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Published in Ideology and Praxis: From Theory to Text, edited by Dr Somnath Pal, Kolkata:
The Book World, 2013. ISBN 978-81-921021-8-4

Subarnalata: The Bengali Woman in Search of Her Own Space

Pradipta Shyam Chowdhury

Assistant Professor of English

Raja Rammohun Roy Mahavidyalaya

pradiptashyamchowdhury@gmail.com

Abstract

Searching a female space is a common trope in the feminist theory. Woman searches for

a space of her own within the male space. This search comes in the form of struggle against the

existing patriarchal social structures which deny the existence of women as an individual, a free

entity and significantly different from their so-called social guardians, who are the

representatives of the patriarchy. Society’s denial to grant her a social space gives rise to another

demand of the women— the creative space, which in the true sense becomes a real ‘space of her

own’. She searches for her creative space to express her locked up desires and to come out of her

social cage.

My present paper will try to locate this search of the female space by Subarnalata, the

heroine of Ashapurna Devi’s eponymous novel and the second part of her trilogy— Pratham

Pratishruti, Subarnalata and Bakul katha. Ashapurna’s novel is a vivid record of the feminist

struggle for the establishment of the female identity in the Bengali middle class society.

Subarnalata becomes the true torch bearer of the feminist movement, which was initiated in her
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by her mother, Satyabati and she continued her war against the inhuman patriarchal system from

the andarmahal (the inner house). From this andarmahal she dreams of an open space,

symbolized by the ‘dakshiner baranda’ (The south-facing balcony), where she will be able to

live a free life and offer a better life for her daughter.

The paper will try to posit Ashapurna Devi’s novel in the mainstream feminist movement

and find out how it becomes a true testimony expressing the desires of the Bengali middle-class

women for a space of their own.

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Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a

little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward

obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain from

them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, everything else is needless, for,

atleast, twenty years of their lives. (Wollstonecraft 586)

In her treatise of Modern Feminism Mary Wollstonecraft has clearly pointed out the

position of a woman in a society which is patriarchal in all respects. She should conform to all

the rules constructed by her fathers and forefathers to become a chaste and obedient subordinate,

and if she is beautiful, then all her accomplishments become useless, for she inevitably becomes

the subject of male gaze, an item to be enjoyed sexually or caged in the inner-chamber for

handsome future. From the very inception of the social system woman is treated as a product,

which is subject to the acknowledgement and approval of the patriarchal system. They are

relegated to the silenced corner of the inner house, in the kitchen or bedroom and denied their

basic demand to establish themselves as an individual entity. She will sew and serve the family
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and any deviation from this will cruelly label her as impure and treat her as a threat to the

society. Caught in these polarities of goddess and monster, a woman, who is not exposed to

education or enlightenment, has no choice but to live a bovine life under the pressure of

patriarchy.

The feminist movement tries to address this politics of privilege by questioning the

patriarchal ethos and consequently fights for establishing the female space, where these caged

souls can breathe freely and live their own life as an individual. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of

One’s Own1 marks the woman’s demand for her own space. She imagines of Shakespeare’s

sister who in spite of being as talented as her brother did not get the scope to flourish. A woman,

as she is, the dark corner of the households is allotted for her. Woolf writes:

She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was

not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic… She picked up a

book now and then…But her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind

the stew and not moon about with books and papers. (1021)

If we bring this feminist struggle to chart out a female space in the context of Ashapurna

Devi’s novel Subarnalata, it gets a new type of dimension in delineating the middle class

Bengali woman’s protest against the patriarchal Bengali society of the nineteenth century.

Subarnalata is Ashapurna Devi’s second part of her maternal trilogy Pratham Pratishruti,

Subarnalata and BakulKatha. Subarna’s daughter Bakul is trying to recollect the history of her

mother and grandmother to posit their struggle against the system. She has promised her dead

mother that she will write their story first, her mother, her grandmother. “…ma go! Tomar pure

jaoa, hariye jaoa lekha, na- lekha sob ami khuje baar korbo, sob kotha ami notun kore likhbo.

Diner aalor prithibike janiye jabo andhakoarer boba jantronar itihas. (Subarnalata 384). Bakul
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reminds us of the feminist imperative to bring to light the curtained histories of their progenitors.

