ABSTRACT
Since the late eighteenth century, the view has persisted that Shakespeare’s Cleopatra redeems herself by dying for a “love which is all giving and selfsacrifice” (Ribner; qtd. in Spevack 689). In her most memorable sexual pun-“Husband, I come” (5.2.287)1-she lays claim to the status of an erstwhile wife, now the paragon of widows. If, in consequence, we read her suicide not as a mistress’s Liebestod but as a response to the death of her husband, regrettably it has much in common with sati, an upper-caste Indian practice that may still be claiming its victims. In India and among some Hindu sects in other countries, widow suicide by immolation on the husband’s funeral pyre, a public ritual some think sanctioned by scripture, came to be regarded as “the duty of a virtuous wife” (Mani, Contentious Traditions 1). Although sati had been outlawed by the British in 1829, in September 1987, an eighteen-yearold widow, Roop Kanwar, whose loveless eight-month marriage had been arranged by her parents, died on her husband’s funeral pyre and was hailed as the incarnation of all that was pure and best in woman. Her sati occurred on the outskirts of Jaipur, no backwater, and Roop herself was a modern young woman (Sen 1-4):
The incident . . . unearthed the information that there have been at least thirty-eight widow immolations in Rajasthan since independence, and dragged out of the closet vociferous supporters of the practice. In this recent case the government of India vacillated in taking action against family members found to have coerced Roop. State officials were present along with an estimated 300,000 others at an event “honouring” the episode thirteen days after the burning, and when the state finally banned glorification of sati, the response was too little, too late. (Mani, “Multiple Mediations” 315)
A year later, some eight thousand people came together to celebrate the anniversary of Roop’s burning (Mani, “Multiple Mediations” 317).
