Dramatization of Women's Identity: A Feminist Reading of Selected Maithili Dramas

Abstract

This dissertation explores the portrayal of women characters in the selected Maithili dramas written by Mahendra Malangia’s [Broken End of a Thread](1973A.D.)and [Birju Biltuand Father](1979 A.D.) and Ramesh Ranjan Jha’s Domkachh (2014 A.D.) and Sakhi(2018 A.D.).Malangia’s dramas depict Maithil society during the 1970 swhere as Jha’s drama was written in the post-1990 sand presents the women of traditional Maithil society, who are mostly guided by patriarchal ideology and are supposed to be subservient to the male characters of their families. However, Jha as a contemporary Maithil dramatist offers certain agency to the women characters who are aware and conscious of the domination that they are facing in contemporary Maithil society. Both the dramatist sillustrate the transition of women from submissive to assertive in Maithil society during the different political, social, and cultural shifts in Nepal. Judith Butler’s idea of gender identity is used as a primary tool of analysis where she defines that gender identity keeps on shifting as there befalls a transition in the indicators of identities established by the patriarchal society. The fixed gender stereotypes established by the patriarchal tendencies need to be deconstructed as identity is not something fluid and that is the only way a change can occur in the society.The dissertation uses ideas from Raymond Williams’s concept of human identity as a secondary tool of analysis. He asserts that the identity of an individual cannot be analyzed as a separate entity from the cultural, political, social, and economic changes happening around that individual.The identity of individual changes as per the shift in culture, politics, economy, art, and society.