Representation of Violence and Quest for Emancipation: A Reading of Dina Mehta’s Getting Away With Murder

Abstract

Women’s theatre in India since 1970s focuses on the various issues and problems faced by women in the society and family. The women playwrights of this time represent in their works issues like domestic violence, bride-burning, exploitation of women’s sexuality, molestation and exploitation of girl-child. Among the women playwrights writing in English, Dina Mehta is a pioneer. Her play Getting Away with Murder (1989) presents the troubled lives of three friends Mallika, Sonali and Raziya. In this play Mehta shows how the lives of these friends are anguished by violence in multifaceted ways. Patriarchy plays a crucial role in the agonised lives of these characters. Social evil like ‘witch killing’ is another important subject dealt in this play. In this paper I shall evaluate how violence and abuse affects the lives of the female characters, and how they struggle to achieve their emancipation from their troubled situations.