Goodmorning again.

Today as Tonishaa gave a preview of our presentation, we are dealing with the participation of the Bengali woman in the nationalist movement for freedom during the Bengal Renaissance and her emergence into the public sphere. The concepts I will be discussing today invariably problematize the location of woman in the public as well as the private domains of the contemporary society and the nature of women's encounter with nationalism continues to remain a complex one. I have basically limited my arguments to Partha Chatterjees essay on the Nationalist resolution of womens question which will help me to locate the distinct identities of the Indian woman along with her colonized counterpart. The Bengal Renaissance that claimed to question existing orthodoxies, particularly with respect to women, marriage, the dowry system, the caste system and religion originated not from the acceptance of the western ideologies on a wholescale basis, but from the discrepancy that arose as a result of the inadequacy of the interpersonal adjustments in those families that had western educated males. These men, enlightened with the new forms of western education opted for a limited and controlled emancipation of their wives that would allow them to adjust themselves in the colonized circles.
As a result whatever reformation was enacted on the part of the women, it was quite selective to those western ideologies that would civilise the women along with preserving the essential core of virtues and chastity. The nationalist ideology, thus, had cleverly succeeded in segregating the world into two distinct halves the material and the spiritual. The material domain being the one that conditions and influences us while the spiritual domain is the one that reflects our true self. Quite naturally, the west was attributed its material traits while the east boasted itself of its spiritual qualities. Therefore, the key to the reform movements in the nineteenth century Bengal was essentially based on the adaptability of the people along with the new western material world while keeping the inner self intact. This gave rise to the two distinct identities of the inner and the outer, in other words, the GHAR and the BAHIR. The world is the external domain of the material while the home represents the inner spiritual self. Eventually, the public space came to be identified with the male while the private space got associated with the woman of the house. The most important facet of the nationalist movement was that it incorporated those traits that helped it fight the colonizers while keeping the rest of the western ideologies away from its epicentre. And in the entire phase of the national struggle, the crucial need turned out to be the protection and preservation of this inner core that would foster the spiritual essence of the national culture. Evidently, the woman was the one who was held responsible for the maintenance of the sanctity and chastity of the virtues and traditions and in no way could her position be compromised. As the Women became

both the symbol of the inner world and its guardians; they were not to be subordinated in the traditional religious ways but they were to be discouraged from taking part in the public sphere except as an extension of the home, and they were to be educated to be conveyers of the national culture. all This was an effort to maintain the inner, spiritual world as the realm of their cultural essence, barred to western aggression in contrast to the humiliation they had to face in the public world of the colonisers.
So it is quite evident that the literature of this period also concerned itself with the theme of the threatened westernization of Bengali women. This ideological propagation was best mediated through parody that was incorporated into the plays, novels, poems, short stories and almost every form of oral and visual communication. To ridicule the idea of a Bengali woman trying to imitate an Englishwoman or a memsahib became on the prominent themes in vogue. But this did nt mean that the Bengali woman remained uneducated and backward, infact The new Bengali woman would now go to schools and colleges and bear the hallmarks of civilisation while maintaining the chastity of her

traditions and culture. The new image of the bhadramahila thus arose that demarcated her from the memsahibs as well as those lower class female characters who feel in the category of working class. Therefore, the new bhadramahila that emerged was quite the reverse of the common woman who was coarse and and devoid of superior moral sense . this new woman, the hallmark of the bourgeoisie elite, would essentially be the home-maker, the sole participant of the private space, along with which she should also be familiar with the outside world as long as it didnt interfare with her femininity and virtues. As a result the physical purdah was replaced by the more docile and subtle rules that governed the new bhadramahilas behaviorial conduct.