A role of a woman in Indian society reduces her to the status of a
mere object. A woman’s life is full of compromises, and she has to make
compromises in every walk of her life. She is full of motherly love and her
eyes brim over with tears due to great sufferings. Women are set to fight for
emancipation (free from legal, social, or political restrictions) from all forms
of oppression by society and by men. A woman’s identity, too, is defined by a man’s world and it revolves around providing him all comforts. She is highly
ambitious and gifted, but due to low self-esteem and self-confidence, she gets
psychological problems.
Similarly, a woman is always cautious about her looks,
as for some men, she is an object and everyone gets enjoyment through that. But
it is a woman’s fate that she becomes an object of appeasement, and no one bothers
about her feelings. She gives everything, but in place of respect, she gets
abuses and tortures (either physically or mentally). This is the role of a
woman in India, that is, 'life-giver.' Whatever sacrifices she does, whatever
love she does, in return, she always has to face the ‘inability’ from
male-beholders as well as mental and physical violence.
A woman has no independent existence, identity, or freedom of will; and
she always exists for others. However, it has been seen that how a woman in
this male-dominated society is conditioned into emotional dependence.
Thousands of women become victims of patriarchal oppression as we can see the
condition of women in a patriarchal society that how they suffer and also how
they react to it.
In India, a woman as a wife is expected to be obedient and faithful to
her husband and prove to be a good mother as far as nourishing her children is
concerned. There is no established tradition for men. I want to define ‘woman’
as a ‘struggler,’ especially, in India, there is another stage of a woman
which is said to be a ‘married woman’ who has no identity of her own. The psychology
of middle-class women doesn’t have any specific name. A woman lost her identity
after her marriage. Before marriage, everyone knows her by her own surname, but
after marriage, she has become a normal middle-class housewife with her
husband’s surname. I am talking about middle-class married women who lose
their identities after their marriage.
The life of a married woman begins with the routine life that has
changed her totally. All the time, she is busy managing her home, saving, and
working to meet other expenses properly. She is just an unpaid servant. Nobody
takes care of her. She has to take care of everybody or else she would face
abuse and violence. She has to perform her household duties only then she can
ever think of herself. In this patriarchal society, it is very difficult for a
woman to maintain her own identity.
Marriage for a girl means only an exchange
of masters. Before marriage, the parents were there, now there will be a
husband to control her. There are various stages and complexities of married
life. A middle-class married woman owns nothing. She does not enjoy the dignity
of being a person as she herself forms a part of the patrimony of a man: first,
her father, then of her husband. In India, women have always been man’s
dependent.
The life of a woman is very difficult, especially for modern women where
there are so many responsibilities for her. There are so many rubbish works for
women as house-keeping, daily tasks that are really tiresome. And ultimately,
nobody realizes a woman’s worth. Though she could not maintain her own identity,
she has to prove her ability and make her presence felt everywhere. She has to
fight for a world that is free from discriminative value systems.
