The figure of the “New Woman” in Twentieth Century Bengal: A Study Based on Selected Novels of Rabindranath Tagore and Their Later Cinematic Adaptations (original) (raw)
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Tagore's women are distinguished for their radical worldview and actions, successfully heralding the 'new Indian women' of modern India. The women's question that proves crucial not only for the colonial justification of a foreign rule over people who apparently 'brutally' treat their women but also for the nationalist discourse regarding the sacredness of space that women in India inhabit, gets a new dimension through portrayal of extraordinary women in Tagore's fictions. His fictional writings foreground images of outstanding women as harbingers of the 'new era'. Tagore's strong belief in the potential of woman as the driving principle for meaningful change in the fossilized immobility of a rigid patriarchal society is evident in most of his remarkable female characters such as Chandara, Binodini, Mrinal, Kalyani, Damini, Bimala, Anila, Nandini, Kumudini, and Ela. These characters, projected as the catalyst for social transformation in terms of the woman question, are fervent advocates of women's rights and caustic critique of social injustices that dehumanize and objectify women in society. This article attempts to explore how such women characters organically contribute, like the blocks of a jigsaw puzzle, to complete Tagore's imagination of the 'modern Indian woman' and critique the nationalist discourse on the women's question in the nineteenth century Bengal.
Muse India, 2015
The paper is about the story of man and woman in a country under foreign rule – about a nation and its rising nationalist consciousness, trying to come to terms with its political subjugation on one hand and its problematic negotiations with the ‘colonial modernity’ on the other. The ‘colonial’ brand of modernity was largely responsible changes in civic space, social modes of behaviour, emergence of ‘clock-time’, new kinds of economic activities and most importantly changing equations between the ‘home’ and the ‘world’ (ghar o bahir). These changes were happening throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century and its impact was still strongly felt in Bengal in the first half of the twentieth. The main focus of my paper, however, will be a study of the portrayal of Tagore’s ‘women’ (and the dynamics embedded in their relationships with men) in his three novels, Chokher Bali (1903), Chaturanga, (1916), Yogayog (1929). Critics most often pay attention to Tagore’s three other more celebrated novels, Gora (1909), Ghare Baire (1916) and Char Adhyay (1934). They single out these three novels, as his quintessentially ‘political’ novels where nationalist concerns and issues are dealt with in a consistent manner. But my contention is that alongside the three ‘political novels’, it is absolutely essential also to closely look into his three other major novels (which I wish to categorize as Tagore’s ‘domestic’ novels as opposed to the ‘political’ ones) in order to get the full picture.
Tagore as a feminist : reflection from Tagorean literature
2015
Revelation of the female psyche, their predicaments, trials and tribulations and their resistance towards oppressive social forces are strong elements in the writings of Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore‘s writings, especially his novels and short stories bring out the erased portion of women‘s experience and show tremendous sympathy and understanding towards the plight of women which was quite an unfamiliar trend for most work of that period. Set in the Nineteenth Century Colonial Bengal, Tagore‘s writings portray the problems within Hindu custom and patriarchy, the uproar of spiritual and intellectual tension between Bengali Renaissance and tradition marked by the emergence of Colonial education and lives of Bengali, Hindu women in the juncture of all these social events. Controversial issues such as remarriage of Hindu window, co-cremation, the need for female education, their emancipation and the oppression caused through social injustice have found significant place in his writing. T...
