Staging
Singlism: A Critical Reading of Selected Plays of Vijay Tendulkar and Mahesh
Elkunchwar
Aratrika Roy,
Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
Malda College,
Malda, West Bengal, India,
Ph.D. Research Scholar,
Department of English,
Techno India University,
Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
&
Dr. Shantanu Majee,
Associate Professor,
Department of English,
Techno India University,
Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Abstract: This paper intends to study changing
representation of single women in post-independence Indian theatre. Indian
patriarchal culture considers marriage to be a significant marker of adulthood,
respectability and social belonging. Amatonormativity ensures this to be the
life goals of young people through popular culture. Beyond coupledom, women
experience stereotypical discrimination, stigmatisation and ignorance
through cultural assumptions that American psychologist Bella Depaulo defined
as ‘singlism’. It operates through social scrutiny and judgemental
(re)presentation of unmarried, divorced, widowed and separated women. It
challenges the cultural assumptions that position single women as failure and
socially inadequate leading a life of loneliness.
The theoretical
framework of Singles Studies, in dialogue with feminist literary criticism
encompasses a methodological lens to reread Vijay Tendulkar's Shrimant (1956) and Silence! The Court is in Session
(1963/1967), and Mahesh Elkunchwar's Party
(1976) and Sonata (2001). This
corpus is selected to trace the politics of representation of single women. The
study focuses on how singlehood as a culturally constructed identity intersects
with class, sexuality, age, and social background. The study aims to explore
how singlism operates across historically changing periods and how single women
are staged, negotiating singlehood in Indian theatre.
Keywords: Singlehood, Singlism, Amatonormativity, Indian Theatre,
Representation
Introduction
Indian
society prioritizes marriage as one of the major goals of adult life and often
positions it as a pathway to family belonging and social legitimacy. Popular
culture and media play an important role in normalizing these expectations by
circulating amatonormativity, the assumption that everyone is better off in an
exclusive, romantic, long-term relationship and that such a relationship is
universally desirable (Brake 81–108). This privileging of amorous coupledom
contributes to what Brake identifies as the marginalization of other forms of
care and intimacy (81–108). Such a cultural framework can devalue singlehood by
representing it as a sign of lack, loss, or deficiency. The saturation of
amatonormative values consequently creates conditions for singlism, understood
as the stereotyping, stigmatization, and discrimination directed towards people
because they are single (DePaulo and Morris 251–54). Popular narratives
frequently construct singlehood through a deficit model, associating single
women with failure, abnormality, loneliness, or the inability to attain the
socially prescribed marital trajectory. Lahad demonstrates how popular cultural
discourses use temporal metaphors such as “missing the train” to position
single women as having deviated from the expected life course (Lahad).
This
framework is particularly significant in the Indian context, where women’s
lives have historically been organized around expectations of marriage,
sexuality, motherhood, and domestic responsibility. At the same time, the
global increase in single-person households and the growing visibility of
single lives demand greater scholarly attention to the politics of
representation surrounding singlehood. Recent scholarship on Indian singlehood
has begun to challenge deficit-based understandings of unmarried life. Ketaki
Chowkhani, for instance, examines the persistence of singlism in India while
also drawing attention to women who actively construct fulfilling lives outside
marriage. Her recent work emphasizes that, despite the persistence of
stereotypes and discrimination, single women in India negotiate and construct
meaningful lives beyond marital frameworks (Chowkhani). Ipshita Chanda’s Selfing
the City similarly examines single women in Kolkata and demonstrates how
they negotiate urban spaces, work, intimacy, belonging, and identity while
living outside conventional familial structures (Chanda 253–64).
However,
a significant research gap remains, as limited attention has been given to the
theatrical representation of single women in Indian drama, particularly through
the conceptual framework of Singles Studies and the category of singlism. By
contextualizing singlism in Vijay Tendulkar’s Shrimant (1956) and Silence!
