GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 ELLEN BRINKS Colorado State University, USA ASHGATE(©Fllen Brinks 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stor system or trmsmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Ellen Brinks has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author ofthis work, Published by ‘Ashgate Publishing Limited ‘Ashgate Publishing Company ‘Wey Court East Union Rosd Famham Sorey, GU9 7PT England wowweashgat.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Brinks, Ellen, 1957- indian women writers, 1870-1920, literature-India-History-20%h century, LTide 820.992870984.4e23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brinks, Ellen, 1957- “Anglophone Indian women writers, 1870-1920 /by Bllen Brinks (hardcover) - ISBN 978-1-4094-4926-3 ebook) 1. Indic literature (English)-Women suthors-History and criticism, 2. Women and literature-Indis-History, 1. Tile, PR988.B75 2013 820.992870954-de03, 2012026158 ISBN 9781409449256 (abk) sae rae Printed and bound in Great Britain by the TEC Pecows | Gentantnge ain Contents List of Figures Ackiowledgments Introduction 1 Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutt's Poems and Letters 2 Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform in Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life 3 Feminizing Famine, Imperial Critique: Pandita Ramabai’s ‘Famine Essays 4 The Imperial Family Begins in the Nursery: Comelia Sorabji’s “Baby-fication’ of Empire 5S The Voice of India: Sarojini Naidu’s Nationalist Poetics Epilogue Bibliography Index 91 123 im 25 23141 42 43 44 43 List of Figures “John Bull’s Christmas Family Party” (from Punch December 27, 1884), reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd. “Baby Uganda” (from Punch April 21, 1894), reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd. “Nurse Gladstone” (from Punch August 25, 1883), reproduced with permission of Punch Ld. it from the cover of Sun Babies (1920), courtesy from Sun Babies (1920), courtesy of 129 BL 132 163 165Acknowledgments ‘This book has been an exciting and rewarding int I journey for me for ort from colleagues, , and my home institution Colorado State University, and they all deserve ‘my heartfelt thanks. My first thanks go to Jim and SueEllen Charlton for their outstanding leadership on a Fulbright and Department of Education sponsored trip to India with fellow ‘educators back in 2003, to share my deep interest in South Asian cult Both the English department and the Dean’s office in the College of Liberat Arts funded my attendance at many conferences over the past seven years, as Twas, I would also like to thank the Program for Women’s Studies and Gender Research at Colorado State for their acknowledgment of the project's value and the award of ship lecture. To Bruno Navasky and Rudrani Sarma I owe wer design. fortunate to have many wonderful colleagues at Colorado “My largest debt of gratitude lapudi, who has been an incisive professionally to all my various queries, especially and Pam Bertram for their hard work, responsiveness and valuable experts. Earlier versions of Chapters 2 and 3 appeared in academic journals. Most of Chapte For permission to reprint material from “ Pandita Ramabai’s Famine Essays,” South Asian Review 25.1 (2004), I thank K.D. Verma, editor of South Asian Review,x Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 lustraions in Chapter 4 from Punch Magazine are reproduced with of Punch Ltd. The two illustrations from Cornelia Sorabji's Sun Babies are reprinted courtesy of Richard Sorabji. The cover design Rudrani Writing is used courtesy of Bruno Navasky. My loving thanks also go to my father and sister, and to my dear friends Bruno, Lee, and Judy, forth ie, my closest friend, an intrepid travel companion, my true love, and person I know. Thank you for all the adventures you take me on, both close and far from home, Introduction Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 was conceived in two places halfway around the world from one another. The first was in my college classroom in the United States. My undergraduates began to entertain the question that EM. Forster's ‘women, especially British and Anglo-Indian women, actively thwart them), it also, at least at one point, raises the gendered question of whether British and Indian women could be friends as well. The bridge party provides an answer to that question. During this scene, Adela Quested and Mrs. Moore, eager to form an acquaintance with some Indian women, arranged to gratify their request becomes insteac segregation between colonizer and colonized in Chandrapore, which no amount of goodwill can overcome. While my students are not as taken aback at this as ‘Adela and Mrs. Moore are, they are surprised to find that the Indian women at the party reveal some linguistic fluency in English and cultural literacy about ‘the West. These abilities enable them to begin @ conversation, something that neither Mrs, Turton nor the other Anglo-Indian women can reciprocate regarding and Urdu amounts to as she knows “none of ling detail, the Indian women at the party possess “a curious uncertainty about their gest if they sought for a new formula which neither East nor West hat exactly was the nature of their uncertainty? What would, “new formula” for interrelating? Where did these women learn ‘my students asked. How common was this? Were there other contexts, in England, for example — where friendships could be formed between British ‘and Indian women? Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 began as ‘an inquiry, beyond the scope of Forster’s novel, into the existence of Indian and. British women’s cross-cultural communications, Ittransformed into something else along the way which leads metothe second place of its origins: the Fulbright Library in New Delhi, where I first came upon Susie Tharu and K. Lalita’s wonderful two-volume anthology, Women Writing in "EM, Forster, 4 Passage to India (New York: Harcourt, 1924) 42 2 A Passage 10 India 43.2 “Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 in print some Anglophone writings from the nineteet twentieth centuries, Collected here were excerpts from a larger body of Anglophone Indian women writers’ work, forming a bridge of their own devising between India and Great Britain, It unleashed a flood of questions: how did these women learn English to such a degree of fluency? What made these women choose to write their literary ‘works in English? Who were their imagined audiences? How were the ized cultures of India, in essence, seeking to find some “new formula which neither East Anglophone Indian Women Writers grew out of the attempt to answer these ‘questions. Spanning the years 1870-1920, it is ita Ramabai, Cornelia Sorabji, and Sarojini Naidu, Al were exceptional women with deep roots and connections to both Indian and. Wester cultures, very well known in their time but largely unknown in ours. They were re and activists, contributing to cultural and political nati ‘ critique, and in one instance, imperial apology. As an. eit works form a body of literature that reconfigured # ‘between India as colony and Great Britain as imperial center. Important so from the understudied perspective of colonized women. Thei embrace a variety of genres — memoirs, poems, transl stories, and letters ~ and were widely read in England an¢ Yet by the end of the twentieth century, most of print. Dutt and Naidu remained partial all were largely forgotten. Anglophone re-issuing of some of their work and the ‘now ubiquitous electronic availability of many of these out-of-print editions gi Us a signal opportunity to reconsider the wider range and ple within the literary and sociocultural contexts of colonialism. While their are fascinating — including, for example, the first Indian woman to travel study in England (Dut), the the first Indian woman to lead literary endeavors that form the fo More than that, however, it aims to reconsider the diverse positions and Giffering postures of Indian women under colonialism. Poste theories of empire have frequently incorporated gender as a category of analysis. Many #8) Than and K. Lalita (eds), Women Writing In India, 2 volumes (New York: The Press, 1993) The volumes ofthe anthology cover the period from 600 nce to the 1990s and not just Anglophone writers. Introduction 3 notable studies have focused on colonial masculinities,* stemming from a view of colonialism — and anti-colonial ice — as male-centered and male-oriented enterprises. Confronting such biases, feminist postcolonial scholarship has done tremendous recovery and theoretical work. Within the last two decades, works by literary erties such as Inderpal Grewal;-Ania Loomba, Anne McClintock, Mary id Jenny Sharpe, among others, have theorized the feminization iscourses and compelled readers to consider the active contributions ‘of British women to the colonial enterpris , understanding of Indian women under colonialism comparatively unders Indian women have not gamered as much attention as the their position as doubly oppressed: as the patriarchal practices, Historical scholarship, of colonialist and indigenous ample, has shown how the male + Seeespecially Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality (London: Routledge, 2003); Joseph Bristow, Empire Boys: Adventures ina Man’s World (London: HarperCollins A Catherine Hall, Whie, Male, and and Heather Streets, Born Warriors? The Military. Martial Races, and in British Imperial Culture, 1897-1914 (Manchester: Manchester University ‘and Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, Gender and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Mills (eds), Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader (New4 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 ‘and female missionaries and the employees of the Raj intervened in the domestic affairs of Indian social the sati debates)? Such positionings which real women were subject to oppression as a ‘and nationalist die: ‘any social structure.” Indian women as a (O'Hanlon poi of agency is at stake: ‘Some conception of experience and agency are absotutely required... for iis ‘ot clear how a dispersed effect of power relations can at the same time be an 8, Sacio-Religious Reform ‘India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) Women in Bengal, 1890-1939 (New Delhi: Oxford ir Chand, ‘Oxford University Press, 1998); and Kumcum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid Recastng Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History (New Brnswick: Rutgers Univesity Press, 1990), Traditions: The Debate on Satin Colonial India (Betkeley: Sangeeta Ray, En-Gendering India: Woman and ‘Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narraives (Duthars, NC: Dake University Press, 2000). "* Loomba, Colonialion/Pastcolonialism 222. Introduction 5 agent whose experience and reflection form th ‘argue that we need these categories to... liberal humanism. Our presen challenge lies precisely in understanding how the underelasses .. are at once constructed in eonflctal ways as subjects yet also find the means through struggle to realize themselves in eoferent and bjetively centred ways as agents." While "Hanlon is here referring to the peasant classes inl limitations of poststructural theory is relevant for any her critique of the centered on Indian of ethnic and cultural zones, with and social arrangements and practices, the familiar, making Western editions uth Asian writers’ works difficult to come by, until very recently int, a few pionecring works by historians have illuminated Indian rity with these efforts, looks at Indian women for the first time spowered literary agents during this same era. No longer solely the rem andior indigenous disco ‘or mimicry, no longer hold. As women writers, they pioneered a new arena of literary representation in English, speaking to the condition of India and Indian Women under colonialism in the tumultuous years between 1870 and 1920, @ period of intense reformist engagement, cultural nationalism, and the awakening Rosalind O'Hanlon and D. Washbrook, “After Orientalism: Culture, Cet the Third World.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34. 