Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses literary sources, by women writing in Bengali, c.1920-1960, which offered far more complex, heterogeneous, innovative, and creative strategies for the shaping, reform, and moral education of subjects, than have hitherto been recognized. Authors focused on include Rokeya Hossain, Ashapurna Devi, and Lila Majumdar.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses literary sources, by women writing in Bengali, c.1920-1960, which offered far more complex, heterogeneous, innovative, and creative strategies for the shaping, reform, and moral education of subjects, than have hitherto been recognized. Authors focused on include Rokeya Hossain, Ashapurna Devi, and Lila Majumdar. 'Moral education' and 'reform' have tended to carry with them a stereotypical aura of sententiousness, didacticism, humourlessness, and aridness. I argue, utilizing tools from literary, historical, and as gender studies, that polemical and fictional writing by Bengali women writers such as Rokeya, Ashapurna, and Lila repay attention to their stylistic fertility, their ability to craft and reinvent humour, and their creative reinvention of genres. The projects of reform and moral education of subjects (not only female ones) that emerge from such writing are nuanced, multilayered, subversive, and wickedly intelligent.