The Court Is in Session (1963; first performed 1967), and Mahesh
Elkunchwar’s Party (1976) and Sonata (2001), this paper examines
how singlehood becomes a socially produced position whose meanings change
according to gender, class, age, sexuality, economic independence, and family
structures. The corpus has been selected across four decades because these
plays represent women whose lives exist outside normative marital structures.
Tendulkar’s plays foreground sexuality, morality, family honour, and social
surveillance, while Elkunchwar’s plays shift the discussion towards
professional independence, friendship, intimacy, ageing, and urban modernity.
The article therefore examines how these plays represent changing forms of
singlism, from overt stigmatization and moral surveillance to subtler forms of
normative pressure, while also revealing the continuing cultural centrality of
marriage and coupledom.
Methodology
Singles Studies in dialogue with feminist literary
criticism provides the primary conceptual framework for close reading the
theatrical representation of single women in post-independence Indian society.
The methodology explores Bella Depaulo’s concept of singlism as a consequence
of Elizabeth Brake’s idea of amatonormativity, providing a basis for digging
into the cultural assumptions between the binary of singlehood and coupledom.
While Depaulo and Morris define singlism as the stereotyping, discrimination
and stigmatisation directed towards singles, amatonormativity provides a
privileged position to marital and romantic couples socially, economically ,
culturally and legally. It defies other forms of human connection and intimacy
to margin. This study rereads the plays through these lenses to bring out
representational politics of bodies, voices, social interaction and dramatic
situations that focus on the cultural attitude towards (in)visible singlehood
on stage.
Representation of Single Women
Post-Independence
Indian theatre emerged as an important cultural space for engaging with the
changing social realities of a newly independent nation. Playwrights such as
Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar and Mahesh Elkunchwar used theatre to question
established structures of family, caste, class, gender, sexuality, morality and
social power, often exposing the tensions between modernity and deeply rooted
social norms. Stuart Hall's concept of representation draws attention to the
ways in which meaning is produced through language, discourse and cultural
practices rather than simply reflected through them (Hall, 1997).
Representation is therefore never politically neutral; it participates in the
construction of identities, social categories and relations of power. In this
sense, the representation of women who remain outside marriage becomes
particularly significant within the Indian context. Indian society has
historically been family-centred, with marriage functioning as the thread that
connects individual identity to family, kinship, social respectability and
belonging. For many, marriage is not merely a personal relationship but a
socially prescribed roadmap of life. Such a framework produces what Elizabeth
Brake terms amatonormativity, the assumption that romantic and marital
relationships are central, natural and desirable forms of adult life (Brake,
2012). This conventional structure pushes female autonomy to become contested
when a woman chooses to remain outside the prescribed marital framework.
Singlehood becomes a statement of resistance, whether it emerges from conscious
choice or from circumstance. Literary representation of single women attests
that socio-economic conditions after partition gave the different reasons for
choosing singlehood: some sacrificed their own desires and aspirations to care
for ageing parents, siblings or other family members, while others turned away
from marriage after experiencing betrayal, abandonment or exploitation within
patriarchal structures. Historiographically, singlehood emerged as
simultaneously a condition of sacrifice, circumstance, resistance and choice.
The
latter half of the twentieth century witnessed significant changes in women's
socio-cultural and legal position in India. Access to education, employment and
financial independence, expanded women's
possibilities for making choices outside traditional domestic roles. Legal
reforms also strengthened women's rights in areas such as property and
inheritance, while changing divorce laws provided greater legal recognition to
women seeking to exit unequal marriages and, in certain circumstances, claim
maintenance or alimony. These developments enabled women to increasingly
articulate their own desires and assert their rights within and beyond the
family. Sarah Lamb’s Being single in India (2022) depicted the
sociological terrain of single women continuing to remain tied to domestic
responsibilities, familial expectations and social vulnerabilities, while
declared ‘failure’ in conforming to established definitions of femininity,
marriage and respectability and remained
subject to stigma and surveillance. How do representations of single women
reveal changing forms of singlism? To what extent do representations of single
women challenge the deficit-based construction?
