Paper
Name: Paper 201: Indian English Literature –
Pre-Independence
Topic
Name: Character of Bimala –
New Woman
Paper Code:20406
Name: Divya Sheta
Roll
No.:06
Enrollment
No.:4069206420210033
Email
ID: divyasheta@gmail.com
Batch:2020-23 MA SEM-III
Submitted
to: Smt.S.B.Gardi
Department of English, MK Bhavanagar University.
- Introduction:
Women in every culture, they
always suffered although they have freedom of speech. They portray as very
typical sometimes or sometimes portray as high thinkers. Rabindranath
Tagore was one the great writers of the 19th-century literary period who
portrayed women as high thinkers, rolling their role in the family quite
appropriately before the Independence of India. In this Assignment, I analyzed
one of his female characters Bimala from the play ‘The Home and the World.
- About the Author
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
was the youngest son of Debendranath Tagore, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj,
which was a new religious sect in nineteenth-century Bengal and which attempted
a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of Hinduism as laid down in the
Upanishads. He was educated at home; and although at seventeen he was sent to
England for formal schooling, he did not finish his studies there. In his
mature years, in addition to his many-sided literary activities, he managed the
family estates, a project which brought him into close touch with common
humanity and increased his interest in social reforms. He also started an
experimental school at Shantiniketan where he tried his Upanishadic ideals of
education. From time to time he participated in the Indian nationalist
movement, though in his own non-sentimental and visionary way; and Gandhi, the
political father of modern India, was his devoted friend. Tagore was knighted
by the ruling British Government in 1915, but within a few years, he resigned
the honor as a protest against British policies in India.
Tagore had early success as a
writer in his native Bengal. With his translations of some of his poems, he
became rapidly known in the West. In fact, his fame attained a luminous height,
taking him across continents on lecture tours and tours of friendship. For the
world he became the voice of India’s spiritual heritage; and for India,
especially for Bengal, he became a great living institution.
Although Tagore wrote
successfully in all literary genres, he was first of all a poet. Among his
fifty and odd volumes of poetry are Manasi (1890) [The Ideal One], Sonar Tari
(1894) [The Golden Boat], Gitanjali (1910) [Song Offerings], Gitimalya (1914)
[Wreath of Songs], and Balaka (1916) [The Flight of Cranes]. The English
renderings of his poetry, which include The Gardener (1913), Fruit-Gathering
(1916), and The Fugitive (1921), do not generally correspond to particular
volumes in the original Bengali; and in spite of its title, Gitanjali: Song
Offerings (1912), the most acclaimed of them, contains poems from other works
besides its namesake. Tagore’s major plays are Raja (1910) [The King of the
Dark Chamber], Dakghar (1912) [The Post Office], Achalayatan (1912) [The
Immovable], Muktadhara (1922) [The Waterfall], and Raktakaravi (1926) [Red
Oleanders]. He is the author of several volumes of short stories and a number
of novels, among them Gora (1910), Ghare-Baire (1916) [The Home and the World],
and Yogayog (1929) [Crosscurrents]. Besides these, he wrote musical dramas,
dance dramas, essays of all types, travel diaries, and two autobiographies, one
in his middle years and the other shortly before his death in 1941. Tagore also
left numerous drawings and paintings, and songs for which he wrote the music
himself.
Nobel Prize motivation: “because
of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with
consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English
words, a part of the literature of the West”
- Life
Rabindranath Tagore was born in
Calcutta. Tagore began to write verses at an early age. After completing studies
in England in the late 1870s, he returned to India where he published several
books of poetry starting in the 1880s. In 1901, Tagore founded an experimental
school in Shantiniketan where he sought to blend the best of Indian and Western
traditions. Tagore traveled, lectured, and read his poetry extensively in
Europe, the Americas, and East Asia and became a spokesperson for Indian
independence from British colonial rule.