Multifaceted Life of Women: A Study of Rabindranath Tagore's Short Stories
2014
Introduction Rabindranath Tagore is known worldwide as a poet. He is the only Indian to get Nobel Prize for Literature. He has also written nearly a hundred short stories and his short stories too are world renowned and as brilliant as his poetry. Most of his stories highlight the rare qualities of Indian woman such as godliness, courage, piety, obedience, love, devotion, sacrifice and kindness etc. His short stories depict the struggles and sufferings of women, their stereotyped roles and the change they bring in society by their inner strength. Tagore portrays women with such marked diversity that every woman portrayed in his works presents a different saga of multifaceted life she lives. Capturing the hues of such life depicts Tagore"s unchallenged dexterity as a narrator. Tagore was greatly concerned about the position of women in the society and how she is treated there. Tagore, being a sensitive man, tried his best to understand women in all spheres of life i.e in their joy and sorrow, hope and despair, their yearnings and their dreams. Tagore found in the Indian women of his country an immense store of wealth and strength-their courage expressions. His short stories highlight the struggles and sufferings of women, their stereotyped roles to fight against all odds, their will power to survive under the worst possible conditions and oppression, their forbearance, their self-sacrificing attitude, and gentleness in their behaviour. It was quite painful for him to see so much human treasure being wasted for nothing. Tagore had the unique psychological intellect not only to peep deep into women"s minds but also tried his best to understand and analyse their strangeness through his stories. He brings out the fact before the entire world that Indian women are highly responsible, most sacrificing, loving, obedient, meek, submissive, religious, brave and kind at the same time. They adore their husbands and are loyal to them, love their children deeply from the core of their heart, and give due reverence and consideration to their parents and their in-laws as well. Indian women know very well what their responsibilities are towards their family and towards the society they live in and they try their level best to fulfill them. His short stories depict the inner and outer lives of women with great sensitivity and understanding that one can peep into their lives both as they appear and as they are in real life situations. The present paper deals with Tagore"s two short-stories-The Story of a Muslim Woman and The Silent Girl (Subha). An attempt has been made in this paper to discuss the way women are ill-treated and oppressed right from their birth, how their voice is suppressed or how they are made voiceless and finally how circumstances force them to willingly change their identity.Sometimes women become more confident, powerful and strong but at times circumstances compel them to surrender. Tagore in The Story of a Muslim Woman begins by reminding us of the times when birth of a girl child was considered inauspicious in the society. This was the fate of Teenmahal Talukdar Bangshibaadan"s family. The situation becomes even more pathetic when we come to know that the
FEMALE VOICE OF PROTEST: EXPLORING TAGORE'S FEMALE IDENTITIES
WEI International Conference Proceedings (Humanities and Social Sciences), Boston, ISSN 2167- 3179 (online USA)., 2019
The cultural icon and trail blazer of Bengali Renaissance Rabindranath Tagore has experimented successfully his strong female protagonists who have managed to stay above the commonplace. A master artist, he has also painted with his dexterously professional brushstrokes a host of highly progressive and modern female identities with strong voices of protest against all prejudices of the contemporary Bengali Hindu communities as well as against all oppressive forces of fate and society. Tagore has portrayed extremely meticulously a number of noteworthy female voices in many of his works by instilling in them the strength of motherhood, the beauty of the beloved and the strong womanhood making them develop their own individual status and identity in a stereotypical, male dominated, and patriarchal Bengali society. This paper undertakes to explore some of those strong female voices who tend to break a fresh ground for the emergence of the new woman not terrified by the severity of male gaze or trodden down by the repression of the backward family or social norms in their struggles for freedom and for representation as individuals without being disloyal to the image of the traditional Indian womanhood.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2023
This research paper explores the portrayal of women in Indian literature through a comparative analysis of the works of Tagore, R.K. Narayan, and Anita Desai. Using a qualitative research design and a thematic approach to analysis, this study examines the portrayal of female characters, their roles and relationships in the selected works. The paper provides a critical review of the literature on the portrayal of women in Indian literature and identifies gaps in the literature, which this study seeks to address. The findings of this study reveal that the works of Tagore, R.K. Narayan, and Anita Desai depict women in diverse roles and explore themes such as gender, identity, power, and agency. Furthermore, the comparative analysis of the works highlights similarities and differences in the portrayal of women and reveals the influence of cultural and historical contexts. This study contributes to the understanding of the portrayal of women in Indian literature and provides insights into the challenges and opportunities for promoting gender equality in literature and society.
