“What an inauspicious moment it turned out to be when she began to write!”: The Presentation and Position of the South Asian Woman Writer in Colonial Bengal
-
Danielle Hall
Abstract
This paper addresses the position and culturally loaded presentation of the South Asian woman writer in two colonial Bengali texts. Through a comparative analysis of Rabindranath Tagore’s “Nashtanir” (1901) and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Sultana’s Dream (1905), it explores the way in which both texts sought to engage with debates surrounding the education of women in the early twentieth century. It argues that the development of Charu’s extra-marital relationship in “Nashtanir,” coupled with Tagore’s representation of her as simple, superficial, and dangerous, gave weight to the claim that women’s education may contribute to a waning interest in domestic duties and facilitate the capacity to engage in extra-marital relationships. However, the analysis of Sultana’s Dream alternatively shows that the woman writer in colonial Bengal used her position to protest the barriers to women’s education in this context. By generating a text that invited its readers to engage in wider educational practises, Hossain produced a politically charged appeal which served to challenge misconceptions surrounding women’s education in colonial Bengal.
Works Cited
Anam, Tahmima (2011). “Rabindranath Tagore’s Legacy Lies in the Freedom-Seeking Women of his Fiction.” The Independent. May 05, 2011. <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/rabindranath-tagores-legacy-lies-in-the-freedom-seeking-women-of-his-fiction-2279473.html> (May 11, 2013).Suche in Google Scholar
Bagchi, Barnita (2009). “Towards Ladyland: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and the Movement for Women’s Education in Bengal, c.1900-c.1932.” Paedagogica Historica 45.6, 743–755.10.1080/00309230903335652Suche in Google Scholar
Chakraborty, Rachana (2011). “Beginnings of Muslim Women’s Education in Colonial Bengal.” History Research 1.1, 75–88.Suche in Google Scholar
Charulata (1964). Dir. Satyajit Ray. Edward Harrison.Suche in Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha (1993). The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9780691201429Suche in Google Scholar
Haque, Rezaul (2013). “Educating Women, (not) Serving the Nation: The Interface of Feminism and Nationalism in the Works of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain.” Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language & Literature 7.2, 95–113.Suche in Google Scholar
Hossain, Rokeya Sakhawat (1988 [1905]). Sultana’s Dream. New York, NY: The Feminist Press.10.1215/9780822395676-035Suche in Google Scholar
Jahan, Roushan (1988). “‘Sultana’s Dream’: Purdah Reversed.” Roushan Jahan, ed. Sultana’s Dream: A Feminist Utopia and Selections from the Secluded Ones. New York, NY: The Feminist Press, 1–6.Suche in Google Scholar
Lothian, Alexis (2013). “Introduction: Feminist Science Fiction.” ADA: Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology 11.3. <https://http://adanewmedia.org/2013/11/issue3-lothian/> (May 15, 2015).Suche in Google Scholar
Morgan, Thaïs E. (1994). Men Writing the Feminine: Literature, Theory, and the Question of Genders. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Perkins Gilman, Charlotte (2015 [1915]). Herland. London: Vintage.Suche in Google Scholar
Ray, Bharati (2002). Early Feminists of Colonial India: Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Ray, Bharati (2010). “New Woman in Rabindranath Tagore’s Short Stories: An Interrogation of Laboratory.” Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language & Literature 4.2, 68–81.Suche in Google Scholar
Ray, Sukhendu (2012). “Translator’s Note.” Bharati Ray, ed. Three Novellas: Nashtanir, Dui Bon, Malancha. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ix–xii.Suche in Google Scholar
Roy, Madhumita (2010). “Scripting Women in Three Short Stories of Tagore.” Rupkatha: Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 2.4, 596–604.Suche in Google Scholar
Roye, Susmita (2009). “Sultana’s Dream vs. Rokeya’s Reality: A Study of one of the Pioneering Feminist Science Fictions.” Kunapipi: Journal of Postcolonial Writing 31.2, 135–146.Suche in Google Scholar
Sarkar, Mahua (2015). “Changing Together, Changing Apart: Urban Muslim and Hindu Women in Pre-Partition Bengal.” History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 27.1, 5–42.10.2979/histmemo.27.1.5Suche in Google Scholar
Sethi, Rumina (2014). “Nineteenth-Century Social Reform, Gender Politics and the Contemporary Indian Education System.” Dhar Debotri, ed. Education and Gender. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 96–116.10.5040/9781472593351.ch-005Suche in Google Scholar
Tagore, Rabindranath (2012 [1901]). “Nashtanir.” Bharati Ray, ed. Three Novellas: Nashtanir, Dui Bon, Malancha. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 3–58.Suche in Google Scholar
©2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- Introduction – Voices of Their Own: South Asian Women’s Writing
- Voices of Resolution and Resistance in Indian Women’s Poetry
- Bengali Women’s Writings in the Colonial Period: Critique of Nation, Narration, and Patriarchy
- Alternative Literary Modernities: A Voice from Colonial Punjab
- “What an inauspicious moment it turned out to be when she began to write!”: The Presentation and Position of the South Asian Woman Writer in Colonial Bengal
- Voices from the Threshold in Attia Hosain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column
- Negotiating Gender, Memory, and History in Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day
- Splitting/Violating the “New Indian Woman” in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors (1980)
- Challenging Gender and Genre: Women in Contemporary Indian Crime Fiction in English
- Book Reviews
- “I Am Because You Are:” Relationality in the Works of Siri Hustvedt
- Counternarrative Possibilities: Virgin Land, Homeland, and Cormac McCarthy’s Westerns
- Shakespeare, Court Dramatist
- Subjectivity across Media: Interdisciplinary and Transmedial Perspectives
- Books Received
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Articles
- Introduction – Voices of Their Own: South Asian Women’s Writing
- Voices of Resolution and Resistance in Indian Women’s Poetry
- Bengali Women’s Writings in the Colonial Period: Critique of Nation, Narration, and Patriarchy
- Alternative Literary Modernities: A Voice from Colonial Punjab
- “What an inauspicious moment it turned out to be when she began to write!”: The Presentation and Position of the South Asian Woman Writer in Colonial Bengal
- Voices from the Threshold in Attia Hosain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column
- Negotiating Gender, Memory, and History in Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day
- Splitting/Violating the “New Indian Woman” in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors (1980)
- Challenging Gender and Genre: Women in Contemporary Indian Crime Fiction in English
- Book Reviews
- “I Am Because You Are:” Relationality in the Works of Siri Hustvedt
- Counternarrative Possibilities: Virgin Land, Homeland, and Cormac McCarthy’s Westerns
- Shakespeare, Court Dramatist
- Subjectivity across Media: Interdisciplinary and Transmedial Perspectives
- Books Received
