Domesticity,
Desire, and Defiance: A Proto-Feminist Reading of Rassundari Devi’s Amar Jiban
Debanjana Banerjee,
Guest Lecturer (UG & PG),
Narasinha Dutt College,
University of Calcutta,
West Bengal, India.
Abstract: The
purpose of this paper is to explore Rassundari Devi’s Amar Jiban as the
proto-feminist writing born out of the social and cultural history of Bengal
Renaissance. Although the Bengal Renaissance produced a rich discourse on
women’s education, widow remarriage, child marriage, and other social reforms,
its reformist and masculine discourse often depicted women as passive objects
of reform. In this regard, Amar Jiban can be seen as a work of female
authorship that gives a unique insight into the domestic realm, patriarchy,
drudgery, and lack of education opportunities for women. With respect to Toril
Moi’s conceptualization of “female,” “feminine,” and “feminist,” this paper
aims to demonstrate how Rassundari creatively negotiates and exploits the
existing notions of Bengali femininity of the 19th century. Specifically, this
paper will analyse Rassundari’s secret learning, justification of her desire
for education on religious grounds, and transformation of her private
experience into a public and literary one. Furthermore, this paper will also
consider her views on her femininity, critique of child marriage and
patriarchy, and problematic reception of her book. Ultimately, Amar Jiban is
the story of female suffering that is sublimated through the author’s literary
creativity and presented against the backdrop of male-dominated social and
cultural history.
Keywords: Female, Feminine, Feminist, Bengal Renaissance,
Patriarchy, Proto-Feminism
Introduction
The nineteenth century Bengal Renaissance was a period of
intense intellectual, social, and cultural contestation. This era witnessed
dramatic debates surrounding ‘women’ – issues such as ‘sati’, ‘widow
remarriage’, ‘child marriage’, and ‘female education’. Prominent male reformers
like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar tried to reshape the role
of women in the society by placing them within the modern nation-building
project. Although they tried to uplift the women, these reformist discourses
often positioned Indian women primarily as passive recipients of patriarchal
kindness rather than autonomous subjects having agency.
Rassundari Devi’s relationship with the Bengal
Renaissance is both complementary and paradoxical. While the era is celebrated
as an intellectual awakening championing women’s reform, it was overwhelmingly
dominated by the ‘bhadralok’ (upper-caste elite men). Rassundari Devi’s Amar
Jiban sits at the intersection, acting both as a product of the
Renaissance’s shifting social and cultural climate as well as a passive
challenge to its male-centric limits.Amar Jiban is not just an
autobiography, but it provides an extraordinary insider account of the
‘andarmahal’ (secluded inner quarters of the household), revealing the
physical, emotional, and intellectual confinement imposed on upper-caste Hindu
women.
This paper analyses Amar Jiban as a vital
proto-feminist text. The term “proto-feminist” is deliberately used here to
acknowledge that while Rassundari was writing prior to the formal beginning of
the organized feminist movements in South Asia and without explicit feminist
vocabulary, her narrative enacts as a critique of patriarchy and asserts female
subjectivity in ways that directly align with feminism. In the era dominated by
‘purdah’ (seclusion), female illiteracy, and rigid patriarchal norms, her life
and writing became a quiet yet radical challenge to the status quo.Amar
Jiban is the first full length autobiography written in Bengali.
This paper utilizes Toril Moi’s analytical framework from
her essay Feminist, Female, Feminine, by juxtaposing Moi’s distinctions
between ‘female’ (biological sex), ‘feminine’ (cultural construct), and
‘feminist’ (political orientation) against Rassundari's self-narrative.
Thisstudy shows how Rassundari navigates, appropriates, and ultimately subverts
the nineteenth-century ideal of Bengali womanhood.
The Male Perspective vs. the Female Lived Experience
The Bengal Renaissance framed the ‘StriSwadhinata’
(women’s liberation) movement. The male reformers viewed women primarily as
objects of rescue – passive figures in need of male benevolence. The vital
missing perspective – the female perspective – was provided by Rassundari
Devi. She did not write about social
policy or philosophy; she wrote about the claustrophobic atmosphere of the
‘andarmahal’, the physical exhaustion, the relentless labour, and the emotional
pain. She shifted the discourse from ‘what men should do for women’ to ‘what
women actually experience and what they can do for themselves’.
Toril Moi’s Essay Feminist, Female, Feminine: The
Triad
In her essay Feminist, Female, Feminine, Toril Moi
develops the idea of the triad of terms – feminist, female, and feminine. Moi
uses French and Anglo-American feminist thought to distinguish the three
concepts.
Female is a biological sex characteristic that determines
an individual’s membership in the female gender.