- Work
Rabindranath Tagore's writing is
deeply rooted in both Indian and Western learning traditions. Apart from
fiction in the form of poetry, songs, stories, and dramas, it also includes
portrayals of common people's lives, literary criticism, philosophy, and social
issues. Tagore originally wrote in Bengali, but later reached a broad audience
in the West after recasting his poetry in English. In contrast to the frenzied
life in the West, his poetry was felt to convey the peace of the soul in
harmony with nature.
- About the Novel:
The Home and the World is a novel
by Rabindranath Tagore, set against the political and logistical nightmares of
India’s 20th-century caste system. Although the story focuses on the dynamic of
a marriage—which shifts when a shadowy outsider enters the lives of the
couple—much of the novel reads like a philosophical treatise. There are
shifting viewpoints between the characters Bimala, Nikhil, and Sandip, and much
of the book comprises their internal and external dialogues as they consider
serious issues such as tradition, the roles of men and women in Indian culture,
the nature of political change, the occasional need for violence in political
activism, and other rhetorical exercises such as the weighing of the public
good.
Published in 1916, The Home and
the World is a critically celebrated work with themes that its author knows
intimately. The novel is a striking example of the power of art (and artifice)
to edify—or destroy—causes, relationships, and possibly an entire country.
Bimala – Represented as Goddess:
The
association of “Shakti” with Bimala is a recurrent theme that the novel
explores. After her interaction with Sandip, Bimala does not take herself as a
passive domestic wife. She believes there is a ‘goddess’, a ferocious Shakti
inherent in her. She wants Sandip to see her in those terms and only that would
increase her value in his eyes. Although Sandip does regard Bimala as the fiery
goddess, he has his own politics in doing so. He wants Bimala to remain
‘disillusioned’ with such nationalist ideas which would ultimately help him to
fulfill his ulterior motives. Through Sandip, Tagore sketches the portrait of
those swadeshi activists with whose policies he personally wasn’t in agreement.
A Foucauldian reading of how Sandip deifies Bimala, (“I shall simply make
Bimala one with my country.”) would lead us to think that it was a ‘discourse’
used by the nationalist leaders (and still used in our country to a great
extent, with the image of ‘Bharat Mata’) portray the country as a weak woman who
needs the active participation of masculine men to rescue her of her imprisoned
predicament. Also, the comparison of the country and the upper–caste rich
women to the figure of the ‘goddess’ kindled the fire of nationalism in women’s
hearts. This could be very well seen in Bimala and also in Mrinal (the
protagonist of Tagore’s short story “Strir Patro”). This illusion could be seen as a similar one
that Marxist critic Althusser talks about regarding religion and how it ‘interpellates’
the masses to give into some kind of ideology. The ideology of the woman as
a goddess and equating her with the country is dangerous because it
unnecessarily pedestalizes her and leaves her in an illusion that she is
respected and given equal importance to men. Through his rhetoric, Sandip
mesmerizes Bimala and is successful to manipulate her.
Her
Emancipation:
Nikhilesh
is a foil to Sandip. Where the latter views Bimala as an ‘object’ of desire,
something to be possessed, the former withdraws all ‘authority’ over Bimala,
leaving her to decide her life for herself. However, Nikhilesh’s extreme
aloofness from his wife’s life, makes her a victim of Sandip’s scheming. It
makes Bimala regret her decision of crossing the threshold of the house.
Engulfed with a sense of immense guilt, she declares, “I vowed I would never again
go to the outer apartments, not if I were to die for it…” With the help of
Sandip’s allegories, Bimala is soon transformed into a ‘goddess’ in her
consciousness. This is where from she gets her confidence to break free the
domestic fetters around her life. She projects herself as a ‘creator’, someone
who has earned a great deal of worship from her devotee, Sandip. However,
Bimala’s idea of herself is not completely false. She does have a majestic
influence on Amulya. She is a woman who commands authority over him, more
than Sandip being a man does. It is
quite interesting to notice that towards the end when Bimala becomes prey to
Sandip’s conspiracy and she wants Amulya’s help, she speaks out certain lines
which make us wonder about the idea of ‘emancipation’ that the novel was
striving at. She says, “I am a woman and the outside world is closed to me,
else I would have gone myself.” How much
of the World has she really seen or experienced? As Nikhilesh’s master says,
Bimala’s understanding of the World is only through Sandip. She says, using a
modern language, “I discovered myself, how far I have traveled.” But how far
has she really traveled? Could she go places like other male characters in the
novel? Her journey of experience was from her bedroom to her living room. It
was restricted within the four walls of the house itself. Her ‘emancipation’
was in the house itself (quite Victorian in nature).
