figuring in them, the dramatic action in these gains intensity. Both Leela Benare and Sarita are educated and efficient and refused to be cowed down by men. Though Tendulkar is not a self- acknowledged feminist, we can see that he treats his female characters with understanding and compassion. While junta posing them against mem who are selfish, hypercritical and brutally ambitions. Miss Benare a dedicated Teacher.

Miss Leela Benare, the central character in Silence: The Court is in Session is a dedicated school teacher who never for one has gone late to school. As a teacher, She has dedicated herself to the uplift of her wards, she has never been wanting in her duties. She has always maintained strict discipline. Her students adore her to the point of making colleagues and the management jealous of her. She tells Samant :

"In school, when the first bell sings, my foot's already on the thereshold. I haven't heard a single reproach for not being on time these past eight years. Nor about my teaching. I'm never behindhand with my lessons!

Exercises corrected on time, too. Not a bit of room for disapproval I don't give an inch of it to any one!" Miss Benare against mingling of private with professional life.

But, in spite off all this the school management is holding an enquiry. It is just because one bit of slander Benare, questions the propriety of her management trying to min up her personal life with her profession. She feels that they should judge her only as a teacher for she has put her whole life into it. She has worn herself to a shadow in that job. She has never hurt anyone except her own self. She says:

"Who are these people to say what can or can't do? 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 my self and my life!".

Miss Benare: a frank character - Miss Benare is frank and forward. In her soliloquy at the court she confesses to having loved her maternal uncle when she was just fourteen when she did not know that it is a sin to love one's maternal uncle. Then as a mature woman she adores, the intellect of Prof. Damle but he only understands her body and makes her pregnant and jilts her like coward. She says that she is both the victim of love and life. The court must punish life by hunging it instead punishing her who has already been torn to shreds by life.

Miss Benare: A victim of life During the mock-trial of Miss Benare, all her co-artists gang up against her to peep into her privacy and make it public. Witness after witness expose layer after layer of her private life, as they would peel the skin of an onion. Their petty jealousies and mean mindedness overpower their sense of friendliness and camaraderic. They derive a malicious pleasure in washing her dirty linen in public. Under the protext of safe guarding the moral and social norms of society, the sling mud on their colleague and trample upon her soul. The court accuses Miss Benare gality of infanticide. But ironically enough, it sentences that she shall live but the child in her womb shall die. All the associates of Miss Benare are failures in life in one-way or other. They try to drive a sadistic pleasure by humiliating and hurting Miss Benare to cover up their own failures in life.

As Benare herself points out that she only has suffered as a victim of life both as a teen-age girl in love with her maternal uncle and later on as a matured women in love with prof. Damle. She alone has borne the brunt of the betrayal of her lovers and the people who are close to her. If at all she has harmed, she has never led the poison of her agonizing life to pollute the inncent children under her care. That being so she can not understand how they can deprive her of her job, which is the only source of comfort to her to bring up her child with security. So we find that Miss Benare is more sinned against than sinning. He offences are of private nature, which does not call for such a curel punishment as meted out to her.

...Prev | Next...