153 Meredith Borthwick, The Changing Role of Women in Bengal 149-1908 Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), Antoinete Burton, Burdens of History British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imp U6 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 tical resistance. Reaching a wide audience, their poems and ind stories were intimately connected with a wider indigenous culture, history, and the idea of India as both colony and as we study these women’s works, the explanatory limits ig methodologies become apparent. Anglophone Indian contexts about and within which these women wrote. These vary tremendously: they describe worlds from the Madras to the Bombay Presidency, from Calcutta to the Punjab provinces; some are set contemporancously, while some reclaim tales yaist to ardent nation tween, Through its attention to the specific circumstances in which wadhan, Ramabai, Sorabji, and Naidu wrote, Anglophone Indian Women Writers seeks to open up wwareness of the nature and pace of regional reform movements, the nalism that shaped these writers? ugh the book is structured around urses proliferating during and 1920. to the conviction that an independent a ich Indians sought greater social and economic parity with Anglo-Indian, to their widespread presence in organized nationalist movements that promoted India's economic self-sufficiency and Political independence. The women writers con engaged with these shifting sen as a brief overview of the changing political emper of the nation from the 1870s ‘onward will show, the available venues, post ‘outcomes of engagement cs during this time were continually in lux. Because the in this book were deeply sm and social reform, And, levant to sketch briefly the contours of Indian political ism and. ym during this time. From the 1870s onwards, a post-Mutiny hardening of social divisions between Indians and Anglo-Indians, itself the product of Anglo-Indian racism and fears of tone Indian Women Writers were all socially and * Introduction 1 another revolt, created deep dissatisfaction among upper-class Indians who aspired to social equality and greater access to English-language education and civil service jobs. Unable to attain these aims, they demanded recognition and redress within the vemacular press and throu ly emerging voluntary organizations, . With Bengal in the forefront, redress was initially sought by turing toward, not away from, the British (the idea of the British leaving India was not entertained until late in the century), Embracing progressive change, politically-engaged Indians made use of the | if Westem European liberalism, even as the British were turning to feudal discourses to justify the increasingly paternalistic tone and tenor of their rule." In 1878, for example, the English-educated Indian elite decried the insufficiency of Viceroy Lytton’s famine policies, as well as new legislation that disempowered the vernacular press. In addition, they protested the Arms Act, which deprived Indians of firearms yyalty was first established. The concerted European the early 1880s, a bill which allowed Indian judges ing Indian protests against the Raj lack of political organizations was rectified at rent. The founding of the National Congress in 1885 was a hugely important milestone toward this goal. ‘Together, these organi ran the gamut from those formed by the progressive, educated classes to those by conservative, religious established their authority and reputation. St extension of self-governance to Indians moved slowly and only under pr beginning with local goveramer Other changes trickled down over the next two decades: in 1882 a framework for local self-governance, with partially elected and ‘appointed boards, was established by Lord Ri difficult to over energize Hindu natio . ‘ioualist energies ~ did much to "4 Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Concise History of Modern India, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge Universi , 2006) 115 and 119.8 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 Further, after fighting and dying forthe British Empire during World War I Indians \were increasingly unwilling to be seen and treated as interiors incapable of self rule, By the end of the 50-year peri Jeagues had been inaugurated in | It also positioned Gani British out of India, Most of the women writers I discuss were deeply social reform that preceded or ran concomitantly with the practice of child marriage. In both Maharastra and Bengal, backlash was particularly intense, Indian reformers as well as ‘progress; some Indian reformers embraced these views, partially or wholly, while * See Heimsath, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform, Jones, Socio and Amiya Sen's introduction 19 Social Introduction 9 others rejected them, attempting to counteract Western biases, misconceptions, and cultural blindnesses, Though many of the issues were secular ones, not all were. In self-defense, and with a self-critical lens, many Hindu reformers sought to define (and homogenize) the plethora of Hinduisms into a religious system that could answer to the utilitarian and social needs of the modem age. The adoption of reformist discourses by Indians need not be viewed: homogeneously as the intemalization of Westem criticisms and values. Indeed, many Indian reformers embraced the robust indigenous tradition o and Europe, of envisioning modernization In advance of nation social reform debates and and the Raj over the course of the nincteenth century, Though idolatry preoccupied early ninétconth-century reformers such as Raj ‘mmolation), female education, the treatment of widows and widow remarriage, conjugal arrangements, and child marriage, which are most often explored by the five writers of Anglophone Indian Women Writers. There was no consensus on these issucs in general, and controversy developed between indigenous and Westem reformers of various stripes Further, Ini divided between conservative and progress ian women sealed off from Western influences and others that embraced f the West's modernizing agenda. both the issues and first, the aspects of “the woman ” considered most worth fighting for concerned women as wives: not as daughters, and certainly -mpowerment, testifies to 45 reformers. Second, rformniss” positions on the “woman question, exceptions, preserved conservative gender roles for women, The question of ‘women's education became tied to conjugaity, as reformers repeatedly stressed ‘Sem, Social and Religious Reform & and 15. hid. 47-9. shi Jn Another Country 173.10 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 that the purpose of education was to enable women to better fulfill their tasks as igorousin the late gradually overshadowed by anti-colonial nationalism. concluding chapter, argued of the nation; they had proven {The} needs of greater political mobilization required temporary glossing over, if not altogether denying, the crying need for s language education in India ‘ely influenced these agendas of decades before Thomas Macaulay’s infamous “Minute on Indian 1835) appeared, Raja Rem Mohan Roy advocated for a modem Indian education, For Roy, English as a medium of instruction was ‘a temporary phenomenon, compared to the curricular content. He argued for English because vernacular languages at that time were not equipped to teach mathematics and the sciences, though efforts were getting underway to % Yhia. 21, ® Partha Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution of the Woman's Question,” Recasting Women 233-53. Introduction n produce textbooks in Bengali in these subject reas. Rey was convinced that the study of mathematics and the ish government (oF A\ ion of the Indian population 1 the imperial projet were very differe: growing hosti ‘was not the intention of the rulers? English-language edi ‘unifying language with ‘middle-classes in questions of self-identity and reform. By the last decades of slcists formulated Roy’ a the desire for a Western moral education and the rejection Roy never referred tothe medium of instruction orto the desirability of incl literature, ® For education as a means of social contol, see Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of trary Study and the British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University 3-44. shnaswamy and Archana S. Burde, The Politics of Indians’ English: ism and the Expanding English Empire (New Delhi: Oxford UniversityR Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 th century, English as a literary 1 was “indigenized and language rary endeavors and to writing in various print- xy vehicle for expressing reformist sentiments Initiatives for reform characteristically sprang up and were onganized largely round charismatic individual reformers, such as Pandita Ramabai* Overall, female reformers like Ramabai were few, yet of the writ Krupabai Sattbianadhan, Pandita Ramabai, Comelia ‘not accidental but symptomatic of idu puts it in one of her leters, there tacit understanding that all talents and enthusiasms should concentrate ‘on some practical end for the immediate and obvious good of the ‘These concems, in tur, found their way into the literature ofthe period and the works of the writers in this volume. They created a socially engaged literature that selectively adopted Western ideas and forms of expres ‘no means slavishly adhered to them. Their works did not only imps readers viewed the condition of Indian women but likely energized B in-their own feminist reformist efforts as well2* Above all, their literary works defined and foregrounded valuable aspects of Indian culture, in response to the Grewal, Home and Harem 165, + Cited in Chaudhuri, Gentlemen Poets 147-8, ‘Translating Hindustan: Tora Dutts Poems and Letters 2 ‘to a subsequent volume of poems, Lotus Leaves (1871), Toru Dutt’s uncle, Hur Chunder Dutt, writes: “We have many histories of India from school up to elaborate treatises, but no work embodying Indian histor characters and older: poetical form.”* Mirroring this in the Indian loosely translates tales from the Sanskrit tradition; lity toward history that is largely lacking in of the bhadralok class in Be loved European literature, adopted some Engli attitudes, and one who, though conver traditions. She combined these to improve social and ish a permanent home-but rather continually explo cultural alienation and belonging in multiple ling ‘many critics have noted.’ All Toru Dutt’s writings, then, are ‘broadest sense, by virtue of subject matter and intended audience: they intellectually ‘ange across multiple cultures and language traditions. Many are, more narrowly, Strategie Singlarity inthe (Wine 2007) paragraphs the Holes Dispenstion’: enth-Century Gender Stu 1-15 phus notes and Foss, “We, Who Happier, Live Gender, Reform, and the Nexus of Bast end West in Tora Gender and Vetorian : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) that Dutt cannot be reduced to either dia, but rather is someone who occupies an ‘between Modemity: Toru Dut (1856-1877) from a Postcolonial Perspective,” in Women's Experience of Modernity, 1875-1945, 8, Ann L. Artis and Leslie more: Johns Hopkins University ress, 2003) 108); Meenakshi Mukherjee fascination turism, ventriloquism, and transplantation fe Acoustics in Colonial India,” in Women’s Poetry, der and Genre, 1830-1900, e, Isabel Armstrong and ‘Virginia Blain (London: Macmillan Press, 1999) 213).2% Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 ious divide between a complex Hindu tradition and Dut Christianity; the linguistic rifts between the Sanskrit language of sacred texts, ly chronicles her experiences during the final f letters to Martin comprise a kind of epist asa young Bengali women(-writ Instead of being merely a ‘of her life in Caleutta ifferent perspective of her. trapped in the “almost, but Joseph Bristow (Auens: Ohio University Press, 2005) 295, 297) ‘Translating Hindustan: Tora Dutt's Poems and Letters 9 and passionate thinker about social reform and current: Duttto be critical of British or Anglo- from which to express her own , there was an increasing separation of Indians and Anglo- Indians, whether that took the the civil lines, cantonments, an ‘mental attitudes According to th contempt were cause of the Mutiny. In the post-Mutiny era, these attitudes rigidified into the belief that Indians were incapable of selfule and thus conveniently justified an enduring British preses exclusivity were apparently particularly of the century, after Toru Dutt’s death. Opportunities for Indians to voice their grievances publically and push for reform differed widely by region, It was in Bengal, however, tence of voluntary moder organizations”; indeed, by the ed the largest number of vernacular and English-language ith contemporary issues." In one of these, The Bengal tt published her essays, translations, and poems, reform movements influenced Dutt as a colonial subject and as a writertranslator. Their emergence can be traced back to the early decades of the nineteenth century. Indian access to an English-! "* Chandani Lokugé characterizes the Duts, including Toru at times, as imperialist in “Introduction Metcalf and Metalf, Concise History 93.30 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 Company's restrietions onthe ftee press. He argued that in taking away “one ofthe ran end to Great Britain's economic exploitation, by noted Bengali political reformers such as Siriskumar Ghose and Surendranath Banerjea (founder in 1876 of the Indian Association in Calcutta), who were contemporaneous with Dutt and with.whom her stated concems and viewpoints overlap. Ghose and Banerjea also denounced the that structured the appointment of ‘qualified Indians to the Indian an issue Dutt passionately in her letters, as we will India and England, had b began appearing in the vernacular inates.” The Hindi poet and journalist correspondence with Mary Martin. The first refers to the Prince of Wales” to Calcutta 3 fo welcoming committee, ted by Mary for calling take care and not call iar Das (ed), The Life and L ‘Toru Dutt (London: Humphtey Milford and Oxford Us references to Toru Dutt’ eters will include the date ition. and page mumber fom thi Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutt's Poems and Letters 31 them natives again. It is indeed a term only used by prejudiced Anglo-Indians, and I am really ashamed to have ust “native” may tempt readers to deduce a coloni andits heavy cabdriver’s refusal to accept a white man an apparently frequent occurrence although the ing, they do so secretly, reinforcing ral ones, will dine at a European's -achette."