Constructing Gender

A Study of Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights Out! and Gurcharan Das’ Mira

Abstract

The human history has witnessed a constant power struggle between the two sexes—male and female and this conflict has its genesis in the socio-cultural process of constructing and appropriating the gender identities. In this process of labeling, enabling or restricting whereby the roles of a man or woman are defined, the dominant patriarchy keeps itself at the centre while the female the ‘other’ is pushed to the margins. This hierarchy favouring male over female faced resistance in the past from women and further more fiercely in the twentieth century when they started voicing their concerns about not getting justice at the hands of male writers so far as their position in society was concerned—in private as well public places, and this voice found place in different forms of arts, particularly by women, questioning the very pyramid of power structure from where this labeling is created. Just to counter the male hegemony, the women writers started coming out with their own writings, speaking from their side. The present paper analyses the socio-cultural process of constructing gender by two contemporary playwrights Manjula Padmanabhan and Gurcharan Das in their two plays Lights Out and Mira respectively. Despite being contemporary the playwrights differ in their perspective, accordingly dramaturgy as well in positioning of gender. Thematic issues, time, setting, symbols, language as well as stagecraft—all these contribute in determining how Manjula and Das are similar as well as different from each other in their perceptions of gender, remaining oblivious to their own gender.