Women's images men's imagination : female characters in Bengali fiction in late nineteenth and early twentieth century / Banani Mukhia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mukhia, Banani.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bengali fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

Bengali fiction.

Bengali fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Women in literature.

Physical Description:

167 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New Delhi : Manohar Publishers & Distributors, 2002.

Summary:

This work attempts to analyse some of the fictional texts written in Bengali by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya, Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya. It focuses particularly on women seen in relation to other members of the family, in their varied attempts to create space for themselves within their restrictive social parameters and in their endeavour to forge an individual identity by resisting the given role models. The book does not essentialize women into categories, that is, wives, daughters, widows or prostitutes; it rather perceives each character in her unique subjectivity, marked by ambivalence, hesitation, indecision, ideological conviction, strong determination or other configurations of attitudes. It seeks to place the narrative texts of a culture at the intersection of different kinds of tensions. The objective here is not to arrive at a neat theoretical paradigm, but to uncover the paradoxes and ambivalences of the colonial Bengali educated class that regulated its social code and its constant erosion and subversion from within, albeit in quiet, rather than assertive ways.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [155]-161) and index.

ISBN:

8173044104

OCLC:

49619180