New Women: A Study Based on Selected Novels of Rabindranath Tagore.

1. New Woman: A Study
Based on Selected Novels
of Rabindranath Tagore
“The unknown bird flies in and out of the cage, If I could
catch it. I would place the chain of my mind on its
feet.”(Tagore)

2. Name : Rinkal Dangar
Roll no : 18
Enrollment no : 4069206420220007
Paper name: Indian English Literature – Pre-Independence
Paper no: 201
Paper code: 22406
Topic: New Woman: A Study Based on Selected Novels of
Rabindranath Tagore
Submitted to : Smt. S.B.Gardi, department of English M.K.B.U
Dated on: 16/10/2023
E-Mail : dangarrinkal0609@gmail.com
Academic Details

3. ● 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 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.
● 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).
● 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). (“Rabindranath Tagore – Biographical - NobelPrize.org”)
● The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 was awarded to Rabindranath Tagore "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" (“The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 - NobelPrize.org”)
Introduction of Rabindranath Tagore

4. hroughout human history, the female persona has been portrayed as a symbol of fertility, a Goddess
epresenting the Motherland or even as a class of people whose best place is in the kitchen and within
he home. In each of these cases the woman is not part of one philosophy or the other.
One peculiarity of the images of women throughout history is that social stereotypes have
een reinforced by archetypes. Another way of putting this would be to say that in every age
woman has been seen primarily as mother, wife, mistress,,Submissive and dominating, the
ld maid,the Godess, sex-object, and liberated as their role in relationships to
men”(Ferguson).
Literature can have the breadth and throb of life only when it keeps pace with changing
mage of the women”(Raja Rao).
New Women?

5. of the primary factors motivating the typical New Woman is rebellion against the 'old woman,' described by one member of an 1890s women's
as 'bounded on the north by servants, on the south by children, on the east by ailments and on the west by clothes.' The conventional Victorian
an is accustomed to self-sacrifice; the New Woman pursues self-fulfillment and independence, often choosing to work for a living. She typically
es for equality in her relationships with men, seeking to eliminate the double standard that shaped the sexual mores of the time, and is in
ral much more frank about sexuality than the old woman.
Dismayed by male attitudes or by the difficulty of combining marriage and a career, she often chooses to remain single; concomitantly, she
comes to place increasing value on relationships with other women (This new literary emphasis on female solidarity paralleled the actual
growth of women's clubs.)
Furthermore, the New Woman tends to be well-educated and to read a great deal. Although not necessarily a woman suffragist, she is likely to
be more interested in politics than the conventional woman. Finally, the New Woman is physically vigorous and energetic, preferring
comfortable clothes to the restrictive garb usually worn by women of the era.
She often has short hair, rides a bicycle, and smokes cigarettes-all considered quite daring for women at the turn of the century.
Significantly, however, the ultimate fate of the fictional New Woman is frequently hysteria or some other nervous disorder, physical illness, or
even death, often by suicide, her unhappy end reflecting the fact that society was simply not yet ready to accommodate her new ways"(Finney)

6. 1. The Home and the World Bimala.
1. Gora Sucharita(birth name:
Radharani),Lolita (Lalita), and Anandmoyi
(Anandmayi).
1. The Broken Nest(Novella) Charulata
New Women in Selected Novels of Tagore

7. Characteristics of New Women in Selected Novels of Tagore
02
03
01
04 Extreme Self Conscious
Educated
Humanists
Self Expressive

8. New Women in ‘Gora’
● Through his novels Tagore was able to construct new and vital female.
● The woman is liberated when she analyses and reflects upon her position as a woman in the scheme of things
which includes the social moral and spiritual fields.(Tagore)
● The novel, Gora created and serialized at the turn of 20th century is regarded as an important milestone in
the history of Indian fiction, and there have been numerous attempts to interpret each move Tagore has
made here.
● Baradasundari is a Brahmo Samaj woman who is doubtful of everything Hindu.
● Barada’s change is superficial. Tagore introduces the hypocrisy of the modern educated class through the
voice of Baradasundari who has a sour taste for idol worship, traditional dress, religious names and
everything that is non-Brahmo.
● Tagore keeps himself away from making his feminine players superhuman beings.
● Despite Lalita’s social failure, Tagore benevolently gives Lolita a ticket to maturity in her conversation with
Anandamoyi(MOHAPATRA)
● “It is not necessary for him to give up all that to established mutual relation with another human being.”
(Tagore)

9. ● Continue…..
The one, Sucharita finds herself at equal ease within and outside home
and strong mind of her own; the other, Anandamoyi, too is ready to
break the shackles of dogmas prevailing in the contemporary society
of their times. Tagore has persistently advocated for the equal rights
for women as they would enhance and enrich our growth. Gora is
relevant even today.(MOHAPATRA)
Lalita, the daughter of a learned Banaras scholar,
discards ‘the tradition of seven generation’(Gora pg-13)