Feminine is a set of attributes, behaviours, and
characteristics associated with the female sex in a patriarchal society at a
given historical period.
Feminist is the view and the stance of an individual
whose worldview is committed to opposing patriarchy and seeking to overthrow
it.
Moi deconstructs the triad of concepts – female,
feminine, feminist. She problematizes feminist criticism’s essentialism and
uncritical acceptance of feminine norms. According to Moi, feminist criticism
suffers from the assumption that being female is sufficient for being feminist.
It also suffers from the assumption that writing within the framework of feminine
norms makes writing non-political. The position of the feminist critic,
therefore, should be to examine the relationship between text and politics,
that is, the position of the woman author in relation to the feminine norms
accepted in society. Reading traditional South Asian life writing through the
prism of Moi’s triad allows for a better understanding of the problematic
position of women in relation to their culture and themselves.
In the life writing of Rassundari Devi, one can see how
the imposition of patriarchy suppresses a woman’s natural desire for knowledge
and self-expression. Being a daughter in a male-dominated society meant
accepting the fate predetermined by society. Girls were forced into early
marriages and were obliged to live within the confines of the house according
to the ‘purdah’ principle. Rassundari Devi’s text is a vivid illustration of
how patriarchal marriage relations function in a traditional society. She
writes about her life from the point of view of the accepted feminine norms,
that is, devotion to family and domesticity, self-denial, humility, and faith
in God. However, a close reading of the text reveals that Devi hides her desire
for knowledge and self-development behind religious practices. Devi justifies
her actions and secret desires with God’s will, but, in fact, she is the first
among her contemporaries to openly speak out against the horrors of patriarchal
oppression.
The Enclosure of the Body: Domesticity and the
"Female" Experience
In order to comprehend the radical nature of Rassundari's
achievement, it is necessary to analyse the physical and material conditions of
her biological existence as a female in early nineteenth century Bengal. Born
around 1809 in the village of Potajia in East Bengal (modern Bangladesh),
Rassundari was raised in a traditional Hindu household. Married at the age of
twelve to Sitanath Sarkar, a rich landowner from Ramdia village, she was
transplanted, abruptly, in a massive joint-family household where her main
social function was to contribute to the reproductive and domestic labour.
In Amar Jiban, Rassundari recounts the bodily
confinement that characterized her youth. The patriarchal ideology of the era
imposed complete physical invisibility to upper-caste women. She writes about
being forced to wear a ‘ghomta’ (long veil) that impeded her sight, movement
and signified her transformation into a silent labourer. She wrote about being
so deeply veiled that she could barely see the ground ahead, moving to-and-fro
in the household as a mechanical instrument.
Moreover, her biological role as a mother was
characterized by relentless physical toil. Rassundari bore twelve children, of
whom seven survived. In her narrative, the domestic space is far from an
idealized haven; it is presented as a realm of incessant and gruelling labour.
She recounts spending long hours in the windowless, smoke-filled kitchen,
preparing meals for a large family and tending to the infant children:
"I worked from morning till midnight. I had no time
to sit down, let alone rest. There were days when I could not even eat because
there was no time... I felt like a caged bird, flapping its wings against the
bars but finding no escape."
Rassundari's portrayal of her biological existence
underscores what Toril Moi identifies as the oppressive reduction of the female
to mere physiology and reproductive function under patriarchy. Her bodily
existence is characterized by isolation, physical pain, and complete domestic
confinement. However, her narrative does not merely recount this suffering; it
problematizes it. Through the detailed documentation of the physical toll of
domesticity, Rassundari challenges the patriarchal myth of the contented and
fulfilled Hindu wife, bringing the hidden, unglamorous labour of the
‘andarmahal’ into the public domain of literature.
Performing the "Feminine": Piety, Modesty, and
Strategic Compliance
Toril Moi notes that the "feminine" contains
those behaviours and qualities society engineered to maintain patriarchal
order. The ideal feminine in the 19th century Bengal was to be the ‘pativrata’–
committedwholly to her husband as her god, and strictly obey ‘lajja’ (shame)
and ‘samsara’ (domestic) duties.
A superficial reading of Amar Jiban might lead one
to believe that Rassundari conformed to the aforementioned patriarchal ideals.
As she narrates the events of her life, she constantly talks of herself as a
pious, unsuspecting lower-class woman, always praising God – Dayamadhav –
andbeing devoted to her husband and family. Moreover, she frequently uses
self-deprecating and condescending language on herself.
However, feminist literary scholars such as Tanika Sarkar
and Susie Tharu would argue that Rassundari's constant adherence to the
'script' of a traditional Indian wife's behaviour is performative. Living in
the region and time when any questioning of patriarchy would be met with the
wrath of society, Rassundari chose to use the rhetoric of patriarchy to conceal
her subversive act of writing, thus safeguarding herself from punishments
ranging from social exile to physical harm.
