The Terra-Incognita of Power Dynamics: Interrogating Masculinity

and Hypermasculinity in Dina Mehta’s ‘Brides Are Not for Burning’

Manivendra Kumar

Indian Institute of Technology Indore, India

Keywords Hypermasculinity, Gender Performance, Brides Are Not for Burning, Dina Mehta, Indian Reformist Theatre.

Abstract The present paper studies Dina Mehta’s Brides Are Not for Burning (1993), which investigates the issue of

women’s subjugation and makes an integral part of the canon of Indian feminist and reformist theatre. Scholars

such as Elizabeth Jackson and Laxmi Subramanyam highlight the resistance Indian playwrights offer to

oppressive patriarchal traditions. Mehta further interrogates the underlying root causes of this subjugation

institutionalized through stereotypes of gender performance and sexuality. The present paper reads closely the

play and analyses how Dina Mehta examines masculinity, hypermasculinity, and the social stereotypes about

male sexuality in the play, which generates an argument around the power dynamics in Indian society. The

paper establishes that Mehta questions the reinforcing role of male sexuality in the subjugation of women

through the performance of gender roles (Butler, 1988). The play, thus, initiates a discourse on the dual

standards of society on the sexual issues of male and female genders.

1 INTRODUCTION

The post-independence Indian drama is an amalgamation of

the streams of turbulent projections of the complexities of

the urban middle-class society. The playwrights of this era

emphasized the social ills that have been permeating society

for several centuries. Significantly, the representation of

women’s subjugation has been a leitmotif in the corpus of

post- Independence dramatic literature. Playwrights such as

Upendranath Ashk (1910-96), Mohan Rakesh (1925- 72),

Vijay Tendulkar (1928-2008), and Girish Karnad (1938-

2019) are renowned as stalwarts of post- independence

Indian drama. Their works highlighted women’s precarious

conditions and other pertinent issues of the urban middle

class. Ashk, in his Anjo Didi (1953-54), sketched women

characters operating of their free will. In his Adhe Adhure

(1969), Rakesh highlighted the contrasts in power dynamics

when a woman became the bread-earner for her family.

Similarly, Tendulkar flayed open the dual standards of

middle-class society in defining an independent man and a

woman in his Shantata! Court Chalu Ahe! (1967), while

Karnad used mythological legends to put forth the social

position of women in contemporary society as in his

Hayavadana (1971) and Nagamandala (1988). On the other

hand, Women dramatists such as Snehalata Reddy (1932-

1977) and Mallika Sarabhai (b. 1954) contested the

mythical representations of women that compared them

with goddesses and, thus, idolized and dehumanized them

in the process. Reddy’s play Sita (1950) challenged the self-

effacing figure of the mythological heroine who performed

the fire ordeal to prove her chastity. Instead, Reddy’s Sita

rejected her husband, Rama, who had ordered Sita to go

through the trial of fire. Similarly, Sarabhai’s play In Search

of the Goddess contested the established notion of Savitri

(a mythological character who challenged the God of death,

Yamaraja, to save her husband’s life) and redefined it from

a feminist perspective. As Anita Singh notes;Her Savitri

calls those men who worship her – and burn widows at their

dead husband's funeral pyres – liars and manipulators.

Goddesses were created to suit the necessity of the

patriarchal politics. (Singh, 2019). Vasudha Dalmia notes

that in the 1990s, directors such as Kirti Jain, Maya Rao,

Anamika Haksar, and Amal Allana brought out impressive

productions inspired by the agendas of the IPTA (Indian

People’s Theatre Association, founded in 1943). Also,

playwrights such as Manjula Padmanabhan, Uma

Parameswaran, Poile Sengupta, and Dina Mehta presented

the stories of women from a perspective that was not

achievable by their male counterparts. Their plays, such as

Lights Out and Harvest (written by Padmanabhan) and Sons

Must Die (by Parameswaran), presented the inside views of

their struggles and sufferings that were hitherto not

achieved While adhering to the question of resistance, the

present paper explores such paradigms of social

performances that are taken for granted and seldom brought

to open discussion. Dina Mehta’s play Brides are Not for

Burning presents the perspective of the protagonist on the

death of her sister. It also questions the premises of her

death. The play exposes the masculine supremacy created

by gender performance and the sacrosanctity of male

sexuality. The play challenges the patriarchal hegemony

Kumar, M.

The Terra-Incognita of Power Dynamics: Interrogating Masculinity and Hypermasculinity in Dina Mehta’s ‘Brides Are Not for Burning’.