Her endeavour rewrites the stories of Satyabati and Subarnalata and ends with her novel way of

positing herself in the matrilineal line. Chandreyee Niyogi in her essay ‘Ashapurna Devi’s

Trilogy and the Feminine Style of Writing’ comments: “…they may appear to be a saga of three

generations set in the background of certain historical shifts in social attitudes to women-as

Ashapurna herself was fond of observing; they are “the portraits of three women in the backdrop

of three ages”.

Subarnalata was introduced to the endless struggle of the women to establish their

unnamed identity amidst a patriarchal culture by her mother Satyabati. From her childhood, she

was initiated to the essential education of being a human being, not a woman. This going against

the grains of the social norms sowed the seed of humanism in Subarnalata, with which she tried

to judge every custom, be it social, religious or personal, in her later conjugal life and raised her

voice of protest against the sexual politics inherent in them. Her untimely marriage came as a

disaster to her life. Elokeshi, Satyabati’s mother-in-law played a foul trick to take revenge on the

latter and secretly but forcefully got Subarna married to Probodh Chandra. Satyabati protests this

by abandoning her family and going to Kashi (Beneras). Subarna had to painfully bear this

daring act of her mother throughout the rest of her life with occasional taunting and tongue-in-

cheek comments from her in-laws. But what Satyabati could do was quite impossible for

Subarna, the next generation. Actually, Satyabati was Ashapurna’s incarnation of her own silent

rebels and her ideal female figure. Chandreyee Niyogi writes:

Satyabati does not strike us as a woman of flesh and blood. In the sharpness of her

skilled reasoning, in the dazzling brilliance of her intellect, and in her unearthly

transcendence of all feminine desires and weaknesses – Satyabati is really an argument

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embodied. Ashapurna had conceived Satyabati as the instrument of her fierce battle,

and an eloquent advocate of her own indictment of gender discrimination. (Ashapurna

Devi’s Trilogy and the Feminine Style of Writing)

But Subarnalata was created by the writer as common flesh and blood woman, who has to

constantly fight for her own space, the real female locale to exist. She dreamt of getting

Dakshiner Baranda (south facing balcony): “…jibon shuru korbar somoye jodi Subarnalata

ekkhana dakshiner baranda peto, hoyto jiboner itihas annyo hoto Subarnalatar” (Subarnalata

2). But, she was not favored and her history was naturally like any other Bengali housewife.

Subarnalata protested in her own way by choosing the oddest bedroom for her. Though the other

members of her family considered her a crack, Subarnalata succeeded in transcending the earthly

desires of getting a home.

Despite all these frustrations, her search for her own space continues. She got her

intellectual stimulation from the writings of Rabindranath. Jaya didi supplied her with books and

magazines through the small hole in the wall. But her little space within the printed lines was

devastated by her husband and she was compelled to go to the labour room several times. She

tried to make her sons and daughter educated following in the footprints of her mother and

started coaching the little boys and girls of her family personally, which was mocked by her in-

laws as “Mejo ginnir pathshala”. Quite unlike the other sister-in-laws, who conformed to the

laws of patriarchy and performed the duties of the family like good house wives, Subarnalata

demanded a different atmosphere within this social structure, where the woman will get the

status to stand beside men in equal rights. The author writes:

Sangsare sudhu sobbai kache ghumocche hasche, khelche chele thangacche chele aador

korche gurujonke manno korche gurujon raag korle chor hoye thakche, niyomer
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byatikrom nei, sudhu mejobou raatdin hoy thikre berache, noy dirgho nisswas felche.

Noyto emon ekta kichu kando kore bosche ja dekhe stombhito hoye jacche loke.

(Subarnalata 32)

She advocates for the proper sanitation of the labour room which at that time was just a mere

luxury for the middle-class people to provide. Subarna raises the question while entering the

labour room: “Eto sob moila moila kapar jama dicchen? O theke osukh kore na

bujhi?”(Subarnalata 32). But the Bengali society is not ready to accept any protest or question

from a helpless housewife, who is supposed to be ignorant of basic hygiene and is not entitled to

speak of her own health or comfort. She is just a machine to produce children, who will not

complain. Muktokeshi with utter surprise retorts: “Aaturghore notun bichana dite hobe

rajkonnyeke? Bhubharate je kotha keu na shuneche, sei sob kotha amake shunte hobe pode

pode…Nabab nandinir jonno satin er bichanar baina pathate hobe?” (Subarnalata 33) and

shows that how women with lack of self respect are indoctrinated to the patriarchal politics and

sometimes becomes more tyrannical and cruel than the men. But Subarna will be there with them

at their ‘Dorjipara’ household, in every domestic chore, protesting and providing everything in

her own ways.

