Women’s Quest for True Love: A Study on Selected Poems by Kamala Das and Rabindranath Tagore’s “The Broken Nest”

Abstract

Many women across the world are still now treated as an object for sexual purposes by the patriarchal society. These women want true love from their beloveds, but often they are deprived of achieving the essence of true love due to male dominance. This paper showcases women’s quest for true love in Kamala Das’ poems named “The Old Playhouse”, “The Sunshine Cat”, “The Descendants” and Rabindranath Tagore’s novella “The Broken Nest”. Kamala Das has represented the consistent psychological damage of women due to fake and mechanical love-making with their husbands or beloveds. The female individuals in Kamala Das’ poems desire emotional and spiritual satisfaction, but they are only physically used for the carnal gratification of male individuals. In “The Broken Nest”, Rabindranath Tagore writes the story of a lonely woman named Charulata. She is neglected by her husband as Bhupati, Charu’s husband was a workaholic person. This negligence makes Charu fall in love with Amal and a new illusionary world is created by Charu. In this world of imagination, only she and Amal inhabit. In the end, with Amal's leaving the house, Charulata understands that she again becomes lonely in both the illusionary and real world. The present paper reflects the deep desire and hunger for true love of the speakers of Kamala Das’ poems and Charulata, the main character of Tagore’s novella.