DOI: 10.5220/0012503000003792

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies (PAMIR 2023), pages 757-762

ISBN: 978-989-758-687-3

757

over the failure of a couple to reproduce. The paper explores

Mehta’s questioning of gender performance in maintaining

this hegemony. It highlights the practice of concealing male

infertility to safeguard the family’s honour that instead

makes the woman the culprit – by deeming her barren. By

examining the performance of gender in marital

relationships, especially in strained circumstances, the play

emphasizes the silence an insignificant outlook of Indian

society towards domestic violence and dowry deaths.

2 UNDERSTANDING

MASCULINITY, HYPER-

MASCULINITY, AND MALE-

INFERTILITY IN DINA

MEHTA’S BRIDES ARE NOT

FOR BURNING

Brides Are Not For Burning was first published in

1993 and has been renowned for its questioning of the

dominant subjugation of women. The play got Mehta

the BBC Playwright of the Year award in 1997 when

it was aired as a radio play. The plot of the play

revolves around Laxmi and her sister Malini. Laxmi

is a victim of dowry death and is never present on

stage. Malini, a college student who dreams of

becoming a lawyer, takes it upon herself to investigate

her sister’s death which was declared an accident by

the coroner. The play presents a sharp reflection of

Indian society from the victim’s perspective. It

presents the illegal and yet prevalent system of

dowries in Indian marriages, an unfulfillment of

which makes the bride a subject of physical and

mental violence, often leading to their death. The

paper, however, circumvents the broader discussions

on resistance against patriarchy, for discussions such

as these have been undertaken with critical attention

in many scholarly works such as Laxmi

Subramaniyam’s Muffled Voices: Women in Modern

Indian Theatre (2002), Diana Dimitrova’s Gender,

Religion, and Modern Hindi Drama (2008), and

Elizabeth Jackson’s Feminism and Contemporary

Indian Women’s Writing (2010). Instead, the paper

focuses on the less emphasized themes of the play,

viz., masculine dominance, hypermasculinity, and

male sexuality. It examines how male infertility is

disguised under aggressive hyper-masculine acts.

However, before attempting any answer, the paper

distinguishes between the study’s premises –

masculinity, hyper- masculinity, and patriarchy and

how they are exhibited in the play.

“Masculinity refers to the socially produced

but embodied ways of being male,” writes Sanjay

Srivastava in his article Masculinity Studies and

Feminism: Othering the Self. While “Patriarchy,” he

says, “refers to a system of social life that is premised

on the idea of the superiority of all men to women”

(Srivastava, 2015). This superiority exhibits itself

through almost all the male characters in the play. In

the opening scenes of the play, Mehta establishes the

expected gender roles for women through Malini’s

father’s nostalgic reminiscence about her curvy

“goddess” mother. He says:

Father: […] It worries me, though, that she has no

children. After five years! You were all born in

the first five years of marriage […].

Malini: A pity you had not heard of contraceptives,

Father!

Father: Her hips were wide, some women are made for

child-bearing […] unlike poor Sujata, whom I

sent back to her parents after ten years. […] but

your mother was curved like a goddess […]

(Mehta, 13- 14)

The general objectification of the female gender as

“child-bearing” machines is a common social

construct requiring repetition of the act (in marriage)

to accomplish the label of an ideal woman. According

to Judith Butler, one is not born a woman but

performs a woman. The performance here is the

repeated act of bearing children. Butler notes in her

article, Performative Acts and Gender Constitution:

An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory;

“… gender is instituted through the

stylization of the body and, hence, must be

understood as the mundane way in which bodily

gestures, movements, and enactments of various

kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding

gendered self.” (Butler, 1988)

Contrastingly, masculinity includes the “socially

produced” ways of staying male. Nonetheless, when

performed for superiority and dominance, these ways

become hypermasculine acts. For instance, in the first

act, Malini’s Father reminisces about how Laxmi’s in-

laws made a show of their wealth. The act performed

by Vinod’s (Laxmi’s husband) uncle is described by

Father:

Father: […] That time when Vinod’s uncle

flung 100-rupee notes at my feet

because they wanted all those extra

guests to be fed at the wedding… that

was the time to have called off the

whole thing. But I swallowed even that

insult. (Mehta, 14)

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Flinging currency notes in marriages is one of many

acts that the groom’s side performs to establish

masculine dominance in Indian weddings. Matt C.

