Page 19 - THE CHANGING WORLD OF RAY

the world from a distance. of Doya in Devi. Yet, in the

They offer her the means end of the film the promise

of escaping the masculine of emancipation and equality

world that has imprisoned is proved to be an illusion,

her into this materially just like the false promise

decorated -but spiritually of the romantic prem. It is

empty- house, in which she this moral realization of
is placed by her liberal hus- the destructive powers of

band. This urge to liberate sexuality, which associates

the female self from the con- uncontrolled sexuality with

straints of the masculine, ‘animality’, and converse-

bourgeois world is manifest- ly portrays women ‘as con-

ed as prem, or the ‘forbidden stantly tempting men away
love’, which was one of the from the path of reason and

favourite themes of Tagore’s morality’ (as in Seidler 1987:

stories. The imported mir- 87). This rationality moral-

ror, upon which both Charu ly subordinates women, by

prepares for her husband, placing them in the house, in

is a symbol of European ad- which they are meant to be
justment, based on the in- controlled .

ternal and external world of

male desire. The prem, seen Spivak discussed

as imported from the ‘West’ Tagore’s short stories along

similarly to binoculars and with ‘the constitution of the

French mirrors, is expressed feminine subject in colonial

as the secret feeling of Cha- vernacular literature’, mak-
ru for Amal, and manifest- ing a parallel connection of

ed in her gaze towards him. Tagore’s use of the roman-

Ganguly (2000: 66-68) high- tic motif prem, to teaching

lighted the power of her ‘for- English to Indian students,

bidden gaze’ as the means of which makes the use of En-

giving her agency. Charu’s glish feel like a ‘burden’

playful Eye subverts the (1993: 139-140). Charu’s
norm of the submissive look burden is visualized as an