® The government of India criminates against Indians, ensuring that only Europeans command ‘Bengali troops; in a region hit by a bad tsunami, Dutt's cousin is sent to relieve suffering, because, as she understands it, “no Englishman would stay in a place ... strewn with corpses and dead cattle."> With a notes how an Anglo-Indian magistrate on one oceasion admittance. t0 go, that they sadly rued their loyalty, for they had three mortal hours, from eleven to two, without any tent2 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 subsequently in newspapers, preoccupy Dutt in. ‘occasion for her to deride the egregious forms of le down tish “mismanaged the whole Mutiny,” and he intends to vote in elections for Kristo Das Pal, editor of the Hindu Patriot, a weekly newspaper ‘known for protesting British injustice and comuption and for sup reformist causes, such as women’s education and widow remarriage. 1876, Dutt complains about the base economic m presence in India: “We have no real English gentlemen or Translating Hindustan: Toru Dusty Poems and Letters 3 for its system of taxation in India.” Taxes on the indigenous population, already suffering from high food prices, he argues, should not be raised, nor should new 1¢ refrain in the Dutt family’s discourse on ‘Toru’s letters when she denounces the British practice of child marriage: ‘and married and a’ before Ishwarchandar Vidyasagar’s and Keshub Chunder Sen’s support for women’s education, she inquires of Martin whether it would be possible to educate a nine- » Shoshee Chunder Dut, “Taxation in Inia.” Fraser's Magazine (September 1876): ‘be without effec on her county Letter of $-3-1876, p. 152.4 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 8 for high-caste Hindu women. During the controversy over the Crown Prince’s visit to a zenana, Dutt expresses her agreement wit al position of The Indian Daily News, She affirms the ‘open up his home to the Crown Prince (i.e, to have family appear before the prince, in other words, 0 violate purdah) and act respect as much as self determination, he is thereby following his o In one of her las letters, Dutt mentions that Anand Mohan Bose, a prominent reformer and advocate for the abandonment of caste distinction and the promotion of women’s education the female members ‘two years in Calcutta, her attention has shifted squarely to local politics and daily events and evinces a heightened sensitivity to social ‘and economic forms of colonial oppression, During the last year of her life, her letters temper her deep affection for Europe with strong criticism, and they record developing pride in Indian life and customs. For example, she chastises the and, Teaving India to go to Engl in foreign lands”). Dut encouraging her to see herself as ‘an “Indian write,” whether it was a British reviewer seeing in her the landmark return of the woman writer in Hindu culture, or an Indian reviewer urging her to ‘write in the Bengali vernacular.” Despite the Dutt family’s relative social isolation from both Christian relatives and Hindu relations (a distance heightened by their conversion to ‘Toru’s own convictions reflect the ambival 116, p. 173; 1-24-1877, p. 255; 4-24-1876, pp. 1877, p. 278, respect x given), pp. 175 and 178. Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutt's Poems and Letters 35 time, influenced by Wester liberalism and indigenous reform mov denounced the egregious racism of Anglo-Indians: Faith in colonialism despite an understan ‘was the paradox of educated conse ‘exploitation was seen, and so was the British were appealed to for re the rulers had been influenced not only tactical calealations but also the very perception of colonial rule“! expoitativeness ~ this gions, but across ideological difference: in the generation that came of age in Beng 857.8 ‘are apparent —indeed they define ~ the contradictory qualities ological and bitations. When Dutt writes Ancient vulture as Sanskritized culture, the past for a definition of its uniquenes however, of indigenous rhetoric as well. continuity with the traditions of the 8 group of reform-minded Bengali in the forefront demanding English gentlemen led by Ram * Chandra, The Oppressive Present 21, 467. “Quoted in Chandra, The Oppressive Present $1. Tid 39 Sources of Indian Traltion, vol. 2, 48-9,36 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 ‘culum. They also argued for the ‘women of the Vedic past, such as ilavati, and the wife of Kalidas, as evidence of a religious sanction Along with he work oft they found themselves in part adopting a discourse of the late cighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Bri Orientalis ‘questioned the legitimacy of Bi served to strengthen colonial context here, they also shaped a particular understanding | Significant for Dut ian cultural history “* Education for women was fostered by the Brahmo Samaj; see Chattej, Inpact of Raja Rammohun both in The Lie ofthe Land: English Literary India, ed. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (Delhi: Oxford University Press, ‘Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutts Poems and Letters 7 dominant for the rest of the nineteenth century. Fascinated by ancient Vedic and. ‘post-Vedic culture, British Orientaliss translated almost exclusively from Sanskrit texts belonging to a distant 2,500-year history (1500 ncz to 1100 ce), ignoring anything ether remotely modem or writen in any ofthe hundreds of othe Indian languages, the Ordinances of Vedas (with many hymns iso ‘known for his translations from the epic The Mahabharata and the Kashmiri love poem, the Chaurapanchasika of Bilhana, Horace Hayman Wilson’s oeuvre {included the Vishnu Purana, and Colebrooke wrote essays on, among other thi the Vedas, Hindu religion, law, customs, caste, ethnicities, arithmetic and algebra, 4. Anuradha Dingwaney and Cerol Maier (Pitsburgh: University of itsburgh Press, 1995) 160-238 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 ir choice of Sanskrit f nineteenth-century Indian literary treatments of this period were largely imitative and celebratory. Yet though they reinscribed an idealized past as the Orientalists had, their works also contributed ‘tonevly evolving self-definitions.** Toru Dutt’s generation retumed to myths from the epics The Ramayana and The Mahabharata and shaped them into a heroic counter-history to the demoralizing historical accounts of India written by the Britis! ‘This consciousness [of the importance of myth as communal history] produced the myth of glorious pastas a counterpoint to the myth of civilzing mission. The two myths together created Indian’s sense of subjection, while continuing to be galling, ceased to be paralyzing.” Earlier in the nineteenth century, Henry Derozio wrote two sonnets evoking Indian to present the Vedic age as a secular period, impulses of the present, Michael Madhusudan Dut * Literary eritic Jasodhara the Hindu heroic ... under the fits.” Even reformers who resisted Westernization and were staunchly opposed to progressive, secularizing values, such as the prominent Bengali Brahmo reformer forthe study of Indian literature and culture. In 1866, the ling, whose goal was the development lemen Poets chapters 1-3. This Dutt is no relation to Toru. The fatherland” was replaced by that of India as “motherland” in the late Bagchi, “Shakespeare in Loin Cloths: English Literature and the Early Nationalist Consciousness in Bengal,” in Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History, ed. Svati Jost (New Delhi: Trianks, 1991) 152-3. Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutt Poems and Letiers 39 ‘and Bengali, At times, annual fairs (Mela) worked to, foster the idea ofa national ature and songs going back tothe Vedic age ‘When Toru Dutt began. rupture wi then, her generation of translators had assimilated an English rere responding to the demands of the ma of Indian translations of Sanst in part because they seem sources as well. Dutt was acquainted theem’s Lays of Ind and the work of Hur Chunder Dutt, her ntitled Lorus Leaves or Poems Chiefly on Ancient Indian Subjet ):° When I speak of Dutt’s translations of Sanskrit best understood as versions of legen {ate of publication fo this votume.40 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 folume, Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, conform superficially to the Orientalism that the “patronage culture” of editors, publishers, und critics applauded and who significantly audiences or in a recuperation of some unchanging, original intent. In better known as the tale of the archer Eklavya from example, the speaker points to the tale’s legendary time: “Up Time’s far back, -- oh fat The great wise teacher must be sou; in a period when magic poet-translator imm In peace, at Dronacharjya’s feet/ Magic and archery they lear ience, which we meet! No more, with ages past inurned’ ance to her material emerges more overtly in “Jogadaya ‘Unna,” a folktale which explains the mythic origins of a local custom, namely, the offering of shell bracelets as a tribute to the eponymous goddess. At the n of the tale, its explanatory value is undercut: “Absurd may be the / Ill-suited to the marching times, I loved the lips from which stand among my rhymes” (64). There is @ merit to the tale, but i the tale as anachronistic and indeed unbelievat from the past, the speaker rejects any easy assi confirmation of India’s past glory. In doing so, to use Lawrence Venuti's term, in two ways. First, she foregrounds her own intrusion into the tale, instead of rendering a “seamless” translation, that is, ‘one without a visible translator. Second, her “interrogative” translation differs © Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, with an introductory memoir by Edmund Gosse (London: Keyan Paul, Trench and Co., 1882). All subsequent references to the poems in Ancient il be indicated parenthetically by page number in the text Foran analysis of the interaction between translation and patconage culture, see André Le¥evere, Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (New York: Routledge, 1992) 15-26. Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’ Invisibility: A History of Translation (New York: Routledge, 1995), Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutt s Poems and Letters a from celebratory Orientalist and nativist ones, creating a critical dissonance or discrepancy between their interpretations of ancient India and her own. loved the lips from wich it fell” In “Jogadhya Uma,” Dutt makes women’s roles as preservers of the Sanskrit tradition apparent, through their transmission of oral, vernacular versions; she even goes $0 far a8 to posi (although it does name the moment to which the children are responding, namely, the emotional tableau of Sita’s abandonment), ‘The emphasis, however, shifts away from Sita. Directed toward the speaker's childhood recollection (“the lay? Which has evoked sad Sita from the past/ Is by lhe suggests that this maternal “archive” is lost: “When weir mother's side/ Gather, ah me! As erst at eventide?” torespond to Vedic age literature, the speaker intimates, depends upon their ability to find a personal connection to the teller, something, ‘the speaker validates through her identification of the tal ancient text, but the words of a beloved mother. Thi source of the Sanskrit tradition, mediating the inters at frst strongly resist Rot erase her deep feelings for these tales, which she also passed on to er c ‘This makes Dutt’s activites as a translator different than that of the Orientalist, 4s she highlights individual experience, voice, and vernacular versions over the ‘authority of ancient texts. Ifthe audience's relation tothe storyteller conditions the {han the narrated content alone. As translator and “speaker” of this oral tradition, Dutt occupies a distinetly femi place of the absent Reconfiguring these Sanskrit tales’ import continues each time the volume cither overtly or implicitly addresses their values. Two of Dut’s translations from the Vishnu Purana;*The Royal Ascetic and the Hind” and “Dhruva,” undercut the ‘morality espoused by the originals. The first tells of an aged king who gives up his worldly responsibilities to devote himself to prayer and penance and his soul's wellbeing. The king's embrace of asceticism adheres closely to the ideology of dharma (the belief that specific duties correlate with life's different stages). When he grows to love a fawn needing his care, he “[finds] his devotions broken” (68) and “{eannot] think of the Beyond” (69), even in his last moments. The original offers a chastsement of his worldly attachment to the deer, a moral whose telling © Loleuge cites a letter from Toru Dutt to Clarsse Bader {hear my mother chant the ancient lays of her country, Iam Collected Prose and Posty sl). re she reveals the “when Iways cry” (“ntroduetion,”a Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 loving bond with the deer, deviates from its original m o-author, she asks her readers to see the“ of the tale’s origin cause of Uttama’s/Suruchee’s favor and Dhruva’s/her itexpretation of karmic doctrine. It extols Dhruva’s ambition and individualism, later authorized by the divine merit he acquires in exercising them: ‘Translating Hindustan: Tora Dutts Poems and Letters a criticism of polygamous prac hher focus on the domestic rai the potential passivism ‘of karmic doctrine, ideoto to the