Zaitchik and Donald L. Mosher define this escalated

dominance level as hypermasculinity. They write in

their article Criminal Justice Implications of the

Macho Personality Constellation; hypermasculinity

consists of exaggerated macho male acts that are

based on some interrelated beliefs that include;

“… (a) the view of violence as manly, (b) the view of

danger as exciting, and (c) calloused sex attitudes

towards women. “Violence as manly” identifies the

macho man’s attitude that aggression – verbal or

physical – is an acceptable expression of dominance

over other men. “Danger as exciting” reflects the

attitude that survival in dangerous situations is a

display of man’s dominance over the environment.

“Calloused sex attitudes” reflects the belief that sexual

intercourse can be equated with sexual dominance

over women, establishing both his masculine power

and the submission of women…” (Zaitchik and

Mosher, 1984)

In Laxmi’s Father’s case, it is the first belief that his

daughter’s in-laws exhibit. These acts, as Father

suggests, are intended to cause insult.

As the play proceeds, two significant characters with

inherently opposite and equally trenchant wits are

introduced. Anil, Malini’s brother, is a twenty-two-

year-old teacher who teaches history at a school and

Roy, the anarchist, believes that mass genocide is the

only way towards an equal and just world. Mehta

presents Anil as a rational and sensitive male who

does not impose his thoughts on others, especially

when displaying his sharp intelligence. On the

contrary, Roy immediately establishes himself as a

dominant male misled by a false notion of superiority

and by his idea of revolution. He performs the macho

masculine act by denying his wife Gita’s choice of

having a child as he believes it is “not the right time

to breed.”

Malini: At a …! I don’t believe you. You mean she

decided to – to get rid of it?

Roy: No. I did.

Malini: Roy, you know how much she wanted that

baby –

Roy: I had warned her. This is not the right time

for breeding. She thought she could get

away with it. A fait accompli, as they say

in French – (Mehta, 27-28)

Roy’s act of deciding the abortion highlights two

critical aspects. First, the woman’s right to choose

when to have a baby (in this case) is controlled

directly by the man; second, she is not given absolute

autonomy over her body and its needs; it depends on

the husband’s will, and thus proves Zaitchik and

Mosher’s idea of the “calloused sex attitudes” as

hypermasculine.

Roy’s performance of hypermasculinity

does not stop at subjugating the choices of his wife.

He questions Malini’s choice to dress up for an outing

only a few days after her sister’s death. He continues

in a similar vein;

Roy: […] You think Sanjay will ever marry a girl

like you?

Malini: Why not?

Roy: […] He will throw you crumbs from his table

like you scatter feed corn for chicken. Or

small change to a beggar.

Malini: I am no beggar!

Roy: No. You are a whore. Had I known it earlier,

I would have taken you myself […]

(Mehta, 28)

Roy’s act proves that for hypermasculine men,

sexual intercourse with a woman can be equated with

sexual dominance over her. This episode changes

Malini’s perspective, and she can see through Roy’s

schemes of revolution and finds that behind the

facade of a revolutionary is a chauvinist who only

wants authority and control:

Roy: Malini, [urgently] you can’t go

back: go forward! Don’t dream:

act!

Malini: I will. I am late for my date…

Perhaps women will stay at

home every night after the

revolution? (Mehta, 29)

A significant proportion of the hypermasculine acts is

performed by another of the absent characters, Suresh

Gadgil. He is Vinod’s neighbour and Tarla’s

(Laxmi’s friend) husband. He is a short-tempered,

foul-mouth drunkard who was suspended by Malini’s

boyfriend, Sanjay. He is reinstated to work a few

days after Laxmi’s death at Vinod’s behest. The lack

of context makes Vinod’s act appear “an errand of

mercy” (Mehta, 47) to Sanjay. Performing this errand

of mercy makes Vinod superior to Gadgil. As

Srivastava notes, “Masculinity… is not only a

relationship between men and women but also

between men” (Srivastava, 2015). Malini,

nevertheless, understands this act as a “smooth wall

of deception” (Mehta, 48) created to manipulate the

The Terra-Incognita of Power Dynamics: Interrogating Masculinity and Hypermasculinity in Dina Mehta’s ‘Brides Are Not for Burning’

759

investigation. We observe the fear of violence aroused

in a woman merely by the mention of the name of the

perpetrator. Laxmi’s mother-in-law uses Gadgil’s

name to threaten Tarla, whom she constantly spies on

and catches her talking to Malini.

Mother-in-law: You think you can knife us in

the back and get away with it? […]

Tarla: [in terror] No no!

