Each individual’s equality in the eyes of the law represents the enforcement of ethical law. In Tagore, he explores a few ethical problems in society. Specifically, the way of how a judge reacts to different genders. “The judge concluded that the brothers had confessed to the crime in order to save the younger wife from the shame of the noose,” (898). While both Chidam Rui and Dukhiram Rui tried to prove the innocence of the young wife, Chandara, the judge took it into consideration, but still placed blame onto her. After multiple times of speaking with different witnesses, it boiled down to the conclusion of Chandara being the one to blame. Before Chandara was officially arrested, Chidam already tried to take back the responsibility by confessing to the officers, but it was not taken into consideration. The exact situation happened when Chidam confessed to the lawyer, but the lawyer took it as if he just wanted to be a nice brother-in-law. This ethical point impacted the ending of the story, in which an innocent female had to face the death penalty without any further investigation.
2 responses so far ↓
k.matthes // Oct 30th 2015 at 5:08 pm
I thought this was really interesting because, in this case, Chandara was not innocent until proven guilty. This case was mostly a ‘he said, she said’, in which all fingers ultimately pointed at Chandara. There was undoubtedly an ethical issue involving gender in this case. I think that, during this time, if a woman were to accuse a man of a crime, their claims would not be valid in court. Thankfully, times have changed. I also thought it was interesting that in each case, whether the men were confessing or lying, the professionals didn’t necessarily care whether or not men were telling the truth, but rather they only cared and believed that the woman was guilty.
JMERLE // Oct 31st 2015 at 12:33 pm
Bo,
This is a very nice analysis of the issue of gender inequality, which you have focused much more specifically, by discussing that people simply did not take the women’s testimony seriously. You also do a good job connecting it to the ending, as, from one perspective, Chandara was perhaps executed because of this very issue. Of course, she did nothing to help herself either, at the end, and we’ll discuss this more in class.
10/10