Introduction of the Poem:
In The Old Playhouse, taken from The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (1973), Kamala Das recounts the unsatisfactory and disappointing conjugal life with her husband, and expresses her resolve to free herself from the prison of her husband's house.
Critical Summary:
The poet compares herself to a swallow and her husband to a captor who wanted to tame her and keep her under his control by the power of his lovemaking. He wanted her not only to forget all the comforts she might have enjoyed in her parental home before she got married to him but also to forget her very nature and her innate love of freedom by keeping her in a state of subjection.
She had come to her husband to learn what she was and, by learning what she was to learn to develop her personality and her potential. (She was married when she was only fifteen). But her husband did not make it possible as he was a self - centred man; his egoism prevented him from letting der learn anything except his own nature and disposition. He certainly made love to her and was pleased with the response he was gratified by the tremors of her body when he made love to her. But be failed to understand that her response was purely physical and therefore, superficial, because she never experienced oneness of feeling with him. He had no notion of what love and affection meant to a wife; he merely thought of her as a sex partner and a housewife.
While having sex with her, the husband used to kiss her very hard, pressing his lips against her and letting his saliva flow into her mouth. He would press his whole body against hers with great vehemence, gratifying the sexual desire in her in the process. He succeeded fully in the physical sense in penetrating every part of her body, making his fluids mingle with hers. But he did not realize that after her sexual desires had been fulfilled, she remained emotionally dissatisfied and hungry. In the emotional and spiritual sense, he was a complete failure as it never occurred to him that his wife, in addition to sexual gratification, also needs emotional and spiritual fulfilment.
As part of her domestic duties, the poet would put saccharine tablets in her husband's tea , and give him vitamins at specified times . Her husband was a hard taskmaster; he was so conceited and egoistical that, with the passage of time, she lost her own identity as a human being; she became a slave to his wishes and whims. Eventually, she felt that her own personality, instead of developing, was reduced in stature, almost to nothingness. She even lost her own will and her thinking faculty. She mumbled incoherently whenever he asked her something. This began to jar and the poet started longing for the inconveniences of life before her marriage. She felt suffocated in her husband's house in which his room was always lit by the artificial light of electric lamps and the windows were always shut. Even the air - conditioner in his room provided no relief to her feeling of suffocation. The house reeked of her husband's masculine breath. Even the flowers placed in vases seemed to have lost their natural fragrance and acquired the odour of her husband's sweat. She no longer heard the singing of the birds outside; she began to feel that her mind was like an old and forsaken theatre - hall which was no longer in use. She was then inclined, rather determined to free herself from the prison her husband's house had become for her. She longed to free herself from her loveless life of domesticity.
Her husband is physically strong and, like a strong man, he always uses the same technique of keeping his wife physically and sexually satisfied but denying her the love and emotional fulfilment she desperately needs; this is killing her slowly. She compares herself to Narcissus who was love in with his own reflection that he saw in a pool of water, which subsequently haunted him, causing him agony and heartache as he could not enjoy a sexual union with himself. The poet is tortured by the intensity of her desire for love that she never got from her husband. It is only by obtaining a release from her husband's tyranny that she can end this torture. This release may be obtained through suicide if no other way out can be found.
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