Mother-in-law: […] You are just a doll of flesh

for him to play with – and you would

betray us? […] What will happen, do

you think, when I tell him? When he

knows? Will that young head of yours

be smashed against the wall like a

coconut offered to Sri Ganesh? Or will

that soft red lying mouth become bloody

pulp at the hands of the butcher you are

yoked to for life? (Mehta, 72)

Tarla, akin to Laxmi, is a victim of dual suppression –

a subaltern. Firstly, from the violence caused by her

husband, and secondly, from the patriarchal

oppression at the hands of an older woman. The

female gender, in this case, performs in two distinct

manners; in Tarla – as the subservient female, and in

the Mother-in-law – as an oppressive female who has

assimilated the patriarchal codes within her. Tarla’s

oppression by the Mother-in-law reflects the case of

women in Indian societies who succumb to masculine

dominance and gradually become the perpetrators.

Tarla is dragged into the repercussions of Laxmi’s

death by a mother figure, who, despite knowing the

“butcher” in Tarla’s husband, chooses to threaten her

with hypermasculine violence.

3 EXPLORING THE

TERRA-INCOGNITA: MALE

SEXUALITY AND ITS ROLE IN

REINFORCING PATRIARCHY

A striking question that Mehta asks about

masculinity and masculine dominance is about the

unchallengeable status of male sexuality. Laxmi’s

death, besides dowry taunts, is a result of the

harassment for not being able to bear a child after

five years of marriage. No one raises similar

questions for Vinod except Malini:

Malini: She was never the one to complain. I

would have known nothing but for Tarla

Anil: […] As the only neighbour on the

scene of the tragedy her testimony was

vital, but she did not have much to say at

the inquest today.

Malini: Perhaps she was scared to! She knew how

they picked on Laxmi because in the five

years there had been no children – as if

Vinod couldn’t be at fault there […]

(Mehta, 17)

It is the first instance in the play that challenges

the for- granted status of male sexuality. Mehta uses

it to highlight the lack of open discourse around a

topic still considered taboo for open discussions. The

reason for our inhibitions to discuss male sexuality,

again, lies in the superiority of masculinity.

Srivastava writes;

“[…] Here the honour of community

becomes coeval with that of men, and while both

men and women might be punished for

disobeying honour codes, it is women who bear

the greatest burden – sometime with tragic

consequences of upholding community honour.”

(Srivastava, 2015)

In Laxmi’s case, the burden of upholding the honour

(of her family) leads to incessant taunts and

eventually leads to her death. Through the play,

Mehta brings to light the custom of labelling women

as barren irrespective of the fact that the same can also

be true for men. Vinod’s impotence is kept hidden for

most of the play, and we are only made aware of it

through the dialogue between Arjun, Vinod’s brother,

and his mother (Laxmi’s Mother-in-law).

Arjun: I’m not a ch-child anymore. What – what

right has Vinod to bully me, the – the

eunuch!

Mother-in-law: [slapping him] Such a word you

speak in my presence! For my grey hair

you have no respect?

Arjun: It’s the truth!... That’s what he is, your

Vinod. Eunuch… Why did he play the

endless farce of dragging Laxmi Bhabhi

from one holy man to another? Vinod

couldn’t father a child if you b-bought

him ten wives and pushed him into bed

with each one in turn […]

Arjun: He bosses everyone like a gangster! But

you think I don’t know the doctors have

found him without sp-sperm? You think

I don’t know about the doctors and the

tests and all the medicines he’s tried –

allopathic, ayurvedic, ho-homeopathic –

(Mehta, 80-81)

The above conversation opens more debates than are

visible in the play. Why do we find any discussion on

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male sexuality and its problems so difficult? Even

with the closest of people we know. The answer to it

is as complex as the problem because it again

involves gender performance and masculine

superiority. Vinod, culturally trained to perform

masculinity (precisely, strength and authority), cannot

accept weakness, while Laxmi, trained to perform

submissiveness, cannot practice authority (by leaving

her infertile husband) and, thus, has to perform

submissiveness by compromising the situation to

protect the family’s honour.