How do changing representations of single women reflect broader
transformations in Indian society concerning female autonomy, sexuality,
professional identity, friendship, intimacy, and ageing? Post-Independence
Indian theatre, especially the works of Vijay Tendulkar and Mahesh Elkunchwar,
provides an important cultural space for examining these contradictions.
Singlehood as a gendered condition
Vijay
Tendulkar's Shrimant, Silence! The Court is in Session, and Sakharam
Binder present different forms of singlehood, including unmarried,
abandoned, single motherhood, and resistance to heterosexual marriage. His
plays represent women as subjects produced and disciplined by a patriarchal
social order. His plays repeatedly show how women's bodies, sexuality, labour,
and desires become objects of social interpretation and control. This makes his
work particularly relevant to the study of singlism (DePaulo and Morris
251-54). In Tendulkar's plays, singlism is inseparable from patriarchy because
women's respectability is constructed through sexual purity, marital
attachment, domesticity, and reproductive legitimacy. His women experience this
regulation through surveillance, humiliation, sexual exploitation, economic
coercion, and violence (Dharwadker).
Vijay
Tendulkar's Shrimant, written in 1956, provides an early and
particularly useful point of entry into the relationship between female
singlehood and social respectability. The play centres on an unmarried young
woman who becomes pregnant and decides to keep her child, while her wealthy
father attempts to arrange a marriage in order to protect the family's social
position. The radical element of the play lies not simply in the representation
of premarital pregnancy but in the conflict between the woman's decision and
the family's desire to restore social legitimacy through marriage. Her body
consequently becomes a site of family honour, while her reproductive and
emotional autonomy is denied. The play demonstrates how singlism and patriarchy
reinforce each other: patriarchy regulates women's sexuality, while singlism
presents marriage as the institution through which that sexuality can become
socially legitimate. The economic dimension of the play is equally important.
The father's wealth gives him the ability to treat marriage almost as a
transaction. The possibility of obtaining a husband demonstrates how marriage
functions as social capital. This aspect of Shrimant allows singlism to
be connected with class. The experience of the unmarried woman is not simply
determined by her personal decision. It is mediated by the family's economic
resources and social standing. Wealth can provide mechanisms for managing
stigma, but it does not necessarily challenge the norm that produces the
stigma.
Single
Motherhood becomes the agency of producing this stigma. Motherhood is not
denied but becomes unacceptable without the institutional sanction of marriage.
Rosanna Hertz's Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice demonstrates how
women increasingly pursue motherhood without marriage, challenging the
assumption that marriage must precede motherhood (Hertz). Leela Benare of Silence!
The Court is in Session wishes to be a single mother. Vijay Tendulkar's Silence!
The Court is in Session (1963)
expands the problem into a theatrical structure of public judgement. Leela
Benare is economically independent, professionally employed, and intellectually
articulate, yet her unmarried status, sexual history, and pregnancy become the
subject of a mock trial. The courtroom can be read through Foucault's concept
of disciplinary power, in which individuals are controlled through
surveillance, examination, categorisation, and judgement (Foucault 184-92). The
theatrical trial produces Benare as a morally deviant woman. Singlism operates
here through the assumption that an unmarried woman is less respectable and
less entitled to sexual and reproductive autonomy than a married woman.
SUKHATME. Mr Ponkshe, is the accused married or unmarried?
PONKSHE. Why don’t you ask the accused?
SUKHATME. But if you were asked, what would you say?
PONKSHE. To the public eye, she is unmarried. (Tendulkar
32)
The
whole play centres around this question of being married or unmarried though,
no one asks that to Professor Damle. The gendered nature of this judgement
becomes particularly evident through Professor Damle's absence. Although he is
the married man involved with Benare, the social and moral consequences fall
almost entirely upon her. This exposes the sexual double standard, through
which male sexuality is normalised or concealed while women's sexuality becomes
evidence of moral failure (Millet 35-58). Benare's pregnancy intensifies this
inequality because the consequences of the relationship become visible on her
body. The mock trial therefore becomes a theatrical representation of how
singlism intersects with patriarchal surveillance and reproductive regulation.
