Social Criticism In Tagore's Short Story Of Women

Through the story, Tagore is primarily concerned with criticism of social behaviour, which he condemns without didacticism but also without complacency. Women, in Tagore’s short stories is most often a living-dead, a known person whom society deprives of independence. At first subjected to her father, then to her husband, and at last to her son. They are caught in a conflict between the individual aspirations and social demands. They are torn between self- expression and social stigmas ( psychological and material ). In the story, the writer deals with a contrast between good and evil, innocence and experience, life and death. He blends in it the techniques of psycho-analysis and being unconscious—factors (forging a short span of death) to interpret her existence at social and personal levels. The author leads the audience to participate emotionally in the protagonist’s conflict with her own unconscious experience. He aims his audience to achieve a state of awareness, which implies both an intellectual perception of the wholeness of situations and more importantly emotionally behaviour of the turmoiled life. The story also maintains the impact of Aristotle’s theory--- “Catharsis” as by the catastrophic end of Kadambini, the audience is purged of the emotions of ‘pity’ and ‘fear’. Tagore’s short stories divulge in many psychological emotions which are acknowledged through his characters. His main interest is ‘ the inner man’, ‘the sou’l or ‘the psyche’ of the individual