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Unit 21: ‘Chitra’ by Rabindranath Tagore: Theme and Plot Construction

the Mahabharata. Tagore filled this skeleton with flesh and blood of an enchanting romance, full of Notes
deep psychological insight into the relationship of man and woman. It is a dramatic sermon on the
theme of true love. Arjuna, the Pandava prince spurns the princess Chitra, the daughter of the King
of Manipur. Later when transformed into beautiful damsel by a boon from the god of Love and god
of Spring, she approaches Arjuna again. He is infatuated. But Chitra conquers her unease by boldly
revealing the truth about her. The false woman redeems herself as the true mother-to-be. The sensual
is transcended in the spiritual, and the union is consecrated at last.
Tagore’s Chitra has a compact and neat structure. Its principal characters tend to be symbolic. Tagore’s
drama is firmly rooted in the Indian ethos in its themes and characters and eminently expressive of
his deepest convictions in creative terms. It is interesting to know the genesis of the play. Once after
one of Tagore’s early visits to Shantiniketan while he was returning to Calcutta and watching the
receding landscape from the window of his railway coach, he was struck by the profusion of flowers
on the wild shrubs and trees that lined both sides of the track in the month of April. “These flowers
so fragrant and lovely to look at would soon wither and fall in the burning heat of the sun and in their
stead the trees among which were many mango trees would bear fruit. The flowers were merely the
play of spring-nature’s trick to induce the fruit.” Musing on this the young poet said to himself: “If a
sensitive woman felt that her lover was bound to her solely on account of her physical charms, which
were external and short-lived, and not by any qualities of her heart and the need of her life-long
companionship, she would discover in her body not an asset but a rival.”This idea intrigued the poet
and he felt like giving it a dramatic form. At the same time an episode from the Mahabharata floated
into his mind. The two jostled in his consciousness until several years later the present drama emerged
during his sojourn in a small village in Orissa, called Pandua, where he had gone to inspect his
family estates.
Chitra is a play in one act and nine scenes in the English version and eleven scenes in the Bengali
version. The eleven scenes in the original Bengali version have been reduced to nine keeping in view
the interests of the English-speaking public. The scenes vary in length from one another keeping in
view their plausibility and requirement in the development of the story. Chitra has been performed
in India without scenery—the actors being surrounded by the audience.
The forthcoming paragraphs consider Chitra as a drama in terms of (i) Plot Construction (ii) Character
(iii) Dialogue (iv) Conflict (v) Theme (vi) Supernatural Device (vii) Soliloquy (viii) Intensity of emotion
and Lyrical quality in terms of Diction.

21.2 Plot Construction

Chitra is a play in one act and nine scenes. Freytag pointed out that the plot of a play may be symbolized
as a “pyramidal structure,” its diagram consists of the exposition, the initial incident, its development,
the conflict, the resolution and the catastrophe. Chitra also consists of the exposition, the initial incident,
its development, crisis, falling action and catastrophe. In the first scene, there is the rebuff of Chitra
by Arjuna. Chitra tells Madana (god of Love) and Vasanta (god of Youth and Beauty) how, on seeing
Arjuna, she had broken her bow and cast away her arrows, changed her boy’s attire to a woman’s,
and approached him—only to be rejected, because of his vow of celibacy. While she knows there is a
long hard way of winning him, she contemplates to take recourse to an easy way by asking for the
gift of physical beauty from the gods. She then acquires it for the span of a whole year.
According to William Henry Hudson, “The plot” must have “a beginning, middle and an end.” In
Chitra, the exposition which should be clear, brief, dramatic and of absolute naturalness and
spontaneity, consists at first the rejection of Chitra’s suit by Arjuna; her sense of inferiority due to the
lack of feminine graces and charms, and her seeking the help of Madana and Vasanta. The machinery
of the gods constitutes an integral part of the plot of action. It is not merely a decorative appendage.
The gods granted her prayer of being endowed with beauty and extraordinary charms for a year.
The playwright thus prepares a background of passion, love, romance and beauty in the very beginning
against which the action here would develop. Moreover, insight into Chitra and Arjuna’s character is
also given here. Chitra, inspite of being attired as a warrior, with her sinews hardened is a woman
after all. Arjuna who is handsome, tall and masculine turns himself away from her, for he does not

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