Subarna, being a common middle-class housewife proved herself unique by addressing

and reacting to the nationalist movement that was surging the whole country. This Swadeshi2

movement, which the middle-class cleverly bypassed, moved her and compelled her to

participate silently from Antahpur (The inner chamber). She did not go out from her family, for

that was not possible, but she created her own social space within that macro-historical event by

addressing it with her personal pangs. She comes in contact to Ambika at Subala’s, her Sister-in-

law, house at Chapta. Ambika is involved with the Extremist Swadeshi movement, writes poems
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for the respite of her motherland and in no time captured the heart of Subarna, who always

wanted an open window to peep outside and have a glimpse of what is happening in the world,

beyond the four walls of their household. Ashapurna writes: “… Subarnalatar cokh- kaan eto

khola thake ki kore! Subarnalata keno bairere jogoter batashe spondito hoy, bairere jhore

bikhubdho hoy, bairer sange bichinno hoye thakake grinar chokhe dekhe!”(Subarnalata105).

Erstwhile Subarna has participated in the Swadeshi movement of abandoning the foreign goods

by burning all the new clothes for the Durgapuja. To her utter surprise, her in-laws were scared

of this daring act of annoying the British, but the maid servant Haridashi spontaneously demands

for khaddar. Subarna with her unique attitude and novel outlook analyses the difference in

responses of the lower class and the stodgy middle class to the nationalist movement and

questions the exploitation of the former by the latter: “Jhi bole ki manush noy? Gorib bole ki

manush noy?” (Subarnalata 104). Thus, Subarna wants to break away all the hindrances of the

society imposed upon women. When Ambika talks of women taking part in the Swadeshi

movement, she outbursts in emotion: “ tumi ki bhabo meyera pare nato? Ami ei bole rakhchi, ei

meyeder kachei Ekdin matha het korte hobe tomader. …bolte hobe, “Etodin ja korechi annay

korechi. Sotti tomra Shakti rupini”.”( Subarnalata 160) and underlines the fact that women must

come out of their kitchen to the world outside in the making of the Nation, where they are

relegated to the passive marginal position. As the very concept of Nation has a patriarchal

structure or to be more precise the very concept is a male construct, women like Subarna has to

fight for making their own social/national identity. Urvashi Butalia in her essay ‘Gender and

nation: Some Reflections From India’ comments:

…women are generally left out of the process of nation making and that their relationship

to such a process or indeed to the nation itself, is a nebulous one…., although it is by now
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clear that much more than being simply a male construct, the nation is a gendered

construct and, though it may involve men and women (the latter in what may be seen as

“lesser” ways) it is a very patriarchal construct. (101)

Subarnalata forcefully tries to enter into this male constructed space by supporting all those

extremist attitudes. But she remains inert at the time of Swaraj3 movement at the fag end of her

life, even when her own children brought the Charka to support this. She says: “… ei suto katar

moddhe klesh I ba koi? Dukkhoi ba koi? (Subarnalata 326). May be she found her own identity

in the struggles of the extremists and equalled the status of the women in the society with the

motherland, who needs strong hands for respite, and it failed because the women are ignored:

keno byarthota jano thakurpo? Tomader somajer adkhana anga paanke pota bole.

Aadhkhana aange niye ke kobe egote pare bolo? Ei akhodde abode meyemanush jaatatke

jotodin na sudhu “manush” bole swikar korte parbetotodin tomader mukti nei, muktir

asha nei.” (Subarnalata 267-268)

Subarnalata’s god has infused in her “Buddhi, chetana, atama” (Subarnalata 295) which

disturb the common housewife identity in her and she wants to express herself in the world

outside. But she is a woman, Ashapurna writes: “Meyemanush hocche haath-paa-badha prani!

