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What Is The Theme Of Stanadayini

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Introduction: The story is an English translation of the original Bengali short story, Stanadayini written by Mahasweta Devi in 1977. Jashoda, the wife of Kangalicharan and the mother of twenty children is the central character of the story. She adopts the task of professional mother and becomes the wet-nurse of the rich Halder family for several years. The women of the Halder family started to breed children in regular intervals with the assurance of Jashoda’s breast milk, to please their husbands and mother-in-law. On the other hand Jashoda took it as a favourable condition for her to nourish her children carefully and to replace her handicapped husband as the only earning member of the family. Kangalicharan loses his feet in an accident …show more content…

She serves with a hope of salvation. But irony of her fate prevents her dream to be fulfilled. She becomes the symbol of betrayed motherhood. Not only as a mother but also as a wife or ‘servant’ she is not given proper respect and honour. But hope does not die before the death of Jashoda. She expected till the end that someone would hold her hand. The tragic feeling is less forceful than the suffering she tolerated both physically and emotionally. Mahasweta Devi at some point rejected to be considered as a feminist in this context of the story of ‘Jashoda’. She perhaps tried to show her beyond sex, gender and class. The hypocrisy and domination of a capitalist society is probably the main concern for her where the person like Jashoda suffers as a ‘proletariat’ in the hands of patriarchal ‘bourgeois’ forces. Jashoda is a milk producing machine, who only produces for her benefit of its master and thereby, after losing efficiency rejected as a useless scrap. Religious beliefs and mythological concepts are used as only a hegemonic tool to control and exploit the innocence self of Jashoda. She is conceptualised as merely to expect from and provide, never to be returned in any term. Rather she is represented not worthy to be compensated at all. This condition of jashoda reminds us of a famous short story, The Ox by H.E.Bates where Mrs.Thurlow serves her family, husband and children like a ‘beast of burden’. At the end she is also betrayed and brutally left in this lonely world to suffer. So the patriarchal and capitalist domination in this materialistic world over the women has become a pattern through the Ages. Mahasweta Devi has furthermore extended the ambit of exploitation and treachery of this hypocritical world cantered only around money and power. The prolific exploitation of the political system is also a

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