D R. Nandakumar sphere (which was also the precondition for many of the reformist movements); with increased sociability in the domestic realm, the privatized individual also helped evolve a public sphere as the location for his increased need for self-expression through social interaction. Though this was felt more among the townsfolk and in the urban settlements of the English-educated middle class, it was felt in varying degrees 43 elsewhere, too. A gradual freeing from the ascriptive norms of identity within the authoritarian forms of the family fold or caste hierarchy to more acquisitive modes, accompanied by the emergence of new forms of civic consciousness from the stage of passive subjects to that of active citizens, was' characteristic of the social undercurrents of the period. It was only natural that the increasingly privatized religion in this public, secular sphere of an emerging civil society was more humanized, "rational7 and institutionally modem, and thus sought expression in what can be called the 'realism' of the age. Ravi Varma being a frequenter to many of the urban enclaves of enlightened sociability across the country, could respond to this emerging phenomenon immediately. The extravagant stage productions of mythologicals in the early Marathi theatre were nothing but another aspect of this move towards 'realism' as a term of self-expression and communication in the public sphere. The exuberance of their stage props and costumes was a celebration of this newly emerging public sphere of the middle class. Naturally enough, this 'realism'6 furnished Ravi Varma with a contemporary reference. In this context, an interesting case is offered by a point of contrast between the female figures that appear in many of his portraits, like A Young Girl (attributed to Ravi Varma), and those in some of his genre paintings like There Comes Papa or Veena Player. The former are a truthful record of the condition of the repressed womanhood of his day within the perceptions of gender discrimination characteristic of the regimented and authoritarian forms of domesticity. The regimentation that bids her to keep the outside world away from her, renders her subjectivity almost of no reckoning other than as a consciousness of the persona she evokes in herself — her closely guarded world of the self into which she shrinks. This subjectivity that is withheld, as if in self-defence, from any interactive functions, is defined only against the male other. The shrinking, withdrawn self and inhibited emotionality expressed by these ladies, uneasy and uncomfortable before the male gaze that they avert (even as they pose before the artist), is captured by Ravi Varma in their lacklustre faces and rigid postures with a remarkable awareness. In marked contrast to these portraits, the women in the genre paintings are sprightly and vivacious, displaying a distinct extroversion. While looking away from themselves into the outer world (the theme of waiting or longing) which they are now confidently a part of, they are informed by meaningfulness in relating to their social location. These paintings display a concept of womanhood which might still be incompatible with the general condition of the woman of the day. But as envisaged by the new middle class, in the context of an idealized domestic realm with its increased sociability and new patterns of emotionality, she is the romantic spouse waiting for or receiving her beloved. The air of warmth and extroversion that these figures breathe is embodied in the thematics of the emerging private sphere Numbers 27-28