Questions of Female Gaze: Males Through Eyes of Females in Vijay Tendulkar’s Select Plays

Gaze, as defined by Oxford Advance learner’s Dictionary, “is an interested steady look at something or somebody” (642). The privilege of gazing presupposes or attributes some power in the onlookers. So, gaze is an expression of power, a way of looking, a point of view or a medium to establish and extend dominance. In a patriarchal set-up of society, the role of the onlooker is played most of the times by males, and according to Laura Mulvey, women are generally made to appear as the visual sex objects of male desire and pleasure. Here, my question is, do the females dare to return the male gaze in one way or another? 
I want to dwell upon the possibility of a reversed or altered picture of male gaze in the context of Tendulkar’s plays. So, let the females be the gazers and males be the gazed in the context of Tendulkar’s selected plays and let me make an attempt to study certain male characters as looked by certain female figures. Champa and Laxmi in Sakharam Binder, Leela Benare and Mrs. Kashikar in Silence! the Court is in Session and Sarita and Kamala in Kamala  represent a polarity of ‘female eyes’. Champa, Leela Benare, and Sarita take guts to have a gaze at the body, activity, and position of their chauvinistic male counterparts and often, put a question mark to the so-called vanity of masculinity. But Laxmi, Mrs. Kashikar, and Kamala look at men in the way men want to be looked at with all of his power over them. In view of the above, I shall try to show whether there is a scope for an active female gaze? If yes, to what extent? Do they transgress their traditional roles imposed on them in returning the male gaze and open up a space for anti-male discourse?


Discourse
In an excerpt entitled "The Play is the Thing" taken from the Tenth Sri Ram Memorial Lecture (1997), Vijay Tendulkar said that his characters were the backbone of his plays (2), and admitted further that he had never been able to begin writing his play only with an idea or a theme in mind (15). Such statements are clear clues to make us realize what an important role his characters play in his plays, and how the study of characters can interestingly reveal and expose so many layers of meanings. Characters are best understood in totality-with their virtues and vices-with their subtle shades of nuances both in reality and appearance, when they are perceived and represented in one-another's visions. This necessarily takes into account the gaze of both male and female in relation to their counterparts and the issues of emmasculation-the state of making women powerless in projecting their gaze and regulate the representation of men in their perception and vision. Tendulkar had never been a self-proclaimed a feminist. But from his delineation of the sufferings and misery of the women folks in the hands of males in the fabric of manwoman relationships, it seems certain that he sympathizes with the plight and predicament of women. He gives women a voice as well as a vision to counter the patriarchal power structure where exploitation both physical and mental, is continuously carried out by typecasting the women as inferior and dependent folks with an innocent look, vulnerable body and with no authority to exercise and or/ exalt their power over masculine pre-eminence. However, Tendulkar's women characters like Champa or Leela Benare come strongly with a threat to knock down and eradicate the age-old binary oppositions between male and female in the Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema is the first article to introduce the concept of male gaze and connect it to scopophilia, a kind of erotic pleasure that men derive by ogling at stimulating objects especially women. However, when she is asked about the female gaze, she says that, if female gaze is ever possible it is only through male identification. What she means is that when females look at males, the surveyors in them are actually males because the social structure is such. John Berger also comments in the same way: "The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. This she turns herself into an object----and most particularly an object of vision: a sight" (47).
This paper as proposed earlier will focus on the fictional oeuvre of Tendulkar with a view to negotiate the masculine and feminine nature of female gaze through a study of character oriented gaze. Let us start with Sakharam Binder. It opens with a harangue which tells us what sort of man Sakharam is in his own terms. In short, he is a womanizer, drunkard Kamala is all about the earning of reputation in journalism in exchange of showcasing a woman bought from flesh market. Jaisingh Jadav is happily married to Sarita, but the entry of Kamala in their house brings some unconventional changes in Sarita's psyche and vision.
She begins to question the objectification of women and the masterly rule over women. But Kamala, on the other hand, expresses her desire to produce a child by Jaisingh when the marital status of Sarita and Jaisingh bears no fruit. So, in a way she is objectifying the male body. The objectification of the male body, here, happens, not merely because of the sexual pleasure that it elicits, but because of the fact that instates the participation of the male partner is necessary for continuing the child producing mechanism in a society. In case of Champa or Kamala, they are roofless and helpless, and needs a partner who they think would feed them in exchange of sexual intercourse. Champa surrenders her body to Sakharam when she is drunk. Her liaison with Dawood in expectation of plentiful sexual gratification reveals the impotence of male power. However, for Benare the body which gave her lovely moments becomes a concern. To give her body a meaning she struggles to search for a male.
Another feature of female gaze is suggested by Jennifer Friedlander in her Feminine Look: Sexuation, Spectatorship, Subversion where she connects a woman's pleasure, not with sexuality, but with an attempt of escape from the system of patriarchal power in order to be Therefore, she hopes a day will come when she will stop being a slave and an object.
The other set of women in these plays internalizes the dominance of men over them as a natural phenomenon and thereby goes to safeguard patriarchy. Foucault in Power/Knowledge articulates that male is exercised and strengthened by a net like organization and by the prescription of some disciplines which not only limit their power and vision, but also force to adapt to the male point of view of looking and seeing men. Laxmi power to insult and silence her whenever he whims. Sarita who seems to be a rebel comes to be siding with Jaisingh when he is sacked.
To conclude, it may be said that the presentation of a couple of women in the aforementioned plays is very purposive. For it offers two contrasting ways of looking and thereby heightens the effect. Mrs. Kashikar and Laxmi see men from a stereotypical feminine point of view that justifies man with all its manliness, power and authority. But Champa, Benare, and Sarita open up a space for an alternative discourse which is anti-male in the sense that they transgress the traditional concept of woman and wife, and enjoy some pleasure in being rebellious and in trying to break apart the system of power. These women though perform the conventional role of wives for the maximum time, occasionally they come forward with their strong masculine perspective to pay back men on their own coin, and often with a way of seeing which is neither masculine nor feminine, but is very characteristic of their being, becoming and belonging.