New
Woman:
Bimala stands at the center of the tale. Bimala’s journal which frames the novel recounts her days as a traditional purdah-bound wife- in her resistance to Nikhil’s more radical impulses toward westernization and through her initial choice to retain the essential ethics of the traditional Hindu culture. Her gradual transformation into an educated, partially westernized woman under Nikhil’s loving tutelage speaks of the latter’s desire to liberate her from the tradition of purdah bearing the symbol of “a seclusion room for woman”. Nikhil’s echoing of the westernized ideals glorifying the role of women in society, makes him foresee Bimala as an independent self, the new woman “free in the outer world to be rescued from her infatuation for tyranny.”
Barathi
Ray defines the new-woman states:
“The new woman was to be an educated and brave wife as an appropriate partner of an English educated nationalist man able to run an efficient and orderly home like her Western counterpart, be high-minded and spiritual like the women of the golden age (...) If the model was absurd, and inimitable, and indeed full of contradictions, no one was bothered. That was the new woman the nation needed, and it was women’s duty to live up to it.”
From the very beginning of the novel, Nikhil tries to shape Bimala as his ‘new woman’. He wants her to leave purdah, to arrive in the outside world to know herself. His earnest desire to see Bimala as a free woman, who will choose to love him, not because custom dictates it but of her own accord, speaks of his denial of the acceptance of the traditional male orthodoxy reigning the society. He dislikes Bimala touching his feet as a form of worship on the pretext that women are cocooned both physically and intellectually, all through their lives, “living in a small world not letting them know their real needs”. On the contrary, he aspires for her transgression in the name of attaining freedom, independence, and education Thus “rationality becomes the core feature of this transgressive attainment” synonymous with ‘civilized behavior’ and ‘erudite intellectualism.’ Nikhil expects Bimala with her modern outlook and western education to belong to him and counterpoise him in picturing himself as a complete human being. In a way the former expects his lady patronage to be a humanist like him, freeing herself ‘from her infatuation to remain loyal with familial servitude and traditional lineage’. In his attempt to remodel Bimala as the new woman Nikhil frames the image of the female Shakti conceived in Hinduism, as a form of the feminine agency waiting to be unleashed upon the earth. Personifying woman as the channel of the pure power Shakti, he portrays Bimala as the replica of the feminine life force of strength and divinity, creation and destruction. Tagore skilfully employs the iconography of Hinduism to make this point explicit, by representing Bimala within the context of the obvious female Hindu role models-specifically, the role of the mother goddess Durga and Kali-long associated with the images of Bengal and its devotional nationalism- “clad in the earthen red sari with a broad blood cell border”.
- Conclusion:
Bimala
is one of the very progressive women against patriarchal structures. She
becomes a role model to other women who have the liberty on thinking in any
field such as political discourse. As this novel is set around the Republication
of India. So Tagore might present the women's character as the republication
of the colonial mindset of patriarchy and the reinterpretation of Indian women as
the New Woman.
Work
Citation:
Aconfessingbook.
“Crossing the Threshold of Inner Quarters: Bimala and Other Women Characters in
Tagore's Ghare Baire.” Womenofattic, 10 Apr. 2016,
womenofattic.wordpress.com/2016/04/10/crossing-the-threshold-of-inner-quarters-bimala-and-other-women-characters-in-tagores-ghare-baire/.
Banerjee
, Ayanita. "Bimala in Ghare-Baire: Tagore’s New Woman Relocating
the." Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 13.3
(2021)
Rabindranath
Tagore – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022.
<https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1913/tagore/biographical/>
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