code of Manu underlying the Vishnu Purana This is further underscored by Dut’s decision to tinker with the Puranic origina: weetee encourages Dhruva to leave home and Dhruva, aftr his it retums home to inherit both his fathers kingdom and his love. , Sunneetee encourages Dhruva to stay at home, and Dhruva ‘shomrific chain of consequences derived from a wicked yet limited ely, ‘8 youth's careless killing of a songbird, the reader is confronted with a narrative that presents karmic x and rigidly deterministic, Beyond questior ignificance of Vedic and post-Vedie material, the speaker's commentary brings the rhetoric of reform to bear upon certain traditional social and religious customs. The speaker, for example, targets the coruption of worldly political and priestly power. In“Prehlad,” a tale fom The ‘Mahabharata, for example, a youth is imprisoned because he worships the god Vishnu as his ultimate authority instead of the king. The speaker castigates unjustly held political authority and predicts the downfall of any king who issues a similar ultimatum. The “sovereign people” declare in unison that kings should “rule for us Patrick Olivelle, The Law Code of Manu (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), See hitp/osselsweb.org/toru_ dt, footnote one to “Dhruva.”4 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 "and whea they donot, tyrants of every age and clime” "can expect to meet with a similarly violent end hes killed by a ded avatar of Vishnu). Numerous other democratizing, anti-authortarian impulses, including “Tree of Life,” “Butt,” “Savitri,” and “Dhruva.” The oppressiveness of class and caste hierarchies, a {arget of many Indian social reformers of the second half of the nineteenth century, including Kasiprad Ghosh, M, Renade, G.K. Gokhale, .G. Phu, and Rabindranath ‘Tagore, also figures prominently in the volume‘ In “logadhya Uma,” the pedlar at the ashram praises the priest for inviting everyone to share in the shrine’s bles not only those with elevated status or those who can pay: “all the poor! Ten around thy sacred shrine’ Know that thou keepest open door/ And praise generous hand of thine” (60). In “Buttoo,” the treatment consummate archer. Buttoo achieves the “goal .. {to} “waking dream” (79) through his and “courage to confront and 1¢ fight” (83-4). Years later, however, rest retreat, Buttoo exhorts him to “give recognizing his skil, in return for which he will grant the teacher a sing. In a cruel twist, the teacher requests Buttoo’s righthand thumb ‘is high-born, favored pupil, Arjuna Buttoo complies, tragically losing the power he has so painstakingly claimed as his own, The cost of caste hierarchy in this tale is exclusion and self-mutilation. In Dut’s ve e strugele against caste injustice becomes equated with the heroism E-sacrifice, despite the ultimate futility of Buttoo’s efforts, something, the “great” teacher also acknowledges: “imen shall ever ink thy name with Self- help, Tr las Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India 1eeton University Press, 2001) 40-1 ened 0 the Vedic Daxi? Orientalism, ‘Nationalism and a Seript for the Past," in Recasting omen 27-87 ‘Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutt s Poems and Letters 4 considerable weaknesses, Sunneetee and Si of power, or possession of too much, res “Sita,” is represented at the moment of he ‘her own chastity and her husband’s and bro versions prove critical of certain Hindu beliefs speaker validates other attitudes and practices, agenda of contemporary reform movements, a traditional narrative whose main characte ¢ are deformed either by their lack ta, in the tales “Lakslaman” and of judgment, where she puts lives at risk. While Dut's 85 an unequivocal symbol of ‘that Vedic women such as Savitri possessed, now lost. The speaker notes that “Ia those far-off primeval days! Feir India’s daughters were not pent In closed zenanas/ On her ways Savi at her pleasure wen Whiter she ” also promotes women’s education, as hhad" (2), and she develops into a model is the bounds of convention. She disobeys Shastric religious orthodoxy when she doesn’t attend to her husband’s fimeral rites, but instead obeys her own spiritual ‘issue of marital choice; the daughter's freedom of choi (that is, patel) and communal sanction. Taking the for a reformist agenda, Dutt makes Savitri not just into wife but a strong \omnat unconfined to the zenana, a place meant to protect her from other men. This educated, free-ranging woman chooses to be the most faithful and devoted of wives. Hr independence does not corrupt her but gives her strength to fight death itself for the love of her husband, a perfect fable to allay the anxieties of traditionalists roused by proto-feminist reformist agendas. Through its attention to purda, women's ‘education, and spousal choice, and by representing Savitri’s marriage as based on the companionate model, issues central to reformers in both colonial and indigenous vealsa translator who, in her writing ofthe past, does more alizing perspectives. Her translations of “Savitri” and ion within the contentious, compl about Vedic.and post and the uses ofthe past In considering Dut’s translation practi of Hindustan, her decision to translate from Sans jaswini Niranjana, for examp| translators positioned themselves as.46 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 ‘This condemnation, serious as it is, neglects to ask the question of why someone like Dutt might have chosen English, historical moment. To answer this necessitates a brief glance by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Sanskrit was not widely known, and Hindi anid Bengali had had. they were heavily exposed by virtue of English was not de facto to be confined to an they also sought and found publication ver ‘As Bagehi and Chaudhuri both note, E the encouragement of Indian writers and editors (such of The Hind Intelligencer or Lal Behari Dey, editor ‘whose own literary careers had frst been launched in in 1872, Bankimchaidra Chattopadhaya, one of the first Indian writers to use Bengali as a literary language, underscored ‘There is one outstanding the writing of Bengali by educated Bengalis, Educated people do not 1d what educated people will not read educated people do not wish tors found themselves urging their readers” support for efforts in the vemacular, In the March 1874 issue of The Bengal Magazine, for example, © Chaudhuri, Gentlemen Poets 58 chapters 2-4 and Bagehi, “Shakespeare in Loin Cloths” 188. quote can be found in Rosinka Chaudhuri’ “The Dutt Family Album: And ‘Toru Dutt” 54, Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutts Poems and Letters a which included some of Dutt’ translations from the French), a “Revent 5" column reviewing a novel wrtter contemporary literary practice and publishing translations from Sanskrit into English are posi itself drew heavily on English poet te different and degrees of into this kind of interpretive framing, with het facility in multiple languages and given the multiple sources or originals she drew on (French, English, Bengali, Sanskrit) for her versionings in Ancient Ballads. ‘Western and postcolonial theories of translation, infact, by focusing largely on the source language and the target language, are not complex enough to account for the shifting, multilingual language contexts that Indians have inhabited and that incient Ballads reinforces English as a literary choice of medium unequivocally represents an assimilation to Westem cultural values is not so certain, The volume, for example, lundercuts the authority of Western Orientalists, as instructors and interpreters of appropriates a cul In doing s0, she engages cotonial identity format lures that are being translated modify and adapt. the versions oftheir translated selves that are offered to them. In this way, translation ® The Bengal Magazine, March 1874, 409. hia 411 August, September and October of 1874 and January, entities: Notes Towards a Sociology of Translation,” the Paradigm of India, ed, Rukzini Bhaya Nair (New Delhi: Sage, 2002) 36-9,48 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 ‘empowerment for the colonized. This view of translation is upheld by Michael Cronin, whose scholarly work describes translation within eighteenth- and ninetcenth-century Ireland. Cronin contends that. English scholars translating Irish works into English, an important ‘when Irish scholars began to do so. They because English was the language of public debate, it occurred lonization, despite the privileging of the English language over Irish as a medium of communication, Such reapproprstons, I would argu, enabled Indian translators to respond to the rails assumpti argues about some trans image of India which withthe West. Promoting ved as an important arena of cross-cultural ‘understanding during a time when the establishment of difference was central tothe justification of a British presence in India.” Following the same trajectory as the historian David Kopf, literary critic Rosinka Chaudhuri notes scholarship, though serving colonialism, ultimately and ironically also contributed ‘o the development of unifying idea of a par-Indian heritage and culture among, Indian writers, suggesting a common ground across a huge territory marked by Social, political, and religious differences." Further, Indian translations from the light the differences between their uses of the past and those the late nineteenth-century Bengali writer Bankimehandira + investigated into how much the Europeans have Cultural Translation 20 * ‘Translating Ireland: Translation, Languages, Cultures (Cork: Cork University V. Dharwadker, “A.K. Ramanujan’s Theory and Practice of Translation,” in Post Translation: Theory and Practice, e4, S, Bassuett and H, Trivedi (London: Pinte, (0. For the inculeation of difference a8 an ideological strategy, sce Metall, ‘Ideologies of the Raj, especially chapters 3 and 4. Chaudhuri, Gentlemen Poets 6 and also David Kopf, British Orientalism and ‘the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernization 1773-1835 (Bekele: University of California Pres, 1969) 8. "Quoted in Bagh, “Shakespeare in Loin Cloths” 156 ‘Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutt’s Poems and Letters 9 ‘and patriotism but challenged deeply rooted assumptions ubout the degradation of Indian culture. Other critics, however, doubt or deny that Indian translations from the Sanskrit can be ideologically resistant, Mah translations worked to legitimize England’s India as primitive. For Niraajana, the Oriental indeed done in her tale “The Royal Ascetic and the Hi Categorizing all translations from Sanskrit to En Unlike either Orientalists or indigg validating the past at the expense of Vedic India as her subject matt ging the texts of the hegemonic culture, Dutt destabilizes the dominance of the English canon in India. She transform: into literary English, but she is not creating English literature. She is by foregrounding folktales and legends of India, and by including untranslated ‘Sanskrit words, references to religious deities and customs, names of indigenous fuuna, all without explanatory footnotes, Her use of both Sanskrit and vernacular vocabularies works to alienate non-Indian readers from their imperial frames of reference. They have to react and re-orient themselves in the face of different historical and cultural presuppositions." “Translation as Manipulation” 160, Suing Translation 180-1 ‘© See Samantak Das, "Notes towards « Sociology of Translation” 40, and Anuradha Dingwaney, “Introduction: Translating “Third World” Culture,” in Between Languages and Cultures Fora viow ofthe subversive potential of Indian words ina predominantly English text, see GALV. Prasad, “Writing Translation: Te Strange Case of the Indian Englishon matters of philology, gramm intertextuaity attest, Defining Sanskrit culture (as Indian culture) requiring specialists for access, the Orientalists offered a “rediscovered” image of india to an elite European audience. This kind of translation ‘conresponds to what André LeFevere conceptualizes as a “type of rewriting ... able ‘to project the ... works beyond the boundaries oftheir culture of origi ‘eat ironies is that these Western translations from Sanskrit into English (or French) also often mediated the Bhadrafok’s access to their own past Dutt’s presentation of the Sanskrit tradition to her audience, however, differs startlingly. A number of Farther, her| space of transformation for her audience as well. Less scholarly, less celebratory, less esoteric, and less aestheticized, she asserts to her audience, both Indian and British, that the past is more than an antiquarian, nostalgic, or scholarly endeavor. addresses an audience ideally engaged with the reformist issues of jing women’s education and emancipation, the injustices of caste, and us doctrines and social customs such as child marriage, karma, and polygamy. Since Dut’s translations often enfold her interpretations into the very telling of them, they enable a new interface between Indian, British, and Anglo- Indian readers over constructions of the past and contemporary, contentious issues, feven when adopting, as other liberal Bengali reformers did, Wester discourses of rights, freedom, and equality. K.R. Ramachandran Nair sees Dutt facilitating a “rapprochement” between England and India.” In offering timely and accessible tales to a popular audience in Great