For centuries women have been kept in the back burner of history. Their stories were often times said by men, and therefore it has been tweaked and perfected as per their liking. And if by some chance women did take up the mantle and tried to show their truth, they were forced to adapt to the liking of their male counterpart.
The theory of male gaze was introduced by Laura Mulvey and is a key term in feminist film theory. Mulvey first used the term in the 1970s in her now famous essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer. Though the term was coined for the visual art, it still holds true in almost all aspect of a woman’s life.
When we look into history, especially the royal ones, we have always found the attributes of bravery and courage been attached to men. Female rulers where often times portrayed as an antagonist, someone who stands between the throne and the rightful male successor. Raziya Sultana of Delhi Sultanate was the prime example for this. Even though she was a very capable ruler and a leader, the court deposed her for being a woman.
Our history is filled with many such capable women, put in some dingy dark corner of history books because men didn’t like it, because their masculinity was threatened by a woman whose sole role in society is to stay at home, be naïve and docile and rear children, so much so that even the valour of Lakshmi Bai is not the part of her femininity. She is chronicled as “Khoob ladi mardani woh toh Jhansi wali rani thi”, making valour a masculine attribute.
Another very talented queen was Cleopatra. But, media has always portrayed her as a sexy seductress who gets her work done through her sexuality, and very blatantly over rule her power and capability as a ruler. She was the last Pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt. She was an intelligent woman and had improved the country’s status and economy considerably. She was the last significant threat to the Roman Empire. But none of this is ever shown in mainstream media.
There are many such women in history who have held their own and have emerged victorious. Queens like Boudica from British Iceni tribe, Mavia of Arabia, Amanirenas the Nubian queen fought against and defeated the mighty Roman army. Nonetheless, their names never appear anywhere mainstream.
It is high time that we reclaim our narrative, that we collectively work together to stop appeasing the male gaze. One of my favourite literary trends right now is the restoration of women to famous epics and stories that have historically focused on men. More recent examples are Genevieve Gornichec’s exceptional The Witch’s Heart, Madeline Miller’s Circe, and Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships.
Rukmini by Saiswaroopa Iyer, Mohini by Anuja Chandramouli, The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and The Liberation of Sita by Volga are few of the examples of retelling of Indian mythology through feministic lens. These books shed light on the female characters from various mythological stories and also gives agency to these women to narrate their side of the truth.