It was a humid summer evening in 2017 and the rusty fans in the community center were whirling at great speed. We rehearsed Tagores Chitrangada.
The story goes: Chitra, the princess of Manipur, is raised to be the heir to the throne. Her father teaches his daughter, similar to a son, warfare and archery. Chitra grows up unaware of the complex woman hidden within her until she meets Arjuna and falls in love. She then transforms into a radiant maiden to woo him, but then realizes the superficiality and transience of her external beauty. In Bengal, Chitrangada is an annual part of various cultural programs. It was to be the third Rabindra Jayanti production in seven years at our apartment complex.
I had finally gone from being an unimportant shokhi (friend) to being an important one, standing in the front row, and that excited me. It still made me sad that I couldn’t play the ‘heroine’ unlike my friend Chitra. I desperately longed for it and soon found myself learning her lines and performing them in secret.
During a very lively rendition of “No Goddess to Worship, Nor Object of Universal Pity” in the bathroom, it struck me as strange that Chitra objected to being treated like a goddess. The question concerned me at the time, but was soon buried, unresolved, under seemingly more important questions. It wasn’t until years later that I found my answer.
History and etymology
The madonna-whore dichotomy, coined by Sigmund Freud in the early 20th century, is a psychoanalytic concept that refers to the polarized perception of women as either chaste and therefore “pure” or promiscuous and therefore “degraded”. According to Freud, this neurosis is most common in heterosexual men, who assume that women fall exclusively into one of these two categories.
The madonna-whore dichotomy, coined by Sigmund Freud in the early 20th century, is a psychoanalytic concept that refers to the polarized perception of women as either chaste and therefore “pure” or promiscuous and therefore “degraded”.
Today, according to psychologists and other psychologists, the concept is considered outdated in its coinage and modeling. No longer interpreted as a natural, psychological trait, it is viewed through a feminist lens by sociological theorists such as William Simon and John Gagnon. The dichotomy is constructed in a misogynistic manner, superficial and one-dimensional in perspective, and undoubtedly disturbing.
It boils down to the idea that a woman must be seen through a narrow androcentric lens. This does not acknowledge her complex range of emotions, her mind and her interiority. She is confined to two mutually exclusive boxes – the Madonna or the Whore.
Chitra: A Critical Reading
In his film Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish, Rituparno Ghosh notes that juxtaposition lies at the core of Tagore’s play. I believe they also form the emotional core of Chitra. Chitra is a woman full of conflicts and contrasts. Chitra is often torn between the binary of love and sexual desire. Their minds, hearts and bodies are, as the philosopher Abu Sayeed Ayyub pointed out, not separable entities but a delicate web. In it reside many Chitras – one who thinks, one who feels and one who desires.
In his film Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish, Rituparno Ghosh notes that juxtaposition lies at the core of Tagore’s play. I believe they also form the emotional core of Chitra. Chitra is a woman full of conflicts and contrasts.
She is a deeply complex being with a rich inner world of her own. She longs for the realization of her physical desires as well as recognition of her generous heart, sharp mind, and excellent warfare. She wants to be seen by Arjuna in her entirety, not through the narrow prism of divine beauty.
“If you deign to keep me by your side on the path of danger and daring, if you allow me to share the great duties of your life, then you will know my true self,” Chitra says in the piece, adding, “Do not worship me.” She is a reminder of generations of women who are labeled before they are understood and their ever-expanding world is narrowed down.
Tagore realizes that Chitra is a complete woman, a phenomenal one at that. Domesticity suffocates her, as does the docility and shyness that Arjuna falsely associates with her. She doesn’t conform to society’s prudish standards and wants to connect with the larger world.
Tagore realizes that Chitra is a complete woman, a phenomenal one at that. Domesticity suffocates her, as does the docility and shyness that Arjuna falsely associates with her. She doesn’t conform to society’s prudish standards and wants to connect with the larger world. Thus, she frees herself and embraces her true self in its entirety, as a woman of many dimensions who completely rejects the binary.
Chitrangada, as interpreted by Ghosh, is about both identity and love. The film has a bildungsroman-like arc that runs throughout its entire length. In doing so, Chitra decodes an inexplicable being: the self. She copes with the complexity and becomes more mature not in her perspective, but in her perception. Her gift to Arjuna is the “heart of a woman,” not that of a nymph or goddess. It is her rooted and mortal identity that she is proud of and offers to her beloved.
Today: Chitra and me
Years later, the Madonna-Whore binary still survives. A newsfeed popup tells me that Marilyn Monroe had a library of over 400 books and was also a civil rights activist. I wonder why this “fun fact” has remained hidden under reductive labels all these years. Her intellect was never acknowledged, let alone recognized. Should she merely occupy the binary and live and breathe through an identity that men have chosen for her?
Chitra refuses to limit herself to a purely male perspective of awe and worship. Through her deep determination, she reflects the desires of millions of ordinary women who seek the extraordinary within themselves.
Chitrangada was published in 1892, more than six decades before Marilyn Monroe was called a “dumb blonde.” The extraordinary modernity that Tagore displays not only as a convinced feminist but also as a humanist fascinates me immensely.
Chitra refuses to limit herself to a purely male perspective of awe and worship. Through her deep determination, she reflects the desires of millions of ordinary women who seek the extraordinary within themselves. Nine years later, when I think about the girl who desperately wanted to play the heroine, I realize that what she wanted mattered. Much like Chitra, she wanted to be seen in her entirety.
Oindri Mandal (she/her) is in her twenties, but most of her sentences still start with a stubborn “When I grow up…”. Much like the nurse in Penny Lane, she believes she is in a play and invents a number of different games ranging from “Find the Allusion” to “Let’s Pretend We Are in a Book” to keep herself occupied. Her friends think it’s kiarostami, manto and Vietnamese latte that keep her going, but she suspects it’s always been Studio Ghibli and fried Maggi.
