Reversing and realigning conventional notions

19th Century Contexts in Bengal

- SUTANUKA GHOSH ROY

Women are a different species—much needed and much neglected and ignored. For aeons, they have remained silent. Around the middle of the 19th century, Bengal, the colonial interface, changed the face of the conformist caste and class-ridden Hindu society; hence a need for women's overall development was felt amongst the male intelligentsia of the period. As a consequence, women emerge as a new mark unsettling the cultural economy of Bengal and reversing and reshaping orthodox notions and expectations of women's agency and power.

Sreemati Mukherjee is an academic and creative writer based in Kolkata. In Women and the Romance of the Word: 19th Century Contexts in Bengal, Mukherjee has stitched the lives and times of four phenomenal women, Kailashbasini, Rassundari, Krishnabhabini, and Binodini, using threads of many hues—pain, suffering, neglect, umbrage, desire, and yearning for recognition. The title is intriguing; it is a romance because there is a romantic moment that occurs when a woman picks up the pen to express herself, to who she is, be it in the form of autobiography or any other genre.

As Kailashbasini, Rassundari, Krishnabhabini, and Binodini write, the romance of the word—the romance of learning, self-realisation, and self-awareness—is endorsed. A new dramatic script emerges as Bengali women become the scriptwriters of their histories.

The volume has a taut structure and is neatly divided into seven chapters. Two women coming from privileged families, Rassundari also belonged to the upper echelons of society, but she was unlettered, and Binodini came from a very poor family and was what we call an amoral woman. Kailashbasini Devi's 'Hindu Mahilaganer Heenabastha' (or 'The Woeful Plight of Hindu Women') was published by her Brahmo reformer husband, Durgacharan Gupta, who was perhaps the owner of Gupta Press, which still publishes almanacs today.