Manush noy, prani!”(Subarnalata 295), and therefore is allotted a sub-humanised position,

where she is not even allowed a personal space. Subarnalata tries to etch out her own space in

her personal diary, where she writes about herself, about the condition of the women in the

society. She tries to re-posit herself in the society with her literary expressions. Helene Cixous

writes:

Woman must write herself: must write about woman and bring woman to writing, from

which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies— for the same
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reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the

text—as into the world and into history— by her own movement. (The Laugh of Medusa

2039)

Subarnalata writes about her own life with her body. Inspired by the lines of Rabi Thakur, who

was considered a low grade entertainer by the middle class (in Probodh’s words: “ei ek rabi

Thakur hoyechen desher mathata khabar jonno! Meyemanushgulo jabe ebar ucchenne”

(Subarnalata 324), she rises to find a new day and a new world in her memoirs. Her literary

endeavour can be seen in the light of the l’ecriture feminine4 which foregrounds her story dipped

in pains of a Bengali middle-class woman. She becomes Cixous’s “…woman in her inevitable

struggle against conventional men” (The laugh of Medusa 2040). But her dream is shattered by

caricatured publication of her memoir in cheap almanac papers full of printing mistakes. Not

only fate laughed at her, but her own children, her family mocked at her desire to express herself.

Subarnalata’s burning her own books paves a new way to save the woman’s story from the

patriarchal academia, which even denies a smart printing of a woman’s story.

But what did Subarnalata get at the end of her life? Is it a smart burial only for being a

rich man’s wife, or mothering some able sons? All earthly possessions, which a common woman

hankers after, were trifles to her. But her dream of bringing up her children in her own light, for

which she endlessly fought at Dorjipara, was not fully successful. Bhanu, Kaanu, her elder sons

never tried to understand her and her peculiar wishes, her daughters followed the tradition of

Muktokeshi. Manu disappointed her with her strategic marriage with his Boss’s daughter. Subal

and Parul always maintained a distance from her. At the end of her life she realized that her

struggling self cruelly eclipsed the mother in her. She performed the duty of a mother but lacked

in affection. Subarnalata emerged as a female ideal from a flesh and blood Bengali woman. She
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becomes the true heir of her mother, who comes in the form of epistolary advice to her at her

mature years and soothes her arid heart, wounded for these long struggles. Bakul is Subarna’s

only daughter, who looks into her mother’s life and tries to re-inscribe Subarna’s deleted stories

anew. Bakul takes it as her duty to write the story of her mother and Grandmother first before

writing her own. Subarna left no sign of her creativity, but sowed it in the heart of her daughter,

who will carry it as her matrilineal inheritance for the posterity.

Notes

1. Please see: Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. U.S.A: Harcourt, 1929. Print.

2. As a part of the Indian National Movement, the Swadeshi movement was mainly an

economic strategy, which aimed at dethroning the British rule from India and developing

the economic conditions in the country by following the principles of Swadeshi or ‘self

suffiency’. It used the strategy of boycotting the British products and promoted the use

of homemade ‘Deshi’ items. The movement started with the partition of Bengal in 1905

by Lord Curzon and continued up to 1908. Among the pre-Gandhian movements it was

the most successful one. Lokyamanya Tilak, Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, Lala Lajpat Rai,

Bipin Chandra Pal were the chief architects of this movement. (Wikipedia)

3. Swaraj literally means self governance and Gandhiji used it as a synonym of the ‘home

rule’. It was taken up by Gandhiji as an instrument to free India from the British

dominance and establishing self governance by individuals and community building

abhorring the hierarchy. It mainly focused on the political decentralization. (Wikipedia)

4. It literally means ‘woman’s writing’ or the inscription of the female body and the

difference in language and text. ‘l’ ecriture feminine’ is a strategy of the French Feminist
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Literary Theory, promoted by Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Monique Witttig, Chantal

Chawaff, Julia Kristeva etc. Helene Cixous first coined the term ‘l’ecriture feminine’ in

her essay ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (1975). As a feminist strategy it places experience

before language and foregrounds non-linear, cyclical writings that evades the discourse

regulating the phallocentric system. (Wikipedia)

Work cited

Butalia, Urvashi. “Gender and nation: Some Reflections from India”. From Gender to Nation.

Ed. Rada Ivekovic and Julie Mostov. New Delhi: Zubaan, 2004. Print.

Cixous, Helene. “ The Laugh of the Medusa”. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

Ed.Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton Company, 2001. Print.

Devi, Ashapurna. Subarnalata. Kolkata: Mitra and Ghosh, 1967. Print.

Niyogi, Chandreyee. ‘Ashapurna Devi’s Trilogy and the Feminine Style of Writing’.

www.scribd.com. nd. Web.26 Nov, 2011.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. “A Vindication of the Rights of Women”. The Norton Anthology of

Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton Company, 2001. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. ‘A Room of One’s Own’. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed.

Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton Company, 2001. Print.