Broken Bodies,
Unbroken Wills: A Comparative Study of Gendered Resistance in “Draupadi” and The Nightingale
Prakash Barai
Assistant Professor,
Department of Applied Science and Humanities,
Global Institute of Management and Technology, Krishnagar,
Nadia, West Bengal, India.
Abstract: This thesis explores how Mahasweta Devi's
"Draupadi" and Jennifer Kent's The Nightingale depict gendered
violence as a tool of control in patriarchal and colonial systems. Both
narratives feature women, Dopdi Mejhen and Clare, who suffer brutal physical
and sexual violence, not as isolated incidents, but as deliberate attempts to
silence and subjugate. However, both protagonists resist victimhood, asserting
agency through radical and embodied forms of resistance. Drawing on feminist
and postcolonial theories, including Judith Butler's concept of gender
performativity and Gayatri Spivak's idea of subaltern resistance, this study
shows how the violated female body becomes a site of defiance, challenging
dominant narratives of shame. Despite differences in setting and form, the two
narratives converge in their portrayal of women who refuse to be broken,
highlighting global patterns of gender inequality and the enduring power of
feminist resistance.
Keywords: Violence,
Subjugation, Radical, Resistance, Performativity
Introduction
In both literature and cinema, female characters have
often been portrayed as passive victims of violence, especially within
patriarchal and colonial frameworks. However, Mahasweta Devi’s powerful short
story “Draupadi” (1978) and Jennifer Kent’s harrowing film The Nightingale (2018) present radically different narratives—ones
where the female body, though subjected to brutal violence, becomes a site of
resistance rather than surrender. Set in distinct cultural and historical
contexts—postcolonial India and colonial Australia—both texts expose how
gendered violence is systematically deployed to silence women and maintain
sociopolitical hierarchies. Through the stories of Dopdi Mejhen, a tribal woman
and Naxalite rebel, and Clare, an Irish convict and survivors of repeated rape,
these narratives foreground the intersection of gender, class, race, and state
power. By analyzing these two works through the lens of feminist and
postcolonial theory, particularly Judith Butler’s concept of gender
performativity and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s notion of subaltern resistance,
this study seeks to explore how violence against women is not merely personal
but profoundly political. More importantly, it examines how these female
protagonists, in the face of dehumanization, reclaim their agency through
silence, confrontation, and bodily defiance. This thesis argues that both
“Draupadi” and The Nightingale
subvert traditional narratives of victimhood and portray gendered resistance as
a powerful, transformative force in the face of systemic oppression.
Gendered Violence
as a Political Tool
In both “Draupadi” and The Nightingale, gendered violence is not portrayed as incidental
or isolated—it is a calculated weapon used by dominant powers to silence,
discipline, and dehumanize women who challenge the status quo. In Mahasweta
Devi’s “Draupadi”, the state uses rape as a method of punishment and control
against tribal resistance. Dopdi Mejhen, a Santhal woman and suspected Naxalite,
is captured, stripped, and gang-raped by military officers under the command of
Senanayak. Her rape is orchestrated not as a crime of passion but as a
political act—an assertion of state dominance over rebellious female and tribal
bodies. Similarly, in The Nightingale,
Clare, an Irish convict woman in colonial Tasmania, is subjected to repeated
rape and the murder of her child and husband by British officers, particularly
Lieutenant Hawkins. The violence committed against her is emblematic of
colonial authority asserting its control not just over land, but over the
female body. As in “Draupadi”, rape is used to strip the woman of agency,
identity, and dignity.
These acts of violence, rooted in patriarchy and
colonialism, serve to reduce the female body to a site of conquest—a territory
to be occupied and silenced. Both narratives thus align with feminist theorist
Catharine MacKinnon’s argument that “sexual violence is political, structured
by male power and systemic inequality.” Moreover, they expose how the state or
empire uses institutional structures—military, legal, social—to sanction and
normalize violence against women, especially those at the margins: tribal,
lower caste, colonized, or poor. By portraying rape as an act of
state-sponsored terror rather than private cruelty, “Draupadi” and The Nightingale challenge the notion
that gendered violence is apolitical. They force the reader and viewer to
confront rape not as a moment of individual suffering, but as a symbol of
broader systemic oppression.
Reclaiming Agency
through Resistance and Defiance
While both “Draupadi” and The Nightingale depict harrowing accounts of sexual and physical
violence, neither story leaves its protagonist in a state of passive
victimhood. Instead, both Dopdi and Clare reclaim agency in radically different
but equally powerful ways. In “Draupadi”, after being gang-raped and left
naked, Dopdi is summoned to appear before Senanayak. Rather than covering
herself or expressing shame, she walks into the officers' presence naked, wounded,
and unbowed, refusing to follow the script of submission. Her now-iconic
declaration, “There isn’t a man here I should be ashamed of” is a profound
moment of defiance. She strips herself of shame and weaponizes her wounded
body, confronting her violators with a terrifying and unflinching silence. In
doing so, Dopdi turns the violated body into a site of political resistance,
refusing to be broken by the very violence meant to erase her.
In The Nightingale,
Clare’s resistance follows a more outwardly violent arc. Traumatized by rape
and the murder of her family, she embarks on a journey of revenge, accompanied
by Billy, an Aboriginal tracker who is himself a victim of colonial brutality.
