Sita

One of the most interesting aspects of "Sita sings the blues" was a look into the role of women in classic Indian society. Sita was an eternally devoted spouse. She follows Rama into the forest, agreeing to spend 14 years in exile with him and unfortunately is kidnapped. Rama saves her and refuses to accept her as his wife because he fears she has spent the night in another mans house. Now yes, Sita could have simply flown home on the back of the giant monkey, but Rama rejecting her after he rescues her is incredibly uncalled for. That is, quite literally punishing the rape victim. More interesting  though is when Sita proves her purity and is taken back only to eventually be kicked out by Rama again, Sita never once curses Rama. Sita actually has a very creepy shrine to him in the video. This shows what was expected of women in this time period. No matter what their husbands did they were supposed to support them. In my opinion Sita was a shell of a person she seemingly only has one emotion which is love. Normally this would be viewed as honorable, but in the context of this story it only serves to make Sita look weak, and incapable of thinking on her own. The one decision she does make, to recede back into mother nature's womb, actually shows that Sita is capable of free will, however all she decides is that life is not worth living with out Rama, which once again shows her reliance on her male counterpart. All of this being said I think it should be acknowledged that Sita, not Rama, is in fact the main character of this entire story. Regardless of her character flaws, the simple fact that she is the main character should acknowledge how important she is to the story as a whole. One could argue that the out and out sexism of the story could be countered somewhat by the story's spot light on Sita. Sita may be a weak, male reliant and undeveloped character however that is more we can say about Rama. The only thing we can really say about Rama is that he is Sita's husband and he can be a jerk. So while the story does reveal the unfortunately sexist role of women in Indian society, I would argue that the story itself is not sexist, if anything it reveals the hypocrisies.