10. ● Bimala, the woman set between the option of choices between the ‘motherland’ and the ‘two-
men’ gradually transgress from the shackles of her naïve identity to become the beset New
Woman.
● To explore Tagore’s rewritten epic of a woman (epitomized in real life as the New
Woman), we need to discuss how the writer helped shaping the image of the New Woman through his
conscious evoking of Bimala in the role of Sita, Nikhil in the role of Rama and Sandip in the role of
Ravana. In response to the popular inscriptions of Bharatmata, Tagore allegorises the iconographic
representation of Bimala resembling the “divine feminine strength (Shakti)for creation and (Kali) for
the cause of destruction. (Banerjee)
“I never liked the way my husband had of talking on this subject, but that is not the reason why I
refused to leave the zenana. His grandmother was still alive. My husband had filled more than a
hundred and twenty per cent of the house with the twentieth century, against her taste; but she had
borne it uncomplaining. She would have borne it, likewise, if the daughter-in-law of the Rajah's house
had left its seclusion. She was even prepared for this happening. But I did not consider it important
enough to give her the pain of it. I have read in books that we are called "caged birds". I cannot speak
for others, but I had so much in this cage of mine that there was not room for it in the universe—at least
that is what I then felt.”(Tagore)
“My sight and my mind, my hopes and my desires, became red with the passion of this new age.
Though, up to this time, the walls of the home—which was the ultimate world to my mind—remained
unbroken, yet I stood looking over into the distance, and I heard a voice from the far horizon, whose
meaning was not perfectly clear to me, but whose call went straight to my heart.” (Tagore)
New Women in ‘The Home and the World’

11. New Women in Film adaptations by
Satyajit Ray

12. ● Women characters of Tagore’s novels always play a vital role in the development of
male characters. Sucharita’s contribution in making Gora realise the true meaning of
nationalism and patriotism cannot be overlooked. She drags him from the
suffocating and stiff boundaries and transfers to a new vision. With her support, Gora
leaves the imaginary burden of staunch notions.(Rathore and Shekhawat)
“Today I am free. I need no longer fear being contaminated or becoming an out-
caste I shall not now have to look on the ground at every step to preserve my
purity.”(Tagore)
● The women of Tagore's narrative are not ready to accept any fear or bondage. They
are courageous like Sucharita and Lolita, educated like Charu and Binodini. (Rathore
and Shekhawat).
● The Role of Sandip and Nikhil in the Character development of Bimala.
Character development through the another Characters

13. Banerjee, Ayanita. “Bimala in Ghare-Baire: Tagore’s New Woman Relocating the “World in Her Home.”” Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, vol. 13, no. 3,
2021. https://rupkatha.com/V13/n3/v13n337.pdf.
Ferguson, Mary Anne. “Images of Women in Literature: An Evolution.” Radical Teacher, 1980, pp. 34-36, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20709278?typeAccessWorkflow=login.
Finney, Gail. Women in Modern Drama: Freud, Feminism, and European Theater at the Turn of the Century. 1 ed., Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1989.
MOHAPATRA, ALINA. “‘SOCIO POLITICAL CONSIOUSNESS OF WOMEN’ IN RABINDRANATH TAGORE’S NOVEL “GORA.”” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE,
LITERATURE AND TRANSLATION STUDIES, vol. 5, no. 2, 2018, pp. 146-150, http://www.ijelr.in/5.2.18/146-150%20ALINA%20MOHAPATRA.pdf.
“The Nobel Prize in Literature 1913 - NobelPrize.org.” Nobel Prize, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1913/summary/. Accessed 16 October 2023.
“Rabindranath Tagore – Biographical - NobelPrize.org.” Nobel Prize, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1913/tagore/biographical/. Accessed 16 October 2023.
Raja Rao, Yamuna. The Image of Woman in Indian Literature. Edited by Yashoda Bhat, B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1993.
Rathore, Priya, and Manisha Shekhawat. “New Woman ideology in Tagore’s Fiction.” International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, vol. 7, no. 2, 2022, pp. 303-307.
https://ijels.com/upload_document/issue_files/43IJELS-104202213-NewWoman.pdf
Ray, Satyajit, director. Charulata. R. D. Bansal & Co., 1964.
Ray, Satyajit, director. Ghare Baire. National Film Development Corporation of India, 1984.
Tagore, Rabindranath. Gora. Translated by Radha Chakravarty, Penguin Books India, 2009.
Tagore, Rabindranath. The home and the world. Translated by Surendranath Tagore, Penguin Publishing Group, 2005.
References

14. Thank You