The Old Playhouse by Kamala das poem line by line explanation, Women's Writing, English Literature, UG Degree - 5th Semester

 The Old Playhouse -Kamala Das

About Author:

Kamala Das (1934 - 2009) was educated in Kerala. She was born in Malabar and as she herself said, “speaks three languages, write in two, dream in one”. A bilingual writer, she prefers to write Poetry in English and Fiction in Malayalam. The literary awards she has won includes the Asian Poetry Award (1963) and the Sahitya Akademi Award (1984).  Her collections of poems are Summer in Calcutta(1965),  The Descendants (1967), The Old Playhouse and other poems (1973), My Story her autobiography, was published in 1975.

Kamala Das is essentially known for her bold and frank expression. The prominent features of Kamala Das’ poetry is use of the confessional mode and acute obsession with love. Against the frustrating emotional experience, guilt and depression  expressed in her autobiography, there is a section of poetry where she writes about an idealized childhood and of a nostalgic yearning for her grandmother’s Nalpat House symbolizing freedom, lobe and protection.

 

About Poem:

The poem “The Old Playhouse” in 30 lines, was written by Kamala Das. ‘The Old Playhouse’ is selected from the book with the same title that deals with Das’ recurrent theme of failure and frustration in love and marriage. It clearly reveals the plight of a housewife who bewails that her egocentric and male chauvinist husband has virtually reduced her full-blooded and aspiring self to a mere entertaining toy. Consequently, the caged wife, with her stifled and crippled spirit, is helplessly destined to witness the pathetic transformation of her mind into ‘an old playhouse with all it’s lights put out’. The network of concrete and evocative  imagery and imaginative symbols transcends an individual’s suffering and makes it a generic experience.

She writes about an idealized childhood and of a nostalgic yearning for her grandmother’s Nalpat House symbolizing freedom, love and protection.

 

‘The Old Playhouse’

Line by Line Poem Summary and Analysis:

You planned to tame a swallow, to hold her
In the long summer of your love so that she would forget
Not the raw seasons alone, and the homes left behind, but
Also her nature, the urge to fly, and the endless
Pathways of the sky.

 

            In the poem, The Old Playhouse, Kamala Das expresses her disastrous married life experiences. This poem has a personal touch thus it is a public protest against her husband. She blames him because he doesn’t think beyond his sensual gratification on her. Kamala Das symbolizes herself as a domesticated “Swallow”, a bird, after her marriage.

            Her husband put full-stop to her dreams, caged life a tamed swallow bird. He didn’t care about her happiness and interests. She was considered as a mere toy for him to quench his sensual thirst. The poet does not like this, just as she does not like him or his ways.

            Being a caged wife she was put forth to live like his slave, her all ambitions were put down. She was forced to live in the summer of his love and she forgot about other beautiful seasons and suppressed to forget her urge to fly into the endless pathways of her sky of ambitions.

 

It was not to gather knowledge
Of yet another man that I came to you but to learn
What I was, and by learning, to learn to grow, but every
Lesson you gave was about yourself.

 

She had wished to learn more about herself, for that she came to him. She wanted to learn ‘What is she’, and by learning that she wanted to learn how to grow into a better future. But when she came to him, it was merely contradictory. The every lesson he gave her was about himself.

 

…..  You were pleased
With my body's response, its weather, its usual shallow
Convulsions. You dribbled spittle into my mouth, you poured
Yourself into every nook and cranny, you embalmed
My poor lust with your bitter-sweet juices.

The above lines are more personal, the Poetess Kamala Das turns to express male domination her husband shown her, in a more deep way with some piercing words.

Her husband treated her as a sex toy. He were pleased by her body’s response and its shape, and the sensual pleasure.

Kamala Das exposes her husband’s wild sexual nature through these lines – “You dribbled spittle into my mouth, you poured yourself into every nook and cranny,” – Husband treated her in a wild nature and tried to embalm her poor lust by dribbling spittle to her mouth and every nook and cranny. Her all expectation was a peaceful romantic life with freedom to fly high in her own way, but what happened is that was exactly opposite. Her all urge were put down before her self-centered husband. The poetess needed love and tenderness, security and permanence, for her strong man but he could not satisfy her on these scores.

 

…….   You called me wife,
I was taught to break saccharine into your tea and
To offer at the right moment the vitamins. Cowering
Beneath your monstrous ego I ate the magic loaf and
Became a dwarf.
(…)
I mumbled incoherent replies.

 

Being a wife, she was taught to serve him food and vitamins at right time. She was always lived under his monstrous ego. His monstrous ego totally subjugated and turned her into a dwarf as she fully surrendered to his demands, performing all wifely duty and functions. She became a dwarf under the heavy weight of his lustful masculinity and monstrous ego. Falling into the trap of his hypnotic lust, she lost her former stature. She left her desires behind, since it has totally reduced her and disappointed her. All her hopes were dashed into pieces: her cheerful spirits disappeared.  As a wife under control she always mumbled his questions with unclear replies.

