Expression of Repressed Desires in Satyajit Ray's Devi

Abstract

Satyajit Ray's Devi: The Goddess is often critiqued as a film about disillusionment, decadence and disintegration. It indeed deals with religious superstition, degradation of feudalism and the tragedy of a colonial era conservative Hindu family split between two world views about the existence of the almighty in the late nineteenth century Bengali society. But this thesis tries to explore and examine the underlying theme of expression of repressed desires in the film. Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis is the tool to explore this theme, with an emphasis on how he interprets dream sequences to decode the desires that the human begins repress in their subconscious mind thanks to legal, social and moral restrictions. Ray has denied implying anything erotic, incestuous or taboo. Nevertheless, the symbols and images found in his cinematic craft suggest the Freudian undertone in Ray's classic. By interpreting the dream of Kalikinkar, one of the three major characters of the film, with the help of Freud's theory of psychoanalysis, this thesis reaches a conclusion that Devi: The Goddess is as much about expression of repressed desires as it is about mysticism, fanaticism, obsession, fate and feminism. The thesis also discusses the concept of Electra complex to apply the process of role reversal to understand how Kalikinkar sees Doyamoyee, who is actually his daughter-in-law, as his mother