Women about Town

Abstract

Most historiographical attempts to draw on early Indian narrative literary works, specifically kāvyas, for insights into the past remain circumscribed either by the apprehension that such literature contains conventional, idealized and stereotyped descriptions that are historically sterile, or by the very opposite tendency to take these descriptions at face value and come up with uncritical, historically thin accounts. Diverging from both these approaches, this article proceeds with the proposition that kāvyas are a potentially rich and complex source of history, provided these are handled in ways sensitive to literary logic. Working in the main with a number of classical Sanskrit kāvyas, this article explores the representation of feminine character types textually located in the city. Of these, the gaṇikā and the kulastrī provide a useful frame of binaries to unravel the extraordinary literary grasp of patriarchal constructs, as well as contradictions and contraventions, worked into the treatment of apparently stereotyped female characters. The courtesan is an object of both public celebration and condemnation; the family woman that of respectability and confinement, but she may also find surreptitious release. Together they signify multiple, criss-crossing sexual roles and attitudes played out in an urban context.