Old Profession, New Tales: Narrative Strategies of Resistance

Abstract

The figure of the “fallen woman”, as prostitute, dancing girl, or simply the abandoned outcaste has been represented in various ways in Indian narratives, whether fiction or film. The images range from that of the  iconic Sita of the Ramayana, the chaste, Goddess like figure abandoned by her husband on suspect chastity, or the stereotypical, villainous “evil” woman of corrupt body and mind, to the figure of the prostitute with the golden heart, very popular in Indian cinema.  But these images of the “fallen woman” have also become sites of resistance to the discursive and socio/historical structures of gendered exploitation. This paper looks at the ways in which this resistance is narrativized in select Indian fiction and film, focussing on selected works of the twentieth century, namely the short novel by Mahasweta Devi, Bedanabala: Her Life, Her Times, Munshi Premchand’s short stories “The Prostitute” and “The Actress” and the cult classic movie Devdas, based on Saratchandra’s novel of the same name. These works portray the female characters engaging with the exploitative, yet judgemental  patriarchal power structures of society, and how they manipulate and often subvert these very structures as strategies of survival effecting a form of resistance to their categorization as “fallen women”.