Benare's
professional independence does not protect her from singlist judgement. Rather
her social visibility and independence complicates the conventional association
between unmarried women and dependence. This distinction allows the play to
move beyond the idea that economic self-sufficiency automatically produces
social freedom. Benare can earn a living, speak confidently and participate in
public life, but she cannot fully control how society interprets her sexuality.
The
play's treatment of speech and silence intensifies this contradiction. Benare
is initially one of the most verbally energetic characters. Her confidence and
humour challenge the expectation that women should remain restrained and
submissive. Yet as the trial becomes personal, her ability to speak is
progressively undermined. The title itself turns silence into a command. The
theatrical demand for silence therefore acquires a gendered significance: the
woman who speaks too freely becomes a woman who must be silenced.
The
play also reveals that modernity does not necessarily eliminate patriarchal
structures. The characters participate in theatre, an activity associated with
creativity and progressive social values, yet reproduce deeply conservative
assumptions about female respectability. Sukhatme’s inquiry shows Benare is
mocked, interrupted, humiliated, and denied privacy.
Can
you tell the court how you came to stay unmarried to such a mature—such an
advanced—age? [Waits ; then] Let me frame my. question somewhat differently.
How many chances of marriage have you had so far in your life? And how did you
miss them? Tell the court. (Tendulkar 53)
The
apparently playful courtroom performance thus becomes a form of symbolic
violence in which patriarchal judgement is presented as legitimate social order
(Bourdieu 1-18). Her final speech attempts to reclaim her subjectivity, but her
voice is not granted social authority. Her experience demonstrates that
individual confidence and economic independence cannot by themselves overcome
institutionalised singlism. It shows that the cultural meaning of singlehood is
historically changing, even though the older logic of singlism persists.
Economic
stability is still a factor as economic vulnerability makes them dependent upon
a male-controlled domestic space where shelter is exchanged for labour,
sexuality, and obedience. Sakharam Binder introduces the category of
circumstantial singlehood. Laxmi and Champa enter Sakharam's household after
being abandoned or displaced from conventional marital arrangements. Their
singlehood is therefore produced through abandonment, poverty, and social
stigma rather than personal choice. The play complicates the assumption that
marriage necessarily protects women: when marriage fails, women may move from
one patriarchal arrangement into another rather than becoming autonomous
subjects (Tendulkar, Sakharam Binder; Delphy 143-50). This distinction
is important to Singles Studies because chosen singlehood and circumstantial
singlehood cannot be treated as identical experiences.
The
play also foregrounds the gendered nature of sexual morality. Her sexuality is
made public and denied the same right to sexual autonomy as a married man or
woman. Marriage functions as the cultural institution that authorises female
sexuality. Outside it, female desire becomes vulnerable to moral suspicion.
This is where the concept of singlism intersects with patriarchy. Singlism does
not operate independently of gender. The single woman is not merely treated as
a person without a partner. She is evaluated through specifically gendered
expectations concerning chastity, and family duty. The play therefore exposes a
gendered form of singlism in which marriage is used as a mechanism for
regulating women's bodies.
Singlehood as a negotiated existence
Singlehood
produces visible social anxiety because it challenges the expected relationship
between womanhood, sexuality and marriage. The same form of singlism explicit
because the pressure to marry is articulated through family honour, social
reputation and the regulation of female sexuality. Mahesh Elkunchwar's Party,
first written in Marathi in 1976, brings the same discussion but in a different
setting. It shifts the discussion of singlehood from the immediate moral crisis
of the unmarried woman to the contradictions of an urban, educated and
politically conscious social world. The play takes place within an urban
intellectual milieu in which political commitment, art, social responsibility
and personal freedom are subjects of discussion. The characters participate in
a world that appears considerably removed from the conventional family
structures exposed in Tendulkar's plays. Yet the apparent modernity of the
setting does not eliminate older assumptions concerning relationships. Instead,
Elkunchwar places the tension between public modernity and private expectation
at the centre of his dramatic world.
