After reading Rabindranath Tagore’s “Punishment”, many other stories came to mind that appeared to have a lot of similarities with Tagore’s piece work. One of those short stories is Feng Menglong’s “Du Tenth Sinks the jewel Box In Anger”. Both stories carry out a similar issue of depicting the women as the victims and more specifically women are depicted as the means to resolve an obstacle. In both stories, the wives of the protagonists were those women that not just struggled to overcome the obstacles of their husbands but also faced death because of the betrayal of their husbands. In “Punishment”, when Durkhiram killed his wife Radha by stabbing her. His brother Chidam falsely blamed his wife Chandara for her death to cover up his brother’s crime because he believed that “ if I lose my wife I can get another, but if my brother is hanged, how can I replace him?”. Chandara agreed to accept the blame of Radha’s death because Chidam told her if she said what he told her, she would be safe. “He reassured her: Don’t worry – if you do what I tell you, you’ll be quite safe”. This can be seen as Chidam using his wife as a tool to save his brother from death row while Radha’s intentions were to help her brother in law and took the risk to keep what’s considered her family safe. Similarly in Feng Menglong’s piece of work, betrayal can be seen from Li Jia and Du tenth relationship’s sad ending. In the beginning, Li Jia felt in love with Du Tenth. Later Li Jia ran out of money and was resisting to see Du tenth with all the hardships. While Du Tenth is sacrificing to keep her relationship with Li Jia, Li Jia took stranger advice and decided to sell her ” He has it in mind to take you in for one thousand taels. With that thousand taels I will have a pretext on which to call on my parents, and you, my dear benefactress, will also have someone to rely on, but I cannot bear to give up the affection I feel for you”. In this case, Li Jia betrayed Du Tenth for money and was blinded to see that their relationship and what they have been through is worth more than just money. Unfortunately, Du Tenth ends up being the victim of this relationship. Therefore, both Chandara and Du Tenth faced the same destiny where they chose death over living with a feeling of betrayal from their husbands.
Ali, You’ve pointed out a lot of important parallels between the two texts. I am wondering about your characterization of Du Tenth and Chandara as “victims.” I agree with you that they are both betrayed by their beloved, but what do we make of their final actions. In choosing death, do they remain victims, or are they able to reclaim some kind of agency?