Gender, Patriarchy, and Women's Resistance in the Select Plays of Mahesh Dattani and Girish Karnad

Gender has emerged as one of the most significant thematic concerns in modern Indian English drama, as contemporary playwrights increasingly interrogate the structures of power that govern women’s lives within family, society, and culture. The stage becomes a critical space where the workings of patriarchy are exposed, questioned, and resisted, allowing drama to function not merely as representation but as social critique. Indian English dramatists reveal how gender roles are culturally constructed, how female identity is shaped through silence, obedience, and control, and how women are subjected to psychological, emotional, and physical oppression within patriarchal systems. This chapter examines the interrelated themes of gender, patriarchy, and women’s resistance in selected plays of Mahesh Dattani and Girish Karnad, with specific reference to Dattani’s Tara (1995) and Thirty Days in September (2013) and Karnad’s Naga-Mandala (1988) and Hayavadana (1971). These plays present women who are constrained by traditional expectations of marriage, sexuality, family honour, and social respectability, yet they also portray female characters who gradually negotiate these limitations and attempt to assert voice and agency. Through close textual analysis, the chapter explores how patriarchal ideology operates within domestic, cultural, and psychological spaces and how resistance emerges through speech, self-awareness, emotional struggle, and symbolic transformation. The chapter argues that the selected plays of Dattani and Karnad function as powerful feminist spaces that not only expose the mechanisms of gendered oppression but also reimagine women as thinking, feeling, and speaking subjects capable of challenging dominant structures. By foregrounding women’s lived experiences and their struggles for identity and dignity, these plays contribute meaningfully to contemporary debates on gender justice and the ongoing process of social transformation in India.