Britain and to a bhadralok and Anglo-Indian audience in India, she expresses a liberal confidence in the possibility of a mutually beneficial exchange. Her translations function as inquiries directed at her audience, rather than products to bé consumed by them. ‘That reading translations, for Dutt, is as active and creative an endeavor as the reading of original works emerges in a sonnet on translation that she writes "in Postcolonial Transtation: Theory and Practice, ed. Susan Baussnett and Harish the medium of instruction, supposedly rehension; it was assumed that this content Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutts Poems and Letters st in 1875. “Sonnet. “A Mon Pére”” is appended as the concluding poem of A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields: ‘The flowers look loveliest in ther native soil Amid ther kindred branches; ph ‘And tose the colours Nature on th Though bound in garlands wi ‘A Paradis, and gather in my But better than myself no man ean know How tamished have become their tender hues Pen inthe gathering, and how dimmed their glow! ‘Wouldst thou again new life in them infuse, ‘Thou who hast seen them where they brightly blow? “Ask Memory. She shall help my stanumering Muse." Dutt projects diminishment as the inevitable consequence of the translator's calculated r tof the source text. Her verbs attest “ the colours Nature on them laid,” an to encourage their mnemonic involvement. When the speaker, for example, interrupts the narrative to enfold her memories of her mother’s original telling of the tales, she models for her Indian readers ~ for whom these tales would likely have been familiar from tellings by their own mothers ot grandmothers" — how they might revi les’ meanings by suturing them to their personal memories, attention to India’s past often directs her readers to question the ‘contemporary colonial and patr2 Anglophone indian Women Writer, 1870-1920 3 was common at this historical moment among the bhadral Up until 1875 in Bengal, political chetoric national culture among the the copying of dominant modes of the colonizer The second phase inaugurates a new relationship with the past, defined as a common and col shared one. This return to “forgotten” cultural traditions is done uncritically, in a spirit of reverence. Furth ry without any effort to connect it to present stru third phase puts that history to use, as it were, mobilizing traditional cul fight against present oppression. By virtue of history's active deploymer utilization in ‘generalizing, homogenizing, and rendering tidy what are long, contradictory, and often unresolved stru depiction of India and , Dutt’s speaker immerses framings, Ancient ically diverges from : have imposed 4 developmental narrative on Dutt’s maturation as a writer. Edmund Gosse’s Susie Tharu notes that Dutt’s translations of revolutionary French speeches have ‘gone unremarked, even by nat English andthe Making of Indian Lit Chaudhuri, Gentlemen Poets % Ray, Social Conflict 82. % See The Wretched of the Earth, ans. Constance Farrington (New York: Peaguia, 1960) tures,” in Rethinking English 167). Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutts Poems and Letters 3 conversion, remains a “pure Hindu, full of the typical qualities of her race and blood”; one who, after a detour to Europe, “no longe compete with European validated because producing European problematic (or on especially fraught ie-ranging abilities and interests which had already contributed “net into English. More import which the activity of translation, for Dutt, was a way of esta and maintaining ties to a plurality of places to which she felt |, as her letters show, or her abil diate environment. By exploring the “l by connecting them to contemporary issues, Anci restlessness of travel (Were, a vayage toa temporal to place. And though Dutt claimed that one of her next projects would be A Sheaf Gleaned in Sanskrit Fields, who can tell how long she would have tarried there? ‘Tora Dutt’s shifting versions of self also enable us to understand how cultural identity among the bhadralok eludes any simple or stable algorithm based on language community, religion, race, or class. Her translations and letters remind us of her different linguistic allegiances, and as a literary translator she remains ‘resolutely between cultutes, a young woman shaped from an early age by a rich © Gosse in the introduction to Anecent Ballads, xi and xxii % Alpana Sharma, “in-between Modernity” % Chaudhuri, “The Dut Family Album: And Toru Dut” 69, 9 Lootens, “I any identity caeg ‘Kippling/Sharma,s4 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 ith-differing degrees of competence, she it encompasses. Different languages ‘house different and conflicting versions —or extensions —of the self that she explores in het writing. This never appears to be cause for confusion, but rather an occasion I translation, appropriation, affiliation, trope to which Dutt returns often, and it hen questions of cultural belonging emergs up notably at those in her very first letter England ... I hope Mamma will succeed in her attemy plants in India.""® Her (and her mot not disappear through physical distance, but assume material form, taking root in Bengal. With its combination of native and English plants, the garden bears the hher optimism about t native” species. Six months point of her “Indian” gard ¢ light, Dutt feels confined in she enjoyed while studying and In both examples, Dutt’s thoughts cycle between India and Europe. The garden ‘as multivalent signifier for this negotiation continues, reappearing twice in 1876, "See Lootens, who reads the symbolic resonances of gardens and flowers in “Our %2 Letters of 9-20-1874, p. 67 and 9-21-1874 p. 6. Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutts Poems and Letters 55 ‘year before her early death, In letter from December 25, 1876, Dutt compares the various places she has learned t : ded itis as good One feels more ne, where one is ‘generally anxious about the cracked water-jug or the loose-stoppered mustard- pot! Baugmaree with its garden becomes a launching point for a consideration of belonging that emblematizes how India, not Europe, is becoming the place where Is the ease that c Looks throug and the white lotus changes Into a cup of silver. One might swoon Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze (Ona primeval Eden, in amaze. (138) Girded though the garden may be, the distress Dutt expressed earlier at her inability to walk outside in an open countryside finds compensation in an ex; ‘That Dut mapping or th tp 24156 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 in Keats’ sonnet, “On First Looking into Chapman's ns, in fact, are present in other poems by Di : the realms of gold, and kingdoms seen; ‘Off of one wide expanse had I been told ‘That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; never breathe its pure serene the similarity of the feeling expressed in the conc! onnet and the final couplet of Dutt’s: namely, theirs} "6 John Keats, The Poetry of John Keats, ed. Jack Sullinger (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978) 34, ‘Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutts Poems and Letters 37 charted terrains of the Keats as a reader of the n. Homer is something Keats speaker has access to via Chapman’ ‘The speaker's “map,” then, is a translation, but the future wealth is presented as a discovery. Corte the colonial enterprise, with their pursuit of “real eats approy recognition as a poet, Like Ki Keats uses Chapman's translation to foster his creative energies, in a spirit of re- "), Dutt terrain already inhabited with Orientalist and nativist prese it large enough to house she proves herse ‘at turning an appropriative gaze to those linguistic terrains where she can, temporarily, find a home,Chapter 2 Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform in Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life In both expected and unexpected ways, Krupabai Satthianadhan’s biography, her cultural milieu, and the reception of her work mirror those of” ectual aspirations and validated learned women as models of feminine virtue. In Satthianadhan's novels, Hindu ‘women’s access fo education as young wives proves integral to improving high- caste Indian women’s conjugal relations and family lives, ‘Krupabai Satthianadhan’s work also encompasses strikingly different worlds from Dut'’s translations, revealing her divergent literary interests and writerly strategies. Satthianadhan neither espouses «a cultural nationalism nor tums to Vedic literary traditions, and her texts are firmly situated in the present. She embraces literary realism and the Western genres of the idumgsroman and the New Woman novel in order to depict the lives of young | women, both Christian and Hindu. Unlike Dutt’ restlessness, her faranging ‘and literary traveling, Satthianadhan’s novels assert the primacy of what lies near at hand, seen witha close eye: the psychological and ine Satthianadhan’s work above all from Toru Dutt’s is her thoroughly ‘While Dutt is preoceupied in her late poems by the juncture of Indian lism chafes against her polemics, as she addresses the social injustices that oppressed the native Christian woman, in© Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 her first novel, and the high-caste Hindu woman, in her second ‘Story of Hindu Life, Satthianadhan’s second novel and the subject filly embodies this ff upper-caste Indian women mutually determine one another, both within and beyond the family unit. Adapting the literary to overtly reformist ends, Satthianadhan’s novel is best understood as a response to late nineteenth century discourses of both Western and Indian social reformers Colonialist accounts of the zenana (the women’s quarters where high-caste/ class Hindu and Muslim women 8 serve as metaphors for the psychological from “backward,” “barbaric” customs that deny them en education or even a circumscribed public life. Anna Satthianadhan, the mother-in-law of Krupabai Satthianadhan (whose reformist novel Kamala of Hindu conjugality. They sought to reform ly by “uplifting” Hindu women. In stark contrast to these voyeuristic views, Krupabai es of a Prominent Indian Chistian Family of 1863-1906: Perspectives on Caste, Culture, and Conversion,” “architecturally and artistically its meanest part” (quoted in Grewal, Home and Harem 51). Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform a Satthianadhan’s novel Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life(1894) complicates colonialist ‘Beographies of high-caste Hindu women’s lives.* Abandoning sen inhabited by a Bralumin Hit inthe stereotypical gender-segregated tum, serve as ideological of child marriage and Hindu ‘along with her promotion of Indian women’s solidarity across kin and caste lines, become articulated, ‘hat Krupabai Satthianadhan would choose to write a refo surprising, given her life and her other writings. One first Brahmin converts to Christianity in the Bombay Presi education. After ye -health compelled her to fousbandd in the Madras ey, focusing on the education of Indian girls and women: novel, Kamala: A English-educated Indi ‘husband occupied an uneasy pos s of the colonizer and the colonized. Further, as Chandani Lokugé describes them, the Sattbianadhans represented an unusual syn ‘and Christianity. It is within this context that Satthianadhan’s indigenous feminism, as well as her employment of @ Christian and # Hindu rhetoric of reform, must be understood. invested in this vision of mature, educated indian womanhood” (Converting Wome * Krupabsi Sattia Hindu Child Wife, 8. Chandani 1998). All subsequent page: ses. Note the editor's change ‘Saguna | and Joshi, In Another Country (87. Both Sagunca setalized form inthe Madrasa Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 ‘We get a sense of the reformist potential and the uniqueness of Kamala’s subject matter ~ allegedly the first fictional lish by an Indian woman wri ‘Wealtend othe reviewers in diverse journals and newspapers who praised it ability to cross the intersecting divides of religion, ethnicity, and gender that splintered reform movements at this historical moment, One Hindu reviewer with The Madras fees his prejudice against the autho as an Indian Christian before reading ly to abandon it afterwards: “We took up the book with a preconceived prejudice that the daughter of Chiristian convers was the last person fitted to of the life of a Brahman houschold, We laid it down agreeably. disappointed.” Another Hindu reviewer claimed that “every educated Hindu ought only forthe purpose of enccuraging Indi literature, but also forthe purpose of laying well to heart the lessons it contains.”