The situation is more challenging because Laxmi is

unaware of her husband’s impotence; thus, even

choosing to stay with Vinod (on the sheer premise of

love) is taken from her. Malini says that “she was

never the one to complain” (Mehta, 16) and hence

follows her husband’s and mother-in-law’s

commands without questioning. For the sake of

counter- perspective, one can say that she stayed for

the money and the status of the Marfatia family, but

that choice is also not available to her as she cannot

ask for money in death. On the contrary, Malini tells

Anil that Laxmi’s in-laws had her insured for a large

sum, making Laxmi’s death a dowry death case. As

established from the dialogue:

Malini: […] Last year, 350 women died of burns

in this city alone, some of them over-

insured wives.

Anil: What are you trying to say?

Malini: And when they died – plucked in their

bloom by fiery fingers – the husband’s

family came into a lot of money.

Anil: For God’s sake, the Marfatia family is in

no need of money. And we don’t even

know if Laxmi was insured.

Malini: We do, as a matter of fact. Early this year.

Laxmi told me herself. (Mehta, 15-16)

Thus, the contradiction that Laxmi might have

chosen to stay for materialistic benefits gets debunked

by Malini, who also establishes the Marfatia family’s

quest for authority and power even over Laxmi’s

death.

The reinforcement of masculine superiority comes

from Vinod’s pushing Laxmi to perform asinine

rituals and his family’s taunts. While both (if only

they should) should feel the burden of not having

offspring, only Laxmi suffers. Her unawareness of

Vinod’s sterility and the family’s taunts push her

towards the threshold of despondency. The futility of

performing rituals leads her to think she is barren. If

only it could be called so, her death is an

epiphenomenon of gender performance. Malini

elaborates and proves it clearly when she says;

Malini: […] The sexual act may be an act of

conquest for the man, of surrender for

the woman… But what I wanted most

out of life was to know myself half of

a true pair, certain of its

integrity…This is the only way I know

of overcoming loneliness… (Mehta,

86)

Thus, Laxmi is the victim of a social system that

does not give women the tools to fight oppression and

lead a life of their choice. She has to bear the

consequences of the dual standards set by social

norms that treat women as the culprit and deems

her barren even when her husband is sterile. Laxmi’s

death asks profound questions about why society

coerces women into rituals and ordeals that bring

them no results but exhaustion and more

embarrassment instead of discussing male infertility.

4 CONCLUSION

The play Brides Are Not For Burning by Dina Mehta

is a significant milestone in Indian feminist theatre.

The play takes up and emphatically presents the

burning issue of dowry deaths, which is still a

horrifying reality in both rural and urban Indian

societies. The present paper studies and analyses

Mehta’s portrayal of dowry deaths through the

perspective of gender performance. The paper

examines Mehta’s questioning of masculinity,

hypermasculinity, and patriarchal dominance and

finds that she challenges the established stereotypes

about marital life and foregrounds the taboo topic of

male sexuality.

The paper introduces the contribution of women

artists and directors since the foundation of IPTA in

the post-independence Indian theatre tradition. The

paper reports that scholarly debates around these

playwrights, such as in the works of Diana Dimitrova,

Vasudha Dalmia, and Laxmi Subramanyam, discuss

the resistance to patriarchy. However, it points out

that in her present play, Mehta goes beyond resisting

and challenges the root causes of this subjugation –

masculinity and hypermasculinity.

The paper describes and problematizes the concepts

of masculinity, hypermasculinity, and patriarchy.

Sanjay Srivastava and Zaitchik and Mosher define

masculinity as the “socially produced ways of staying

male”, hypermasculinity as the inter-related beliefs of

staying dominant, dangerous, and having a calloused

The Terra-Incognita of Power Dynamics: Interrogating Masculinity and Hypermasculinity in Dina Mehta’s ‘Brides Are Not for Burning’

761

attitude towards women, and patriarchy as the system

of producing and sustaining the superiority of males.

These definitions constitute the paper’s argument that

the association of infertility with the woman in a

marriage is a function of gender performance.

Further, the paper studies and analyzes the

instances in the play where the paradigms of male

dominance are exhibited by the characters. The paper

studies the gender performances of both the male and

female genders in the play and finds that it plays a

pivotal role in leading to the death of the protagonist

Laxmi. The paper also carefully establishes the

reciprocal relationship between the performance of

feminine submissiveness and masculine supremacy

by studying the performance of several characters.

The paper then studies the functioning of male

sexuality in the play. It reports Mehta’s questioning

of the sacrosanct status of male sexuality in Indian

society and explores Laxmi’s repercussions when her

male partner is infertile. The paper finds that the for-

granted nature of male sexuality also results from

gender performance. The paper establishes that

Laxmi’s death is a consequence of the performance

of gender and patriarchal oppression that push her

first to commit suicide.

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