Her transformation is gradual but deliberate, she moves from trauma-stricken
silence to a woman who actively confronts the empire that sought to destroy
her. Her final act of resistance, however, is not murder but restraint.
Standing over Lieutenant Hawkins, she chooses not to kill him with her own
hands but leaves him broken and exposed, stripping him of his power just as she
was stripped of hers. Clare’s refusal to descend into the same violence that
defined her trauma marks a powerful reclaiming of moral and emotional control.
Both women, in their own cultural and narrative contexts,
refuse to be defined by their violation. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of
performativity, their resistance defies prescribed gender roles of modesty,
silence, and passivity. Instead, they perform new identities—unapologetic,
defiant, and unashamed. Where society expects silence, they answer with
confrontation; where shame is anticipated, they offer power. In this way, both
“Draupadi” and The Nightingale reveal
that even under the most extreme oppression, the female body can become a site
not of defeat, but of revolutionary assertion.
Intersectionality —
When Gender Meets Caste, Race, and Colonialism
The comparative exploration of “Draupadi” and The Nightingale
demonstrates that gendered violence is never neutral or isolated—it is a
systemic tool, intensified by intersecting forces like caste, race, class, and
colonialism. Yet, in both narratives, we find that resistance is possible, not
despite this intersectionality, but because of it. Dopdi and Clare use the very
bodies marked by violence to assert power, dignity, and refusal. They do not
seek redemption through external rescue but become their own sources of
resistance, disrupting the narrative of victimhood and reclaiming voice, space,
and subjectivity.
What makes their resistance even more striking is the way
each story deploys a different cultural and aesthetic language to convey
defiance. Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi”
draws on mythic subversion and political allegory, invoking the epic figure of
Draupadi only to radically revise her story for a revolutionary context.
Jennifer Kent’s The
Nightingale, on the
other hand, operates within a cinematic tradition of gothic realism, using
visceral imagery, haunting landscapes, and trauma-laden silences to expose
colonial brutality. Despite these differences in form and cultural setting,
both works converge on a shared truth: that the margins—tribal, colonized,
female—are not merely sites of victimhood but potential grounds for radical
resistance.
As Judith Butler argues, “gender is a kind of persistent
impersonation that passes as the real” (Butler 186), and both Dopdi and Clare
destabilize this “real” by rejecting the scripts of passive femininity imposed
on them. Their defiance becomes a performative act that reconstitutes the
meaning of female agency under oppression. Likewise, Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak’s famous question “Can the subaltern speak?” finds a compelling answer
in these women who speak not always through language, but through action,
silence, and bodily confrontation (Spivak 287). Spivak warns that the subaltern
woman’s voice is often overwritten or unheard, but in “Draupadi” and The Nightingale,
resistance itself becomes a speech act—one that disrupts dominant historical
and ideological narratives. When Clare defiantly tells Hawkins, “You can’t own
me,” she rejects the very foundation of patriarchal colonial power, ownership
and domination (Kent). Like Dopdi’s refusal to cover her naked, violated body,
Clare’s statement becomes a verbal act of reclamation, asserting that her
identity and agency cannot be possessed or destroyed. In reclaiming their
violated bodies as instruments of confrontation, Dopdi and Clare shatter the
ideological scripts of silence and submission imposed on them. Their acts of
resistance resonate not just within their narratives, but beyond them—as
challenges to the global structures of power that continue to devalue and discipline
subaltern women.
Conclusion
Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi” and
Jennifer Kent’s The
Nightingale do more
than recount the brutalization of women; they offer urgent and unflinching
narratives in which gendered, racialized, and caste-based violence is laid bare
as a deliberate tool of political domination. By placing Dopdi and Clare at the
center of their stories—not as passive victims but as agents of radical
defiance—both works dismantle traditional tropes of female suffering and
silence. In confronting their violators not with fear, but with unyielding
presence and will, these women reveal that even the most violated body can
become a site of insurrection.
Through the lens of Judith Butler’s performativity, we
see how Dopdi and Clare subvert imposed roles of docility and shame by crafting
new identities rooted in resistance. And through Gayatri Spivak’s critique of
subaltern silencing, we recognize that their speech—whether through silence,
nudity, or defiant refusal—constitutes a potent language of its own. Their
bodies, marked by violence, refuse to be erased; instead, they confront and
expose the very systems—patriarchy, colonialism, caste, and class—that sought
to control them. Clare’s assertion, “You can’t own me,” and Dopdi’s iconic
declaration, “There isn’t a man here I should be ashamed of,” echo across
cultural and historical divides as declarations of self-possession and moral
victory.
Ultimately, these stories teach us that the subaltern can
speak—not always in the language of the oppressor, but in gestures, refusals,
and acts of survival that rewrite the meaning of power. “Draupadi” and The Nightingale
do not simply depict violence; they indict the structures that perpetuate it,
while illuminating how resistance emerges from the very margins where women are
most silenced. In this act of literary and cinematic rebellion, both works
reclaim the narrative and declare, unequivocally, that the wounded female body
is not a symbol of defeat—but a battlefield of liberation.
Works Cited
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Crenshaw, Kimberlé.
“Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence
against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, pp.
1241–1299.
Devi, Mahasweta. Breast
Stories. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Seagull Books, 1997.
Kent, Jennifer, director. The
Nightingale. IFC Films, 2018.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. Toward
a Feminist Theory of the State. Harvard University Press, 1989.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist
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