Exploring Gender in the Selected Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore
St Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2018
Human societies, since the time immemorial, have always tended to assign different roles, codes of behavior and morality, and even different feelings and thoughts to men and women based on the biological distinction of sex (between male and female) thereby leading to the construction of the social distinction of gender (between masculine and feminine). As a literary genre, short story developed in the 19 th century and by the end of 20 th century occupied the role as one of the major literary forms. In the field of academia and literary circles, Rabindranath Tagore is mainly known as a bard, thinker, philosopher, painter and social activist but few know the first Asian Nobel laureate Tagore as a feminist, with gender issues forming the underlying theme in many of his works. Rabindranath Tagore is one of those pioneer short story writers whose writings reflect maturity. He is regarded as one of the progressive modern Indian short story writers. Tagore has been very successful in depicting woman psychology in his short stories and has made very scathing comments against gender suppression. The focus of this paper will be on the female protagonist of the short stories titled, "A Wife"s letter" and "Musolmanir Galpo" or "The story of a Muslim Woman," by Tagore that how they remained unperturbed although the society in which they lived were dominated by male patriarchal norms and in what ways they have been successful in protecting their rights thereby becoming the champions for women mainly through their progressive thought, courage, and determination.
“Women in post-Independence Bengal: Mahanagar by Narendranath Mitra and Satyajit Ray” “Face(t)s of Woman: Gender in the Indian Cultural Context.” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific 22 (2009). 27 Oct 2009. http://intersections.anu.edu.au
In the short story 'Abataranika' (Introduction) (1949), the Bengali novelist Narendranath Mitra [1] examined how immigration from East Bengal, after India's independence in 1947 and the Partition of Bengal, put new economic pressures on the Bengali community in Calcutta, resulting in middle-and lower middle-class women taking up jobs for the first time. His short story is a grim reminder of how such a change in the role of women in the private and public spheres, driven by economic imperatives and unaccompanied by a concomitant shift away from patriarchal modes of thinking at large, made their move towards social emancipation insecure at the very roots. Mitra's short story was adapted into the film Mahanagar (The Big City) (1963) by Satyajit Ray (1921-92),[2] in which these changes were shown as inevitable, given the changing times. However, unlike Mitra, Ray suggests that such changes, when taken up by seemingly ordinary but ethically-impelled individuals, could lead to the questioning (and possibly, overhauling) of conservative Bengali middle-class values through a process of interaction between the older generation and the new, between men and women, and between different social groups, such as Bengalis and Anglo-Indians. Ray's film inspired Mitra to expand his short story into a novella (1965) bearing the name of Ray's film, which highlighted further the feminist thrust of his original short story; it was, however, shot through with the overall pessimism of Mitra's short story, although Mitra made some significant alterations that I discuss in due course. An examination of the relationships between the works by Mitra's short story and novella, on the one hand, and Ray's film, on the other, illustrates how the writer and the filmmaker were in conversation with one another, with Mitra and Ray providing two different but crucial perspectives on the changing roles of women at a transitional moment in the history of independent India, as well as on the centrality of female figures in Ray's cinematic oeuvre.
Role of Women in Tagore's Short Fiction
Rabindranath Tagore is a world figure. Today the two most prominent figures in India according to the western world are Tagore and Gandhi. In his writings he has talked about almost everything, say, from religion to science. Women's struggles and sufferings are particularly highlighted. His writing engages themselves with the wave of emancipation of women in Bengal. In his writings he talked about the social injustices inflicted on women though he never took an extremist position. Tagore urges women to find an identity of their won and realize that wifehood and motherhood are just a small part of their being. Tagore's short stories represents three facets women's life : 1) the romance between men and women (as seen in A single Night), 2) social oppression of women (as represented in The Exercise Book), 3) the birth of the "new woman" (as shown in The wife's letter and Laboratory). This paper will discuss the last two facets of a woman's life taking in consideration three short stories written by Tagore, namely, The Exercise Book, The Wife's Letter and Laboratory.