* Seeing her a liaison between cultures, Phe Fastern Guardian call attention to Satthianadhan’s capacity to represent both Hindu and Christian world in her writing: “To Europeans the life of the higher classes of Hindus written by one of them is of great interest as there J ofthis to be met with, especially anything written by Hindu women, is as capable of describing the Hindu woman of the period as well a, .” Other reviewers perceive the novel as promoting more nuanced yet, reforms for women. The Madras Standard finds that Kamala “cannot \dentified Hindu and Christian reviewers and described as of interest to male and ‘female, Anglo-Indian, British, and Indian readers, was an anomaly indeed. ‘Though Kamala reached both an English-educated Indian and a British audience, there is no doubt that its readers’ understandings of the lived of el iu women." Kamala offers an implicit challenge to Victorian spatial ideologies of the public-mascutine {the premature death of the author. © Soshi, Jn Another Country 187 ® ‘This and all subsequent reviews are published in Satthianadhan’s Miscellaneous Writings. ‘only were Satthianadhan’s novels printed at twice the usual pent runs but, 08 ‘otes, they “were part of an inadvertent but significant transaction witha world ‘the Madras Presidency where she lived and wrote” (In Another Country 199 Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform a and private-feminine spheres that colonialist accounts brought to bear upon the zerana (and whose explanatory power is problematic in both Vietorian and Indian contexts). This particular discourse of gendered space neglects fo take into aceount the relative situatedness of is own position, problematically mapping Indian spaces ‘and constricting Indian women within a decontextualized Western paradigm. If we think of space, as Satthisnadhan’s novel does, as the social “stretched out,” as sets ‘of “superimposed spatial frameworks, as many social spaces negotiated within one ‘geographical space and time,” we can see beyond the public-masculine/private. feminine and caste- Allaying conserva nandibai Joshi’s biography anadhan whose learaing did Rewriting History 215,n Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 she upsets gender norms and she only cares about dyad by trying to be an eq the men of the household, not the women, Perhaps the most comy reason they articulate against her education ‘within the extended family ur 's/brother’s/husband’s favor and 1d hierarchical power of women in the household, whereby the young child-wife is typically at the bottom, compelled Quoted in Chakravan, Rewriting History 204, * who desired reform turned to British (imperi Gendered Spaces ane Conjugal Reform B fears awakened, and his affections played upon and divided between his sisters, his his wife. Change is actively resisted by female in-laws, and an inherent conservatism prevails among the women. The young husband's own dependence on the extended family makes him unable to protect his wife works such as Ramabai Ranade's autobiography and S. A Sketch of a Bombay High Caste ‘many reformers proposed that the boy's “age of consent” be raised as wel Kamala's husband proves unable to stand up to the women’s energeti effo keep Kamala subordinate within the household, as do the other men in he Kamala’s father, after h her father follows, Similarly, Kam. the child-wife’s position withi one of increasing isolati women (including Rakhmubai snd Ramabai) minists as they lost faith inthe imperial {government's and in Indian male reformers’ commitment to real reform (“Age of Conwent” 109-10),1" Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 undergone by girls her own age; and she often with her own eyes witnessed scenes ‘which shocked her and gave her food for much painful reflection” (59). In a direct address to the reader Satthianadhan concludes: The relations between a husband and a wife in an orthodox Hindu home are, a a {eneral rule, much constrained. The two have not liberty of speech and action ‘The joint fai Sie Attempts at the realization of companionate marriage outside the joint family system, were, as Uma Chakra ill very much “an abstraction, in construction” during this period. , Kamala’s parents’ narrative will provide a realized fictional model, In progressive reform movements of the late nineteenth century, widowhood became another avenue for the crit -xogamy, following the reformer family system in The High Caste iala's fiend Rukhma is widowed dearest relations would tum their faces from her and say: “Let her bear the sins of former generations, the unfortuna ‘committed ... And Rukhma ... would hide her face and mourn and nota soul Would go near her to sympathize with her or say a kind word to her. (130) ‘When Ganesh too dies, Kamala, who had left him earlier in Rampur and returned to his parents’ home, sees his death as her “meet punishment for having left his 53), despite his infidelity with Sai and his baseless accusations of fulness. Unl from her father upor further ostracism. Yet her intemalization of the blame and embrace ofthe widow's stigmatized social identity keep her from the happiness that Ramchander’s offer of lage promises, Although she has every reason to anticipate happiness with ‘ second marriage to him (he is the husband with whom, the narrative intimates, she would have recreated her parents’ ideal), she chooses instead a life of service © Rewriting History 207. This constrction of @ companionate ‘on both Western and indigenous discourses. According to Grewal, the“ ‘companionate marriage and the nuclear family, pervasive in missionary di 4s discourses of the family in both England and the United States, is also powerful in ‘Ramabai’s opposition to Hindu custom” (Home and Harem 208), ‘tn Pandita Ramabai Through Her Own Words: Selected Works, ed. Meera Kosambi (New Delhi: Oxford University Pres, 2000) 141-69, Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform 75 educating widows and orphans (like Pandita Ramabai), a decision tha ultimately confers upon her an exemplary status. Similarly, after her mother Lal death, her father Narayan becomes a sanyasi (a holy man), shunning remarriage and following ancient Hindu the varnashrama dharma (religious Kamala and Ramchander’s ‘genuine love suggests an alternative happy ending) but rather that her reformist Priorities lie elsewhere. ‘The present-time of the narrative places Kamala primarily inthe home of her secondary narrative (arising afler Kamala asks her father about her mother) depicts # model of companionate conjugality that dovetails ineteenth-century understandings of ancient Hindu p aspects of which were acceptable to Indian reformers and tra Satthianadhan draws on fairy tale and myth to characterize Kamal story, beginning with her mother Lakshmi being ‘“immured in the fortres ther” lity of a couple who caste husband and wife would not meet and certain for talking before their marriage. Yet “quite against [Narayan] to talk tothe gir” (118); under her ax they meet numerous times. ‘The choice of the name Droupadai can hardly be accidental here; a version of fan leaves with Lakshmi on a Ramechander accompanying them. These actions overtly allude to 's voluntary exile from Rama’s own dysfunctional family, as well as 8 during their forest exile, recounted in The Ramayana, a popular friend's16 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 , Narayan and Lakshmi are vietims of familial ns who manage to escape. At the center of the ere recreated by Narayan and Lakshmi: (Ob, my Kamala! How can I give you a glimpse of those happy days? It falls not to the lot of morals th the birds, oamed through 20) ‘The incorporation of mythic elements legitimizes Nerayan’s and Lakshmi’s love, reinscribing an ancient Hindu ideal of marriage within a modern novel: Kamala’s ting happiness as forest based on a number of: factors: Narayan’s understanding that a husban cessary for their ‘happiness; and that Lakshmi pursue an education, with Narayan’s encouragement, As he relates to Kamal standard fare of Hindu women’s education ~ Puranic texts are books in the novel ~ Satthianadhan insists that intellectually challenged women become better (because more equal) companions within ‘marriage. As Narayan raises his daughter Kamala after Lakshmi’s death, he ‘continues this same kind of edueation, ‘The narrative excursus away from Kamala’s unhappy marriage to the representation of her parents’ happy one allows Satthianadhan to propose an alternative model of Hindu marriage, one where the exogamous, extended family \ay to a companionate, nuclear model, where the young woman marries at a later age (Lakshmi is presumably older because her father has neglected to ‘marry her), where she has a right to choose her partner, and where her education continues after her marriage and extends through both parents to their daughter (Kamala) Although this inserted narrative is situated long after the many problems ‘of Kamala’s own marriage have become apparent, it helps the reader understand ‘moments with her husband Ganesh occur When her marriage most ly approximates her parents’: when Ganesh is teaching her; when they leave ilgrimage to Dudhesthal; and when Kamala contempl life alone with him in Rampur away ftom his family. Kamala st atta ‘such an ideal requires both the husband’s and the wi tance In creating a companionate conjugal relationship that draws strength from its allusion to religious texts and myths, Kamala contributes to what Uma Chakravarti has called the “construction of a particular kind of past and a particular kind of ‘© "In“Whatever Happened tothe Vedic Dast?” Chakravart describes the frequent use ‘uring this time of ancient Vedic myths to legitimize contemporary reforms (79) Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform n Womanhood” by cultural nationalists to further a reformist agenda. While problematic to pigeonhole Satthianadhan as a cultural nationalist on the basis of Which forges a new identity for high-caste Hindu women in part by ing her high status in the Vedic pas. Further, Lakshmi’s and Narayan’s ideal marriage describes a model of “Aryan” (Indo-European) womanhood as Constructed by both male and female Indian waiters such as RC. Dutt, Bankim, Dayananda, and Kailashbhashini Devi.“ Characteristics of “Aryan"” womanhood included the. following (most of which are found within the narrative in Kamala): women are educated before their marriage, and their education continues after marriage as well; women choose their partners after getting to kno d, can contract second marriages; women are co-equal and are partners in religious duties; marriages ‘model; and in accordance with Vedie practices, there are idolatry, or child marriage. By making her proposed reforms consistent with The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, texts beloved and familiar, Satthianadhan employs a strategy used by progr reformers who gestured toward a Hindu “gol ideal womanhood, such as Maitreyi, Gargi, Kamala's, is one way the no forest distinguishes as well. First, her th her husband Ganesh iveys the pull of Kamala’s natal home, Her early life i the ‘fom that of other girls who live in town in other ways teaches her to abhor caste prejudice, another allusion to ast in the present, Her favored playmate is Sudra (lowest of the castes, here, peasants), and this cross- only in & remote setting, beyond the strict caste to perform puja [worship] and “to fi lay his plantain leaf ready for food, attempts to allay conservative fears ale ed feminine modesty. Indeed, its proposed reforms consolidate certain demands of Patriarchal power as well as mitigate its abuses. Finally, Narayan also tums out (28-9, 40-1). this raciaist mode of thinking by mentioning Kamala's faimess Here it hecomes an index of et moral superiority Tid 50-61, bid, 79.n Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 to be an opponent of child marriage. He det love and carefe indepen Eventually losing what he calls “the great strug arranged mariage he is unhappy wit he defers any longer” Kamala sug father is incapable of overriding the weight of customary practices. Yet in its parents’ familial home, the novel also conveys to readers indu traditions — women’s education, women's right to onsent ~ can find contemporary articulation It offers a companionate model seemingly compatib. ian progressive and conservative conjugal ideas, as well as Western ones: a common ideological base, despite religious and cultural differences. In highlighting the physical and psychic toll associated with patriarchal viilcal exogamy, Satthianadhan reveals herself tobe a strong opponent of child marriage The death of her mother Lakshmi orphans Kamala at an early age, but iti not until she leaves her natal home that her psychological bereavement truly begins. Indeed, the novel stresses the absolute separation ofthe two homes once Kamala marries and moves from a natal home c by strong emotional bonds to her in- laws’ home, where she atempts transfer her affections to her husband and his family. Visilocal exogamy ‘drastic separation ~ Kamala is denied access to her parents ~ and her extreme subordination within her inlaws” home exacerbates the pain of separation’ Although Kamala foregrounds the power of the the unbroken emotional tie between the dead mother nature or wilderness, the mother’s “ghostly” presence ‘testifies, simultaneously if paradoxically, to the relative invisibility, as well as the «enduring significance, ofthe mother-daughter relationship. Within Hindu discourses cof child ms Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform n separation. Although the dead mother cannot be brought back physically the psychic “ongoingness of their love triumphs over two kinds of death, the biological one and the “death” ofthe mother-daughter relationship that early mariage signifies Kamala’s longing for proximity to her mother is charted alo herein the maternal is aligned with nature; the imagery of ‘water, wind, and light connotes their psychic reunificati as one dominant aspect ofthe text's association Kamala is first represented as a solitary child, hillock topped with a ruined temple dedicated whose temple Kamala regards ‘one last time before her marriage, buoyancy of life which made her ting wind, this wild landscape 1 gravitas of marriage. Lakshmi psyche, is asso ‘such intangible presences as light and moonlight. When the wind on the when she contemp! that whenever I look over those ability to temper ver light of the moon feathery veil the deep Here and there the moonbeams touched igations of marriag daughter from a too-early entry into adult The episode of the pilgrimage to Dudhesthal, where trau and a sociosexual geography are inscribed upon another illuminates this maternal function. An erotic mythos governs name, Dudhesthal, means “milky spot,” due to the effect created when the “masculine river Ganga (associated with Shiva) shoots down to @ ‘eayern and it, appearing to viewers as « white spray, Another feature of 'eeta’s bath” (after Sita, the embodiment of the ideal faithful wife ‘© My reading here contrasts starkly with Pri sis, which claims that in Kamala there are “no mothers... only grotesque mothers (In Another Courtry 202),ly suggestive. The “bath” is a rocky cave, “ the cave” (69). Even the place of Seeta’s baby’s cra womb imagery: “the rude slab of rock cut in the shape of a cot with mos stones underneath and ferns springing up on sexual topography, Kamala has atory flashback: of falling into the river and near life by/with the mother(c..,to.atime ler “ghostly” reappearance at this spot reintroduces rotective presence as Kamala reaches her difficult negotiation of Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform 81 she looked up wondering whether the sunlight was still there and the wind, ‘old play fellow: and she saw the moming rays struggling withthe so® mist under the trees... Thea she thought that had come on he ..