The argument so far suggests that the unusual couplings that riddle Nautanki stories be they of character, incident, or motif couch meanings that pertain to the moral universe of the audience. Sharp contrasts surprise the spectator into new perceptions, casting light on issues that never fully meet satisfactory resolution. Perhaps nowhere are startling elements rifer and more productive of altered awareness - than in the last thematic area of this section, the Nautanki's representation of women. Nautanki poets delight in describing women as murderers, lustful vamps, warring goddesses, and potent sorceresses. Yet they expound an ideology of female chastity and subservience that belies the powerful posture of so many of the women in their stories. Once again, these plays probe a dilemma with firm roots in Indian society. To appreciate the Nautanki characters, it may be useful to mention first the mythic female figures most often identified in India: the heroines Sita and Savitri who appear in the great epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The epic heroine type the wife who is sacrificing, chaste, and loyal represents the ideal for female behaviour among the high Hindu castes. The ideal may be far from the real experience of many women. Nevertheless, the prescriptive force of the epic heroines remains strong. The story of Savitri, for instance, teaches unswerving devotion to the husband, which if faithfully practiced can endow women with supernatural capacities, even the power to bring back the dead. Passive endurance in adversity is the lesson imparted by Sita, heroine of the Ramayana, who follows Lord Rama into forest exile. Willingness to suffer self-immolation for the preservation of her husband's honour is enjoined by the examples of Sita's fire ordeal as well as the self-sacrifice of Sati, wife of Lord Shiva. Hindu mythology offers another important female paradigm that contrasts with the wifely ideal, namely the mother goddess. The goddess, whether manifest in her benign aspect as goddess Lakshmi or Parvati or in her more menacing form as goddess Kali or goddess Durga, derives her power fundamentally from her status as mother rather than spouse, a role in which she exercises uniquely female control through the ability to generate and nurture life. Outside folk religion, however, her power is often subverted or leashed by subordination to a male deity. Each god in the Hindu pantheon is matched with a consort who is understood as his activating energy or Shakti. Philosophically the individual goddess consorts may be subsumed under one universal principle or Shakti, of which they are considered manifestations. The Hindu recognition of an underlying female principle has impressed some observers as a more positive formulation of woman's place in the cosmos than that offered by the Judeo-Christian tradition. Although women in Nautanki plays most frequently figure as wives and mothers, they do not necessarily conform to the mythic prototypes of classical literature. In addition to these two roles, women appear in other relationships. A female unrelated to male characters, however, scarcely exists; she is always some man's daughter, sister, or spouse and may act in more than one familial role. The relationships defined by kinship are crucial to understanding Nautanki's women, particularly in view of the cleavage that exists in North Indian society between a woman's natal family and her affine (her husband's family). It goes without saying that men are the heads of household, and that male kin (the father, his sons, their sons) ideally reside together in an extended family. Daughters are shorn away from one family and thrust into the midst of strangers. As a result of these practices, women are reckoned an economic, social, and emotional liability, despite the large contribution they make to domestic welfare through the value of their labour and fertility. |