In
Party, Elkunchwar presents women within an apparently modern, educated,
and socially privileged urban environment. Damayanti and Brinda are
economically secure and socially influential, while Sona and Mohini possess
education and access to elite social networks. Their privilege, however, does
not free them from gendered expectations. Sona's pregnancy outside marriage
exposes the continuing association between female sexuality and legitimate
coupledom. Her vulnerability results not simply from the absence of a husband
but from the belief that women's sexuality requires the sanction of marriage.
Singlism therefore operates through reputation, social conversation, exclusion,
and moral disapproval rather than through openly institutional punishment. Her
experience demonstrates that economic and social privilege cannot fully protect
a woman from patriarchal regulation when sexuality is concerned.
Damayanti's
position further complicates the relationship between marriage, security, and
autonomy. Although she possesses wealth, property, and social influence,
marriage has not guaranteed emotional recognition or personal freedom. Her
experience challenges the assumption that married women are necessarily secure
while single women are necessarily deprived. But she wears the masks of
patriarchy and wants her daughter to marry an influential rich man only to have
class privilege. Elkunchwar thus presents autonomy as an uneven condition:
material resources may provide greater freedom, but they do not necessarily
produce emotional fulfillment or release women from social expectations. Party
shows that singlism affects women differently according to their class
position, sexual circumstances, and relationship to social respectability.
This
distinction is important for the study of singlism. If singlism is understood
only as direct discrimination against unmarried people, Party may appear
less immediately relevant. However, DePaulo's formulation includes not only
overt discrimination but also cultural stereotypes that position married and
coupled life more positively than single life (DePaulo and Morris 251-54).
Mohini and Vrinda in Mahesh Elkunchwar’s Party simultaneously reveal the
possibilities and constraints of singlehood. Their unmarried status provides a
degree of personal freedom, professional independence, and freedom from the
routine expectations of marriage and domesticity. Their friendship and chosen
forms of companionship suggest that meaningful relationships need not be
confined to heterosexual coupledom. However, they are stereotyped as lonely,
immature and under a pitied gaze that continues to measure happiness of women
through marriage and heterosexual intimacy. Their singlehood therefore attracts
subtle forms of judgement, exclusion, and normative pressure. Mohini and Vrinda
are denied a self-defining space of cultural legitimacy. The question is not simply whether a single
woman is condemned. It is whether a life organised outside marriage is granted
the same cultural legitimacy as one organised around coupledom.
The
party itself becomes a useful theatrical metaphor for coupledom and social
conformity. It is a social space where identities are performed and
relationships are displayed. This is where Brake's concept of amatonormativity
becomes useful. Amatonormativity identifies the tendency to treat an exclusive
romantic relationship as a normal and desirable goal and to accord romantic
relationships disproportionate social value (Brake 81-108). Party does
not necessarily present amatonormativity as an explicit doctrine. Instead, its
social environment can be examined for the assumptions that make certain forms
of intimacy appear more natural or complete than others. Friendship, solitude,
professional identity and intellectual association do not always receive the
same cultural recognition as romantic attachment.
Mahesh
Elkunchwar’s theatre shifts the representation of women from the more visible
structures of patriarchal control to the contradictions of modernity,
individual freedom and emotional life. His women are often educated, articulate
and economically independent. Though their autonomy does not necessarily free
them from social expectations surrounding gender, sexuality, intimacy and
belonging, his theatre is particularly significant for a study of singlism
because it allows the concept to be examined beyond the direct demand that
women should marry.
Mahesh
Elkunchwar's Sonata, first performed in 2001, provides the most
contemporary representation of singlehood. The play focuses on three
professionally successful unmarried women, Aruna, Dolon and Subhadra, whose
friendship creates an alternative form of social and emotional belonging. They
have established careers, maintain a household, and form an intimate community
outside the conventional sequence of marriage, domesticity, and motherhood.
Their lives shift the central question from whether a woman can survive without
marriage to whether she can construct a meaningful life beyond coupledom. It
offers a possibility of challenging amatonormative assumptions with an
alternative model of intimacy.
