Novels

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Abstract

Women were taught to be discreet and reserved, to excel in domestic accomplishments and to influence only through familial affections. To gain ‘legitimate’ entry into the ‘male preserve’ of creative writing, women took to writing novels. This chapter examines how Kusumkumari Roychoudhurani’s Snehalata and Swarnakumari Debi’s Kahake? were adaptations of the western genre of novel writing to deal with indigenous societal injunctions on pativrata, dutiful daughter, and sisterhood. The protagonists, apparently docile Snehalata and feisty Mrinalini, are juxtaposed to explore the western ideal of romantic love. Snehalata’s unrequited love and unconsummated wifehood finds fulfilment in death, which bestows her with agency. The spirited Mrinalini presents multifaceted dilemmas to herself, moving from several loves in her lifetime before marrying a man of her choice. Both authors transcend their disadvantageous social location and physical reality in a patriarchal set-up to unleash an unbridled social imagination in the creative arena to depict transgressive women’s subjectivities who could re-draw a new social/moral order.