The Muted Voice: Marriage as a Continuum of Desire, Discontent and Despair in “The Old Playhouse” by Kamala Das

Abstract

Earning the reputation of India’s best-known writer, Kamala Das is celebrated and remembered for her undaunted expression of the female psyche. She has ventured deep into the sensitive spaces of women’s psychology and voiced the complex nuances of thoughts and the tabooed feelings and sentiments hitherto denied to women. Popularly acclaimed as a confessional poet, she has boldly divulged the often restricted and unuttered aspects of carnal pleasure and pain both in and beyond the confines of conjugal life. The present paper focuses on her work, “The Old Playhouse” and is purposed to examine the conception of power that prevails in the male spouse in the domestic sphere of the Indian household. The study applies the lens of feminism and reveals the docility of the female body as an influence of societal and cultural norms in tune with patriarchy. The findings reveal the ongoing continuum of desire, dissatisfaction, and despair experienced by women in matrimony.