Gender roles in Mirch Masala

While watching the movie “Mirch Masala”one could pretty easily see the objectification against woman that occurred between many different characters.  While this was also seen in other movies we have watched, in particular “Lagaan”, the most apparent objectification was being done by the English colonialists to the villagers.   In “Mirch Masala” there wasn’t a single British colonialist depicted in the movie.  Instead the objectification that occurred was being done by villagers and heads of the village to the woman.  It was very clear to see that the woman’s role was to cook, clean, and do whatever their husband or father wanted them to do.  A lot of this could be due to the fact that woman were banned from studying in school.  One scene that really jumped out at me was when the mukhis wife was bringing their daughter to school for the first time and the villagers were making comments as they walked by.  One of these comments was something like “what is that girl going to do with an education”.  This was irritating to me to hear but at the same time the women who said this had a point.  While I don’t agree with the way woman were somewhat second class citizens in colonial India, that was the harsh truth and this girl would have been educated and not been able to do anything with it.

While I said earlier that this movie was different because it wasn’t British colonialists behind most of the objectification, they were still somewhat behind the objectification.  In the case for this movie it was still the system that the British set up in colonial India that led to the objectification of women in this movie.  Two of the main characters who were causing the most problems to these women’s were leaders of the village who were appointed by the British. The subedar and mukhi were both driven by their own lust for other women and in the end this led to people dying and a village being torn apart.  They both had this sense of entitlement to any women they wanted and seemed to always treat women like they were lesser to them.  While these are just a couple of examples where women were objectified in this movie, I was just wondering if anyone else saw a different view on this issue?