The summer
Begins to pall. I remember the rudder breezes
Of the fall and the smoke from the burning leaves.

 

Under the stifling and ‘mechanical’ surroundings of her husband’s company she has lost her zest for life and is reduced to a passive, lifeless individual, Again, note the nature imagery – the summer, the rude breezes of the fall and burning leaves. This reinforces the suffocation of the woman, aptly symbolized in the ‘smoke’

The days of happiness came to a grinding halt in her case. She began of feel the arrival of the autumn for her and the suffocating atmosphere of the burning leaves and the rising smoke.

……  Your room is
Always lit by artificial lights, your windows always
Shut. Even the air-conditioner helps so little,
All pervasive is the male scent of your breath. The cut flowers
In the vases have begun to smell of human sweat. There is
No more singing, no more dance, my mind is an old
Playhouse with all its lights put out.

 

The husband becomes the very source of the pervasive oppression. The man she loved adopts artificial measures to satisfy himself – ‘artificial lights’ – and grows indifferent and insolent towards her by keeping his windows shut. But the artificial measures have not helped him in any way to override his dominating male impulse. Even the air stinks of his sweat (strongly masculine). He turns her life into a mere playhouse with its lights put out. The overall impact of all this on her is dejection and cheerlessness, with no hope of regeneration. She began to feel a great emotional vacuum and could not enjoy sexual encounters with him. Her singing is gone, her dance is forsaken, and her mind becomes ‘an old playhouse with all its lights put out’.

            Note the urban imagery – artificial lights, air-conditioner, cut flowers in the vase – these point to the unnatural state of her sapless life.

 

……..    The strong man's technique is
Always the same, he serves his love in lethal doses,
For, love is Narcissus at the water's edge, haunted
By its own lonely face, and yet it must seek at last
An end, a pure, total freedom, it must will the mirrors
To shatter and the kind night to erase the water.

Love becomes sheer lust and acts like a killer.  The man adopts a hard line towards her and serves his love in deadly doses, whereas for her love is self-obsessed and unenjoyable and yet it seeks its fulfillment in freedom rather than in bondage. Love for its healthy growth wants to be pure and emotional, and not lustful and muddy. The expressions like ‘the water edge’ and ‘to erase the water’ signify sexual consummation between the man and the woman, which the does not like.

Note the irony: love is supposed to be the spirit of life but is here, the killer.

Narcissus (According to the Greek legend) was a Greek youth who fell obsessively in love with his own image reflected in a fountain, thinking it to be the nymph of the place. His fruitless attempts to approach this beautiful object drove him to despair and death; Narcissism: sexual gratification found in one’s own body.

The Greek myth symbolizes the fall (destruction) on account of excessive and obsessive self-love. The ‘lethal’ love between the husband and the woman is sure to lead too destructive end. The woman, however, would like to strive against this self-destructive aspect of love and treat it as a self-realizing agent, winning over the false (mirrored) image of love.

The lustful advance of her man grew distasteful to her and she took revenge upon him by carving for freedom from his snares and by seeking shelter in others’ arms.

 Short Summary :

      The poem is written in the first person point of view. The persona in this poem is a woman, who gives an account of her unsatisfactory and disappointing conjugal life with her husband. She compares herself to a swallow and her husband a captor who wanted to tame her and keep her fully under his control by the  power of his love- making.

    The husband wanted to make her forget all those comforts which she might have enjoyed in her home before being married; but, in addition to that , he wanted also make her forget her very nature and her innate love of freedom by keeping her in a state of subjection to him.

    The speaker says that she had come to her husband with a view to developing her own personality. But all she has had from her husband are lesson about him. Her husband, who is a self-centered person, makes love with her and he feels pleased by her bodily response to his love-making. He approves her state of mind and her mood when he makes love to her and he feels pleased by the tremors of her body during the sexual union.

    He, however, fails to understand that her response to his love-making is purely physical and, therefore, superficial because she never experiences any feeling of oneness with him. According to the speaker, the notions of love and affection mean nothing to her husband. To him she is nothing but a plaything, a sexual partner and a housewife. In the course of the sexual union, he kisses her very hard, pressing his lips against hers and letting his saliva flow into her mouth. He presses his whole body against hers with great intensity, satisfying his sexual desire in this process.

    In this physical union, her husband is successful as he is able to penetrate every part of her body and make his bodily fluids mingle with hers. But he never realizes that she is still emotionally unsatisfied and hungry. In the emotional and spiritual sense, he completely fails.

*****

Detail Tamil explanation for this poem is given in this below video:

                               Click the image and get the video

Don't forget to follow our youtube channel for more videos : Saipedia