This 'performance' is most acutely seen in her
explanation of the source of her desire to read. Reading was strictly forbidden
for women in 19th century Bengal, owing in large part to the superstitions
around women's education (an educated woman has the power to take her husband's
life, and hence become a widow). Rassundari chooses to depict this deeply
personal desire as one that was divinely ordained by God, in order to make her
act of defying the social order appear as one of devotion to God.
In her dream, she wishes to read the Chaitanya Bhagavata,
the life story of the 16th century Vaishnava saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
However, on waking up, she interprets her wish to read as a wish ordained by
God Himself. By making the source of her desire to read 'God' rather than man,
she absolves herself of disobeying her father and husband. A wish made by God,
if fulfilled, could not be seen as an act of defiance or disobedience.
Rassundari has cleverly used the tool of the 'patriarchal feminine' to attain
the freedom of literacy.
While living under the repressive gaze of patriarchy,
Rassundari chose to depict herself to her readers as a textbook example of a
'patriarchal feminine'. However, this did not stop her from taking advantage of
this trope in order to justify her subversive act of writing. By depicting her
desire to read as one that came from God, she was able to use the notion of
'piety' to her advantage.
The "Feminist" Subversion: Literacy as
Clandestine Agency
Toril Moi defines the term 'feminist' as actions, texts,
and ideologies that seek to undermine the dominance of patriarchal relations
and promote the self-willed advancement of women. The scene in Amar Jiban
where Rassundari acquires literacy is among the most potent examples of
proto-feminist practices in South Asian literature.
Forced into domestic service at a young age and deprived
of formal education, Rassundari had to invent a pedagogy that was entirely
clandestine and depended on her own initiative to gain literacy. Her daring and
cleverness were both on full display as she first tore off a leaf from
Chaitanya Bhagavata when her husband left the room, swiftly hiding the pilfered
leaf in the wooden rafters of the kitchen. Rassundari then stole a piece of
paper on which her eldest son was practicing his alphabets.
What follows is a description of her self-taught process
of learning to read, which is itself an astounding story:
"I would hold the page under my veil and compare
the letters on the leaf with those my son had written. I tried to remember the
sounds of the letters I had heard the boys reciting in the schoolroom outside.
Day after day, while cooking, I would secretly pull out the leaf for a brief
moment, look at a character, and hide it again under the stove. I matched the
shapes with the memory of their sounds."
Reading under the veil and comparing the stolen
characters with those written by her son, whose alphabets she has memorized, is
a potent image of feminist resistance. Furthermore, it is worth noting that Rassundari
was a self-made woman; no well-meaning patriarch had it in his power to bring
light into her life.
The acquisition of literacy by Rassundari is a
proto-feminist act because it provides a window into how patriarchy seeks to
control women by forbidding them access to knowledge.
The narrator performs an act of subversion by bringing
the written word into the kitchen, thereby polluting the space with potentially
emancipating ideas. In a nineteenth-century Bengali household, the domestic
space was strictly apportioned as the sphere of women, who were barred from
higher education and public life. By contrast, the larger world was the realm
of men, who engaged in politics, commerce, and education. Rassundari’s act of
writing her autobiography is an implicit critique of this binary.
Autoethnography and Self-Fashioning: Constructing the
Female Subject
In feminist theory, life writing and autobiography are
viewed as genres that enable marginal subjects to destabilize master narratives
and assert their humanity. As such, Toril Moi, in Feminist, Female, Feminine,
emphasizes the significance of female agency in textual production — the way in
which a woman transforms from a man-represented object to a subject who
represents herself.
Prior to Amar Jiban, Bengali literature had been
presenting women from a distinctly male point of view — either as pure goddesses
and sati — idealized figures of Indian mythology — or as the source of sin and
family discord. Rassundari’s work disrupts the established tradition by
claiming the right to represent her own experience as worthy of being
documented and disseminated.
Her account is organized around two intertwined plots –
theholy/religious one, in which Rassundari recounts her relationship with God –
Dayamadhav – andreflects on the divine will behind her life events; the worldly
one, in which she narrates her humble, joyless, and confined existence.
While the first one serves the purpose of religious
justification and Rassundari’s unquestioned faith in God’s power, the second
one shapes the author’s self-representation as an educated, sensitive, and
self-aware individual. Despite the strong religious undertone of the work, its
overall message proclaims the equality of men and women, which is not
surprising given the context in which it was written.
Notably, Rassundari frequently refers to her early
marriage and childhood as the most sorrowful period of her life, which is
highly revealing. When recounting the episode of her wedding, she recalls how
her mother, grieving and distraught, held her close before she started off for
her in-laws’ house, after the marriage.
