Business Commons^™

The Little Clay Cart (Mrcchakatika): The Construction Of Gender And Emotion In Act V, “The Storm”, Mohan Limaye, Kim Price

Mohan Limaye

In Act V of The Little Clay Cart, a Sanskrit play written in India about 1600 years ago, the playwright Shudraka constructs a poetic duet between Vasantasena, the heroine, and a Vita, her male companion, as they walk to the house of her lover Charudatta in a raging storm. Their poetic descriptions of the storm portray the differences in gender and emotion between these two characters. Vasantasena’s verses create an enriched gender-specific persona through the expression of her nuanced feelings for Charudatta and of the sentiment of love in separation. The Vita, on the other hand, describes the storm …