With the growing wealth of contemporary theoretical/critical discourse that is deployed to re-evaluate 19th century literature it is intellectually stimulating and interpretatively challenging to write a book entitled 'Feminism and Postcolonialism in Krupabai Satthianadhan'. Satthianadhan has two firsts to her credit. She is the first Indian woman to author an autobiographical novel as well as to fictionalize the life of an upper caste Hindu women in English. Saguna was serialized in the Madras Christian College magazine in 1887-88 while Kamala appeared serially in the same magazine six year later. Varadachari and Co. Madras, published both the works posthumously as books: Kamala in late 1894 and Saguna in 1895. For almost a hundred years these books remained fairly inaccessible to readers. In 1990, Women's Writing in India Volume 1 edited by Susie Tharu and K. Lalita includes an extract from Saguna with a pithy biographical introduction to Krupa Satthianadhan. In 2002 Chapter 5 of Saguna ha been included in Women's Voices, an anthology of 19th and early 20th century Indian writing in English, edited by de Souza and Pareira, published by OUP. It was in 1998 that Oxford University Press published the autobiographical novel entitled Saguna: The First Autobiographical Novel in English by an Indian Woman, altering the original title Saguna: A Story of Native Christian Life. Similarly, the original title Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life was altered slightly to Kamala: The Story of a Hindu Life, and published in the same year by OUP. With altered titles and explanatory introductions these novels have been placed within the scholastic discourse of gender and postcoloniality. The deletion of 'native' in Saguna and the inclusion of an indefinite article in Kamala offers alternatives to orientalist and denominational fixities, thus opening up the texts to secular readership.
The book underlines the value of Women's writings when pitted against patriarchal discourse that have naturalized their interiorisation, legitimized their marginality and denied agency to women. Substantial credit accrues to the influence of postmodernism in Women's Studies and Literature departments which have legitimized space for women's writing and excavated diaries, autobiographies and essays that have constructed women's histories as an important archival source within the domestic space.
Smriti Singh's book interrogates the politics of discursive structures and attempts to underline the relationship between patriarchal oppression and colonial control and uses Bhabha's terminology of the 'third space' to situate Satthianadhan's writings. It interprets her work in the context of gender and postcolonialism while negotiating with the dialogic tensions that mediated the historicity of reform and the rise of nationalism particularly the politics of woman's glorification as a mother figure within the nationalist discourse The significant purpose of the book is to explore such early feminist writings that are often victims of neglect in order to retrieve and articulate feminist subjectivities. Hopefully the book will ignite an interest in Krupabai Sattianadhan's work and other women writes of her generation both among common readership and in the academia.
This book is a critical study of the writings of Krupabai Satthianadhan in the light of postcolonial and feminist theories. I have tried to show how Satthianadhan has brought into Indian fiction female figures that resemble the rebels in Victorian fiction. Apart from that she raises questions of nationalism and is critical of the England returned Indians who act as 'mimic men'.
The present book is divided into five chapters. The first chapter Introduction is a brief description of Krupabai's life and the influences on her mind have been traced. While the members of her family, especially her mother and her brother influenced her in the early years of her life, Wordsworth and George Eliot were the literary influences on her. The chapter also discusses the influence of English language and literature on the development of the form of the 'novel' in India and how this form was indigenised in 19th century India. Krupabai's writings are placed within this context and an attempt has been made to compare her with other writers writing in the regional languages.
The second chapter is about the ideological changes that were taking place in the nineteenth century. Beginning with an analysis of the institutionalized practices of Hinduism like child-marriage, the discussion revolves around the joint family and its influence on relations among other members of the family. Taking into account the Utilitarian and Evangelical attack on Indian society, the chapter focuses on the issue of widowhood and sati. Finally, the focus turns to education English education as well as female education- and to the issue of conversion which in 19th century India was connected to the process of social reforms.
The next chapter uses the discourse of Postcolonialism to read the writings of Krupabai Satthianadhan from a different perspective. Placing Satthianadhan's writings within the 'third space', the chapter deals with ideas like patriotism and plurality of identities, structuring of racial differences and also looks at the relationship between patriarchal oppression and colonial domination.
The fourth chapter uses feminist literary theory to discover elements of feminism in Krupabai Satthianadhan. Satthianadhan has been compared not only with Victorian feminist writers like Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Florence Nightingale but also with modern feminists like Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir. An attempt has been made to compare her characters and their actions with the characters to be found in Indian women writers of the twentieth century like Anita Desai. The chapter discusses how Satthianadhan negotiates western feminism as well as the nationalist construction of womanhood and can be placed in the 'third space.'
The fifth chapter deals with the contemporaries of Krupabai Satthianadhan who were writing in Maharashtra - Pandita Ramabai, Ramabai Ranade, Tarabai Shinde and Shevantibai Nikambe. the chapter begins with the idea of the 'new woman' as she emerged in Britain and her emergence in India and shows how these writers created a space for themselves in the public domain and created new roles or spheres for women's activities. While dealing with these writers, an attempt has been made to study their relations with the men in the world around them and also with the colonial powers and also take into account their attitude to the various issues associated with the reform movement. Thus, it is an attempt at discovering the voice of the female subalterns which can give a new insight into the history of the times.
Hindu (935)
Agriculture (118)
Ancient (1086)
Archaeology (753)
Architecture (563)
Art & Culture (910)
Biography (702)
Buddhist (544)
Cookery (167)
Emperor & Queen (565)
Islam (242)
Jainism (307)
Literary (896)
Mahatma Gandhi (372)
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Manage Wishlist