A woman with a desiring gaze is often represented as dangerous because she is characterized as a being who does not respect the boundaries on which the symbolic order of society is based. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) repeatedly delineates fearless women who seek for freedom from oppressive domestic life. He was a pioneer in dealing with women in revolt at a time when many women internalized the belief that women should be submissive to men. Here I would like to focus on “The Wife’s Letter” (1918) which delineates a plain woman named Bindu in love with her sister-in-law, Mrinal, the protagonist of this story. Bindu is obsessed with Mrinal’s beauty, and her lesbian gaze causes Mrinal to see a true image of herself, something she has never seen before. She also knows that a wife is a domestic slave. She leaves her husband, violating the law of the threshold, which confines women to the domestic sphere. Mrinal knows that a woman’s beauty is not her own, but a male possession. A patriarchal society imposes a ranking among women according to a male standard of beauty, which causes them to think that their inner self can be expressed only according to this measure. But Bindu’s lesbian gaze subverts this. Tagore showed how a woman could be undauntedly faithful to her sense of rightfulness through Mrinal, thus constructing a new image of the female body with a desiring gaze, an eroticized body not suppressed by patriarchal control.

Authors:
Eiko Ohira, Otsuma Women’s University, Japan

About the Presenter(s)
Professor Eiko Ohira is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at Otusma University in Japan

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

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