Swarnakumari Devi’s ‘Kahake’ and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay’s ‘Radha’: Women's voices in two novels

Abstract

The wave of influence that Western literature exerted under the impact of the nineteenth-century Renaissance significantly affected Bengali literature as well, and soon thereafter a major shift in literary direction took place. In nineteenth-century Bengal, the Bengal Renaissance, the reform movement of the Brahmo Samaj, the spread of women’s education, and the influence of Western education profoundly transformed society. Its direct reflection can be observed in literature — especially in the novel. Though comparatively younger in age, the history of the Bengali novel is glorious. It became a medium through which real life, social conflict, morality, and questions of individual freedom were newly articulated. In ‘Kahake’ (1898), Swarnakumari Devi presents, with gentle satire and sensitivity, the issues of female self-identity, the morality of love, and social crisis within the urban bhadralok society of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, in ‘Radha’ (1958), Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay unveils, against the backdrop of rural Bengal in the twentieth century, the realities of male-female relationships, desire, moral conflict, and the patriarchal social order with powerful realism. These two novels, written by two different novelists from two different centuries, stand upon distinct temporal and social grounds, yet together they construct a complex discourse on women, love, and society. Focusing on the two central heroines, Moni and Mohini, I intend to present a comparative discussion through which the inner emotions, pain, suffering, desires, reluctances, and aspirations for freedom of these women become comprehensible. The heroines Moni and Mohini embody two different forms of love. Although the time and context of the two novels differ, they are thematically connected. In ‘Kahake’, the romantic dilemma of the educated urban woman Moni (or Mrinalini) is foregrounded, whereas in Radha, the love, struggle, and social reality surrounding the rural woman Krishnadasi and Gobinda are vividly portrayed. On one side stands the women’s consciousness shaped by the Renaissance; on the other, the modern realist representation of rural womanhood. This contrast and similarity together create a new field of discussion regarding the position of women in Bengali literature.