Dolon: what an awful women are we!
Aruna: we are right. We are self - sufficient. We
earn. We spend.
Dolon: self- centred. Do nothing for the society.
Subhadra: without any commitment. Without any ideal.
(Elkunchwar 271)
The
three women respond differently to singlehood, demonstrating that it is not a
uniform experience. Aruna remains relatively attached to conventional moral
values, Dolon's professional self-sufficiency coexists with dissatisfaction and
emotional uncertainty, and Subhadra more openly rejects marital norms through
her relationship with Sangram. These differences reveal how singlehood is
negotiated through personality, desire, previous experience, age, and social
values. Their professional autonomy gives them greater control over their
lives, but it does not produce identical forms of freedom. Intersectionality is
therefore central to understanding their experiences: autonomy is shaped not
only by marital status but also by the interaction of gender, age, sexuality,
class, and emotional needs.
Age
is particularly important in Sonata because the social meaning of
singlehood changes across the life course. A young unmarried woman may be
viewed as someone who will eventually marry, whereas an older unmarried woman
may be regarded as having failed to enter the expected social order. Age
therefore intensifies the pressure placed upon single women by making questions
of companionship, sexuality, care, and future security more urgent. Elkunchwar
does not present this alternative as entirely free from difficulty. Their
conversations reveal anxieties about loneliness, sexuality, ageing, and the
future, but unconditionally happy at the same time.
Dolon (giggling): Sheee! What kind of women are we!
Subhadra: Decadent. But happy. We’re happy.
Dolon: Unabashedly happy.
Subhadra: Abominably happy.
Dolon: Obscenely.
Aruna (getting into it): Nirlajjam sada sukhi. (Elkunchwar 271)
Singlism
is still visible between the lines and sometimes they themselves use it against
each other because of the patriarchal conditioning. But it hints at the need of
women to have a space of their own, where they can be unabashedly happy. The
theatrical setting of Sonata creates a relatively intimate space in
which women can speak to one another outside direct patriarchal surveillance.
Their conversations become a site where they negotiate identity and desire. The
theatrical space therefore shifts from a space of judgement to a space of
negotiation. Singlehood emerges not as a fixed condition of exclusion but as a
complex and continually negotiated form of existence shaped by both autonomy
and social constraint.
Conclusion
Single
women, especially those in positions of power, are seen as anomalies, as they
challenge the traditional expectation of women being paired off or fulfilling
roles as wives or mothers. Jennifer S. Clark in her essay on “Reclaiming Single
Woman’s Work” highlights,
“Her
appealing but potentially threatening elements—her independence, unmarried
status, and sexual freedom—were tempered by the capitalist containments of her
cosmopolitan, fashion-conscious lifestyle.” (Clark et al. 31)
Tendulkar
and Elkunchwar ultimately shift the question from why women remain outside
marriage to how women negotiate identity, intimacy, and autonomy within a
social order that continues to privilege coupledom. These plays portray the
social pressures, exclusions, and forms of surveillance experienced by women in
the name of singlism. The theatrical representations of single women by
Tendulkar and Elkunchwar trace a gradual movement from resistance through
confrontation to quieter forms of autonomy. Therefore , the study opens new
questions that extend beyond its present scope. What new forms of friendship,
community, care, and chosen family might theatre bring into focus? Can newer
theatre represent singlehood beyond the familiar categories of the lonely,
resistant, independent, or ageing woman? How might digital culture and social
media reshape the representation of single women? What happens to the idea of
singlehood when it intersects with migration, diaspora, or transnational
identities? How do queer and non-binary experiences challenge the heterosexual
framework through which singlehood is conventionally understood? Singlehood has emerged not merely as
exclusion but as a negotiated way of living. The theatrical catalogue of these
two playwrights rightly defined the journey of representation of single women
in Indian society and how women have adapted singlehood over the years.
Statistically singlehood, as a social category is on the rise and these
theatres answer most of the questions why women are adopting this new lifestyle and how they are changing the cultural
vocabulary of single existence.
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