English BA III (Bravely Fought the Queen)

The play Bravely Fought the Queen is set in Bangalore of 1980s and 1990s. It deals with the emotional, financial and sexual working in the lives of an urban Indian family. The play dramatizes the emptiness and shame in the lives of women and self-indulgent men. The play mainly raises questions of gender equality and identity.

The play centres on the Trivedi family with its two brothers Jiten and Nitin and their wives Dolly and Alka. Dolly and Alka are sisters. All the relations are maintained strictly under some rules and regulations. Praful is the only brother for the two sisters. The third family that is connected with the characters of the Trivedi house is that of Lalitha and Sridhar. Sridhar is the employee of the Trivedi brothers and Lalitha is his wife. 

Jiten, the elder son always treats his wife Dolly as slave. She is considered to be a pawn in his hand. Dolly has been married for fifteen years to Jiten who has always ill-treated and beaten her up. She reminds him up that how on her mother Baa’s instigation, he had beaten her up and kicked her when she was pregnant. As a result she gave birth to a premature and spastic Daksha who is now studying in a spastic school and wants to be a dancer. Her only interest is to listening to soulful thumris by Naina Devi to forget her sorrows and the emptiness of her life. Both husband and wife feel reluctant to talk about Daksha till the end of play. Dolly by listening her daughter’s name always remembers how she was tortured during pregnancy when a letter arrived informing that Dolly, Alka and Praful’s father was not legally married to their mother. This is one of the reasons for their husband’s torture on them. Jiten is a womanizer and plays with all girls who work as a model in his company. Dolly never asks him about it and remains silent.

Alka and Nitin consider each other as enemy more than husband and wife. Alka is an alcoholic young woman in her early thirties. She drowns her sorrow in drink. That’s why when Jiten and Nitin planned to take them out, both Dolly and Alka are seem to be very excited. Alka, due to curiosity, makes a call to her husband to ask when they are coming and where they are going in that evening. Alka is shocked when Nitin tells her that the program has been called off. Nitin feels that he has been tricked into marrying Alka by Praful. So he had driven her out of the house earlier when drunken Alka created an ugly scene at a family gathering in Praful’s presence. She had asked Baa whether her two sons had the same father. Baa has hated Alka ever since. Alka drinks heavily and goes out to drench herself. Soon both the brothers return home and remain dumbstruck with Alka’s behaviour. Jiten asks Dolly to tell her sister to go inside and change her dress. But Alka does not listen to anyone and she makes herself busy in drenching in rain.

At last Dolly raises her voice and blames Jiten for everything. At that time he realises his mistake and apologises to Dolly, blaming Baa for everything that happened. Jiten keeps sobbing and says that Baa made him to do it. But Dolly won’t let him get away so easily. Jiten rushes out of the main door and moves out in car and due to anger he ran his car over the old beggar-woman. 

Nitin realises how unfair he has been to Alka and he feels that in order to hide his real identity he has been neglecting Alka for a long time. In his monologue, Nitin reveals his indecent relations with Alka’s brother Praful. At last he accepts Alka as she is, with her drunkenness.

From the title itself, it is clear that Dattani is not biased against women. He regards them as human beings and not an object of entertainment only. He focuses on the powerlessness of women as they are confined to the houses and financially dependent on men. His play simply asks one question to the audience that why the society demands faithfulness of a woman to her husband but not the faithfulness of man to his wife.

The play focuses on the three generations of women: 1. Baa; 2. Dolly and Alka; and 3) Daksha. Dattani talks about two generations who seem to be sharing the same experiences at the hand of their callous husbands. Jiten and Nitin’s father was also a cruel and a dark man who harassed their mother. Daksha who belongs to the third generation also experiences the maltreatment of her father even before her birth and is born as a disable child.

Dattani’s use of the bonsai is an interesting technique used in the play. The women in the play are creations like Lalitha’s bonsais, whose shoots or their desires are constantly trimmed and cut so that they spread only to a particular level. They are not allowed to attain the required height. Their roots are not given ample space to spread. This is also the case with the women in this play. They too are trimmed in different ways to fulfil men’s desire.

The play clearly depicts the plight of modern educated women. In this play all the women characters are the examples of exploitation that is still prevalent in urban families of our country. It also shows the reality that women cannot be kept suppressing for a long time. If they are not heard for a long time, they will fight back. That’s why in the play, Dolly and Alka are seen turning rebels against their husbands and the male dominated family world.


(econtent written by Dr N. A. Jarandikar)