“I was twelve years old when I got married. If people
caught a wild bird, they would put it in a cage. That is exactly what happened
to me. My mother held me in her arms and wept, and I cried too… They put me in
a palanquin and carried me away to a stranger’s house. I was like a sacrificed
animal being led to the altar.”
By likening herself to a captured bird and a sacrificed
animal, Rassundari visualizes the terror and confusion she must have felt when
she left her home and family forever. It is noteworthy that she identifies the
abusive child marriage institution as the root cause of female misery.
This assumption is further supported by the episode of
her mother’s death, to which Rassundari refers with palpable pain. She
describes the unbearable grief caused by the inability to take care of her
mother, as a married woman was not allowed to leave her husband’s house without
permission.
“Why was I born a woman? If I were a son, I would have
flown to my mother’s side. But because I am a woman, a helpless creature bound
by social laws, I could not even see her one last time.”
Once again, Rassundari regrets her gender and blames
society for treating women as second-class citizens who must be obedient to
their husbands and in-laws. Rassundari exposes the sexist marital traditions of
Indian society through the lens of personal experience, thus making her
reflections a pioneering feminist work.
Amar Jiban and the Politics of Reception: Anticipating
Feminist Theory
The author argues that feminist literary criticism should
not only be concerned with the production of texts but also their reception and
place in the literary canon. A look at the reception history of Amar Jiban and
its place in critical discourse demonstrates how the female author’s agency was
conceptualized in late nineteenth-century Bengal.
This literary work published in two volumes in 1876
includes an introductory essay by Jyotirindranath Tagore, a member of the
Indian literary elite, and the older brother of the future Nobel laureate.
Tagore praised Rassundari’s composition, but at the same time, it was he who
shaped the understanding of the work and its main character. This reception
history highlights the problematic position of women writers in India. Although
they were encouraged to create literature, their works were not perceived in
the same way as those of men.
Tagore commented on the text that it repeatedly crossed
the borders of domesticity and patriarchy. Rassundari’s contemporary male
writers’ works glorified female characters who accepted their subordinate
position in society and contributed to their families’ well-being, and were
loyal to their husbands and children. The female protagonist’s insistence on
receiving an education and pursuing knowledge for its own sake questioned the
prevailing order and suggested the desirability of another way.
Rassundari’s autobiography demonstrates several ideas
that were later incorporated into feminist discourse. Women’s personal lives
are inherently political. Although this idea was popularized in second-wave
feminism, Rassundari wrote about the domestic and patriarchal sphere more than
half a century earlier. In her work, the kitchen represents a domain of power
struggles and is linked with female resistance.There is a phenomenon of double
consciousness in female consciousness. Rassundari as the female protagonist is
faithful to the social norms, behaves modestly and diligently, but at the same
time, she secretly possesses knowledge that could challenge the existing
inequalities. This concept is similar to that of double consciousness developed
by Luce Irigaray and Homi Bhabha and the idea of strategic mimicry.
Conclusion
The Amar Jiban piece of Rassundari Devi is a significant
chapter of South Asian literature and feminist studies. Reading the
autobiography of Rassundari under the guidance of the Toril Moi’s distinctions
between the concepts of the “female,” “feminine,” and “feminist” allows for
evaluating the creative potential of this woman, who managed to make her
contribution to literature despite severe obstacles.
Being a female living in patriarchal society, Rassundari
faced the severe limitation of her activity due to the natural physiology,
which was further worsened by the social pressure to accept her condition
without questions. However, the way she secretly learned to read and write,
justified her capacity to the divine world through religious practices, and did
not hesitate to share her knowledge and experience made Rassundari a feminist
hero of Indian literature.
The Amar Jiban story is far from being an
illustration of how Indian women in the 19th century had to rely on men and
wait for them to come and rescue them. Rassundari managed to learn to read and
write despite all the restrictions and social rules imposed by the patriarchal
system and succeeded in creating a literary work that would inspire women for
generations of her descendants.
Works Cited
Devi, Rassundari. Amar Jiban [My Life]. 1876.
Translated by Enakshi Chatterjee, Writers Workshop, 1999.
Moi, Toril. "Feminist, Female,
Feminine." The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of
Literary Criticism, edited by Catherine Belsey and Jane Moore, Macmillan
Education, 1989, pp. 117–132.
Sarkar, Tanika. Words to Win: The Making of
"Amar Jiban": A Modern Autobiography. Zubaan, 2014.
Tharu, Susie, and K. Lalita, editors. Women
Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present. Volume I: 600 B.C. to the Early
Twentieth Century. The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1991.