“ back to me any more’ ‘When the widowed Kamala is finally able to make choices about her life, due to an ‘unexpected inheritance, she creates for herself what one could call nonbiological oF asexual motherhood. Although she has the ability to marry (and give birth) he chooses to step out of the generational matrix. Instead, she devotes herself to the care of widows and orphans, a service made possible by her mother’s dual legacy: the gift of an education and the jewels she bequeaths to her daughter. Economic independence confers upon Kamala freedom from a procreative paradigm, ‘The natural world, much lo due to her early childhood associ to represent an escape from the misery Kamala experiences as a chi place that transcends the social altogether: ‘So Kamala ... wondered why she ever fet happy at all, as she did when she looked on the blue sky, the radiant sunset, or the swollen river ~ why she felt Such longing tobe lost in a great, wild wilderness, where she might dream alone in silence and enjoy .. the glory and magnificence of earth und sky. (59) By virtue of the text’s association of Lakshmi with natural phenomenon, and Particularly with wild landscapes, however, it is tempting to read Kamala’s pleasure in nature as the recall ofthe matemal bond she has encrypted there. Thus, nature is less @ solution to social alienation than an arena replete with alternative ie “spectral mother” comes to stand for a diversity of desires ied ones: the longing for an extension of childhood pleasures; 4 wish to defer, cancel, or abrogate female sexual reproduction; and a refusal {o relinquish the psychological primacy of the mother-daughter affective bond. Here is @ place where the “precocious and artificial childhood” of her friends in ‘town need not end by entering into “a premature of forced womanhood”: “Just as the door of a city house leads abrupt! street where everythi en ‘and glaring, so the threshold of (her ftiends’) childhood opened suddenly into womanhood” (86). Thus, the text conveys a profound anxiety about hetero free and happy, though going to a poor village hi iage, Kamala seems to suggest, depends upon a mother’s continued involvement with and ability to protect her daughter, The difference between the status quo and a utopian social vision is figured in the text through.2 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 {wo oppositions. One is geographical, namely, the contrasting spaces of the town and nature, with their alternative social and familial values. The othe is temporal iods of Ka fe, Just as Dutt bridged her stant past and the present through the memories of a maternal figure, sdhan also envisions the remembered mother as nodal point between ‘mother-daughter bond represents the charged values. Over the geographical and temporal ‘mother inthe wilderness, a figure testifying to gender arrangements. ive to such arrangements that the novel if only to reject it, is represented by a female protagonist Sai, th wildemess and public spaces. Like her persona, “rugged ravines” and “precipitous hills’ is a landscape associated with female deities hostile to men, is the destructive goddess Kali: “Once an uncanny sensation crept over him dark grove close by, a hideous image of sexual liaisons with Ganesh (and others, presumably). «brilliant woman, an artist with words, and her gift for conversation ‘uneducated Hindu wife's limits as an companionate conjugal partn More critically, she exposes unmarried women’s need for money and social Standing, and the difficulty of attaining that honorably. Sai has a network of sp mostly comprised of Bheels or tribals, who supply her with information at ctiminal wrongdoing and give her a special status with legal and governmental offices: (Sai] was intimately connected with most of the a robberies and quarrels, that happened in and abou fants and trusty servants who kept her informed o ortant events took plac in different localities, To outsiders ste seemed a woman of great bility and power, and she was often entrusted with work belonging to others, es 2 A Michaels, C. Vogslanger and A. Wilke, Wild Goddess in Indta and Nepal (Bem: Peter Lang, 1996) 15-34, Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform 2 for example, the detection of robbery and the setling of disputes... Government officials, roo, consulted her now and then. (80) Sai’s confident ease in maintaining a powerful public persona make her intimidating both to men, who suspect her of poisoning her husband, and to women such Kamala, who regard her as loathsome, no better th Her education and wealth, her involvement with sexual behavior with men such as Ganesh and Ramchan: her tragic past from home and family to escape oppression ~ it ies. Instead of awe, the reader is meant to vi oman harboring envy jor Sai has irretrievabl possesses. Her agential subjecti to be both the pawn of a pri power, ized many of Kamala’s own most urgent for an education; for a sexual relationship with a partner who is also an lectual equi ic independence that Kamala onl 1m Sai has been engag hher movements between lived social and psychological worlds in a third arena beyond the domestic interiors and wild spaces discussed thus far. These spaces include the banks of rivers pathways and hedges, wells, and local temples ‘where women perform ritual offerings or ate in festivities together. Most of ‘these spaces are behind the houses themselves, yet they create a feeling of another In font, the houses look insignificant and small; but behind each opens out ‘nto a cour-yard with outhouses and a small garden, The houses communicate ‘with each other by means of paths leading through hedges, and womea at work offen keep up s running conversation with their neighbours. Theoy Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 in the backyants are usually scenes of great bu ‘exceptionally good water there gather groups of fom far and near with brass pots and other water ‘and around a well with the home, with thei own culture They are, in a sens interiors where the but where they have a relative freedom from immediate expected roles. In Kamala, these places are inthe o a very different ki cones: adjacent to gathering points for Kam with whom she forms close Venues offer an important al disintegrative female interrelations within the ly sy socialization in gender and conjugal ‘motherless, and because her Kamala forthe firs time, curi about her dress and her jew. and questioning Kamala aby she knows nothing, The knowledge, and one ol (24), even teasing the arranged marriage in store for her, of which ie wrong in dancing and singing? What w« and the mocking, jeering voices of the girls came before her” (36). fter her marriage, much of the kno} terrifying her, however, they also help her ibordinate female within her husband’s famil safe forms of resistance to — and pearl jewelry to adorn themselves, Kamal allowing them to take her sole source of we more cautious ie, and takes her to the festival herself. Later on, the ‘reader (here, an implied Westem one) learns the economic significance these ‘trinkets hold for young wives: jew Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform 85 Blame not the poor Indian woman for her love of jewellery ... She knows Well that they are the only things that Inusband’s death or when any trouble or her future independence in them, have something to fll back upon in Besides educating Kamala in the value of her jewelry, Kashi temporarily gets her ‘out of her oppressive situation. Yet she also acknowledges her powerlessness before the inherent injustice of Kamala’s exploitation: ler oppressions, but she admits det thing wrong somewhere"). In. . {ater when, gathered by the river, Kamala’s close friends try snother young wife, Hami, cope with a mother-in-law who deprives her of food. Scheming to dress 'up as witches who bring illness in order to seare and punish her mother-in-law for her maltreatment, they choose cholera for their fintasized revenge, hherselfis particularly susceptible to, due to her chronic undemourishment they never carry out the prank, their joy in plotting freely against the seemingly limitless power of Ham's mother-in-law —"she”is reduced to fear and trembling in their skit ~ constitutes an act of psychic resistance to her domination. The advice and support these young women offer each other does not change the status q it does make its consequences much more bearable. Thus, when Bhagirathi ims another man who res her, Kamala pleads in favor of rnorins of female chastity (thereby , and therefore conjugalty could not be reformed. Instead, she delineates spaces where female bonding already prevails. Women within the conjugal household may prove fo education and conjugality, but a in these shared, extra-famil Kamala, in fact, depicts community of women who are angered by the injust elf outside the home: hence the significane affords these places in the novel.” Anagol-MeGinn, “Age of Conseat” 106. Reformers who were women, however, ere les convinced that these women’s orthodoxy made them unable to change, they sa them as the products 5 Inopposit has been thoroughly ruptur86 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 ‘These public, gender-segregated spaces also allow the narrative to represent crucial differences in these friends’ lives, Friends like Harni and Bhagirathi su in their marriages; Rukhma and Kashi have happy ones. Although Kamal situation is characterized as common ~ they instruct her in what “her wom: lot wil be” ~ the presence of these other women all in greater depth the conditio , her mother, in servile, demeaning fashion, returns her mortified, appalled daughter to her husband's family, with the result that her husband’s contempt for her resumes in intensified form. Trapped in what she describes as a “living grave” (59), Bhagirathi considers running off with ‘nother man to escape the pain of being unloved. and Rukhma’s happy marriages provide a counterpoint to these ‘ones. Though Kamala does not i near to each other, and the old dames regarded cach ashi’s mother's protectiveness extends to Kamala, and tly criticizes Kemala’s mother-in-law for the weakness of character others to easily manipulate however, its detuiled accounts of in- the home work to reveal Satthians strong supportive group of female for marital felicity. ler-segregated places offer crucial insights into the is signaled by the narrator's indication of her own spatial text's reformist agen Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform 7 location, the place where she claims to first have heard Kamala’s story and where she also writes the novel: my side, The: ‘Sivagunga was there, andthe same old river rolled on, mindful ofthe ) ‘The authorial space of writing occurs in relation to three specific landmarks: ‘the Shivagunga river, the temple of Rohini, and the shrine to Kamala. As the embodiment of the god Shiva, the river is associated with male heterosexual desire, dangerous due to its pote the village. Beside the river, s the temple of Rohini. Rohini is the name ‘one, Rohini saves the town from “being washed away when floods came” (97) by setting up a barrier to keep back the raters “unmindful of ‘not within or beside the temple of Rohini but “far stands for something yet to be realized, something for or of the future. Kamale’s story has revealed that however assiduous and good she may be, the chaste wife might not be the sole bulwark capable of channeling her ‘husband's wayward desires. Kamala’s shrine close beside this same river testifies often find support 's " s and-orphans, her memorial is a necessary supplement to Rohini’ traditional one, providing comfort to those for whom marriage does not afford either security of !happiness (hence the need for the agency of her “unseen hands,” 156). Kamala comes cot of her widow's seclusion to help fellow widows and orphans, demonstrating ‘women, through their actions, have a role to play in cultural reform, ‘When the narrator constitutes herself as author in relation to these three places (the88 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 Rohini temple, the Shivagunga river, and the monument to Kamala), ‘metaphories of space to call attention to the larger context for reform: one in which reform of Hindu husbands’ sexuality and obliteration of a sexual double standard is @ necessity; and one in which women act on behalf of other women, whether that means cultivating gender solidarity across caste and kinship lines ot Working to ‘underscore and ameliorate discrimination against widows, ‘The conservative reformist f the zenana as “happy home” proves to bbe an untruth for most, though not all wives, in Kamala. Conditioning substi for love, self-surrender derives more from coercion and dependence than fulfillment, and early integration does not guarantee security (Kamala’s in-laws ‘as Kamala and Bhagirathi, each ina miserable of inferior in character, experience strong ines, thereby negat ful nonetheless. For Satthianadhan, women must know their own desires in order to be agents capable of controlling them; a chastity based on strict seclusion and control means litle, whereas chastity (male or female) Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform 89 tradition and modernity, espousing reform but seeing the imy legislative solution that does not arise out of Indian communities themselves. does do is keep the conversation about the consequences of child and finds overlapping ground between liberal Hindu reformers, ies. Female education had long been ‘an indigenous reformist project, and both shared a vision of an educated Indian womanhood with transformed social roles, through the alteration of family structures and sexual pattems, incl Satthianadhan retains this potent and despite the Familial nd spousal abuse she suffers, and this substantiates the urgency of the need for reform, One significant and many others exemplify courage end moral tala’s criticisms of child marriage do not stem roots. Yet, equally persua to draw, starting Her position, infact, is compatible with Hindu reformers who insured women’s educstion would not come at the cost of deculturation or significantly jeopardize male authority, Instead of one-upmanship along religious, cult Satthianadhan carefully avoids designating substantiated by the reviews from see organized space as susceptible to reinscribed with meanings based postcolonial critic Inderpal (on the actions and practices that occur there. © ssh, Another Coury 203 % In relation to the “buming widow,” Ania Loom discusses the conjunction of hast femininity and oppressed victim in “Dead Women Te Subjstivty, Subaltrn Agency, and Tradition i Colon Widow fataton nid,” Hoy Ope cannot asoume a sable ‘fom generation to generation between Westerization and Indianzation 20, 322), HLL. Moore, Space, Text and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) 74 and 890 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 Grewal argues, “home and harem were useful spatial tropes by which female subjects were constructed in both England and India within a colonial context that linked pstriarchal practices,” Satthianadhan attempts to undo such constructions, reconfigure such tropes, and thereby limit patriarchal control.” °° Home and Harem 56, Chapter 3 Feminizing Famine, Imperial Critique: Pandita Ramabai’s Famine Essays mn the closing scene of Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Kamala, discussed in the previous chapter, the narrator sits beside a memorial to the protagonist whose her fellow widows and orphans, former and an object of reformist tthianadhan identifies the position from which Pandit Ram would exercise her political cfforts, Satthianadhan’s brief essa hher Work” reveals that, 1890s, Ramabai was already a well-known figure to her.' Though they lived in different regions of India, during a journey to India’s west coast, Satthianadhan made an effort to stop at the | " Ramabai’s home for child widows in Poona. She t0 see her of whom I had heard so much” and anglicized figure with a great deal of pomp and affectation about her ... but 4 figure neatly and quietly dressed in white in the regular Brahminic style"? Assuming, as did Ramabai’s detractors, that her years abroad and converted status would have overly “anglicise(d]” her, what Satthianadhan sees — to her surprise and pleasure ~ is a woman whose Indian dress and manners are i reveals, as did Dutt and Satthianadi orthodox Hindu opposition to her work id it lessen her own radical commitments to educating ‘marginalized women toward a goal of economic self-suffi {0 conservatives’ attacks on the Sharada Sadan, Ramabai “1 do not care what people say. If| had been guided by work would ha is Satthiamadhan, at people say my ollapsed long ago’.”” Indeed, after viewing the school rooms iat Ramabai will have a revolutionary impact upon ‘women’s place in Indian society: " Krupabei Satthianadhan, “Pandite Ramabai and Her Work,” in Miscellaneous Writings 92-5. 2 Thid 93, > Ibid 942 Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870-1920 Pundita Ramabai’s work is ational in its effects, training are sure to take te lead in the eman the widows that she is of the women of India, ey can make life more ‘intellectually, innocently happy, the martied women would be sure ‘These scenes from Satthianadhan’s essay are instructive, not least because they encourage us to see the points of congruity Satthianadhan traces between her objectives and Ramabai’s: a concer for India's women ly circumscribed but national in its aims; an widows, especially child widows as a group particul Further linking the two (and Dutt before them), edu need of assistance, becomes in their writings the best means for advancing the condition Satthianadhan’s comme if from other groups active in matters pertaining to /omen, including orthodox Hindu reformers, Western ‘missionaries, and British feminists.* Indian women reformers, whether converted ‘of not, had to negotiate both indigenous and colonial patriarchal practices and. institutions. Converted ones, understandably, had to face constant scrutiny at in ies to “Christianize” their 'y had to lear to use language calculated to ‘appeal to Western Christians in order to maintain financial support for their private reform projects. Both Indian Christians and Hindu feminist, as we saw in the last chapter, had to compete with a natio was rendering the social reforms of independence. Ramabai would ed by Satthianadhan, though the ‘organization she founded had a remarkable international reach, Her commitment self-empowerment, however, estranged her at times from and missionary groups with their uninformed views of Hindu ion. i of Hindu patriarchal systems and her focus on educating upper-caste child widows was transformed during the late 1890s and the first years ofthe twentieth century, when India suffered a series of devastating famines, Encountering countless female famine victims ~ many of whom were destitute, physically impaired, abused ~ she expanded her work to include these s less women, while her polemical ‘writings criticized the Raj for the failures of its famine relief efforts. This shift, "or Ramabai’s conflicted relationship with Anglican Christianity and Western ‘missionaries in India, see Anagol, The Emergence of Feminiom in India 42-9, Viswanathan, Outside the Fold and Antoinette Burton, the Heart of Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in late Victorian Britain (Berkeley: Univessity of California Press, 1998) 72- 109, Feminizing Famine, Imperial Critique 93 the subject ofthis chapter, had significant ramifications for her activisin, dropping her exclusive foc caste women, Ramabai became jon and economic empos ffom Ramabai, but is response could never endatiger the cont (@s orthodox challenges could and did threaten to do) Most significantly here, the recutrent nature of the uring this ti ism into an unprecedented arena: single-handedly, she created a discourse attuned to famine’s unique impact upon Indian women ‘Because Pandita Ramabai’s writings on famine and famine relief, both private and governmental, occured relatively late inher pubic life, afer she was already well-known across India, its worth revisiting her career as an activ prior to this period. That 358-1922) should have up the cause of socal reform was, in one sense, remarkable. Although reformers had been addressing the patriarchal oppression of Indian women in the nist ritiques over the course ofthe nineteenth a Hindu woman and then as a converted ime, she was internationally known), And almost over-determined due to her upbringing. jous Brahmin and an exceedingly unconventional stom certainly dictated this), Rsimabai’s father refused to comply, teaching both his second wife and his two daughters. Incensed by these attitudes and his refusal to arrange an carly, unhappy one), the village ly. After living in the forest for a Ramabai, with her surviving brother, her father’s work, gaining renown as {up in Caleutta, There Niswanathan argues that Ramabei's spiritual struggles with Hinduism and (Christianity enabled her to analyze and critique British imperialism (Ouaside the Fold 121 see Meera Kosambi, “Introduction” in Pandit story, especially chapter 6, and Padmini Sengupta, Pandita Ramabat Saraswat: Her Life and Work (London: Asia Publishing House, 97).94 Anglophone Indian Women Wrters, 1870-1920 4 lecturer and debater who used Hindu texts and mythology to make a strong ‘ease for women’s education and emancipation. It was there in 1878 that Ramabai ‘earned the title of “Pandita’ (learned one) and came into contact with the Brahmo Samaj, an indigenous social and religious reform movement that, among other ‘things, promoted women’s emancipation and the abolishment of caste and dowry systems. After marriage to a Bengali non-Brahmin and then widowhood two years ar Bombay, where she encountered the much ‘mote orthodox Chitpavan Brahmin community, Gender issues — especially child ‘marriage, enforced widowhood, and the preservation of women’s domestic roles as wives and mothers ~ were the preoccupation of the upper-castes. Conservative ‘reformers used their interpretations ofthe shastras [religious treatises and texts] to ‘uphold customary practices and argue against upper-caste women’s education and. other progrs Although they became increasingly involved in political st sympathizers antagonistic to Hindu values. ‘in tandem with Maharastra’s regional history ‘missionary conversion efforts and engagement “on behalf of Indian womanhood.” Women there were believed to enjoy a greater telative freedom, a fhe lack of Muslim rule that allowed missionaries better ‘access to them.* Not surprisingly, they were outraged as Ramabai, a widow and aa sumed a vi lic speaker and founder of the Arya Mahila *r own reform group championing the education of upper-caste (child) ia commission in 1882 (news of ‘hich reached Queen Victoria), making impassioned pleas forthe teacher taining ‘of women, women inspectors of schools for gil, and training for female doctors to serve the needs of Indian women, ome a doctor herself and traveled to England in 1883 here. Although she never pursued this seriously, her successfully raising funds, she founded anon- sectarian home and school for child widows (the Sharada Sadan). Ramabai was Emergence of Feminism in India 23. anion has writen of how Indian women who deviated frm traditional bject to hostility im A Comparison Between Men and Women: Tarabai tique of Gender Relations in Colonial India (Madras: Oxford University radieal Jotrao Phule applan ‘interpreted orthodox Hindu treatment of osteasts and we J, well-deserving of rejection, Feminizing Famine, Imperial Critique 95 not alone in focusing on the widow to imagine a broader reform of “the condition of Indian w 10 did such well-known reformers as Jyotirao Phule, . DK. Karve, and Parvati Athavale."' Ramabai’s Sharada in Bombay in 1889, the first home! child widows in Mabarastra (the only other one was in Ben supported by reformers of all leanings in Bombay. When school to nearby Poona, however, ‘accused her of receiving finds from missionaries and actively converting students; the public outcry against this supposed proselytization eventually led all Hindu reformers to break with her.* Christianity did appe saw it as a doctrine of social equality in terms of es Hinduism Tace, and gender, whereas For some widows, there may for their conversion, thool where could work in the fields, bakery, weaving studio, or the arden, pres sew, weave, and/or do embroidery. During ‘of 1896 and 1900, several hundred women were rescued and brought to the farm, 'eading Ramabsi to found the Kripa Sadan in 1899, home for sexually victimized Women. Shifting he focus away ftom upper-caste widows toa broader collective "Grewal, Home and Harem 210-12. Numerous legal reforms ‘caste widow had been enacted over practices they aimed to prokbi 1874, the Right sbands’ property 5-71 and Teresa Hubel, Whose India? The dificult to sort out the extent to which the stents were proselytized, to conver,