English Language and Literature Commons^™

Dutiful Daughters (Or Not) And The Sins Of The Fathers In Iqbalunnisa Hussain’S Purdah And Polygamy, Teresa Hubel

Faculty Publications

Poet and editor Eunice De Souza has described the neglect of 19th and 20th century writing by women as a “distortion” of “the history of Indian writing in English which is far more rich and varied than the accounts in these histories would suggest.” Iqbalunnisa Hussain's 1944 novel Purdah and Polygamy , though superbly clever in its irony and always brave in its depiction of injustice, is one such piece of literature that has fallen away from history. Against the historical representation of Muslim women as followers of the minority politics of their men, this essay situates Hussain within a …

A Mutiny Of Silence: Swarnakumari Devi's Sati, Teresa Hubel

Department of English Publications

Aim:
To discuss how Swarnakumari Devi's family connections as much as her sex contributed to why her work faded from the memory of nationalist India.

Introduction:

The historical context that helped to produce the writing of Swarna-kumari Devi Ghosal also gives us a glimmer into some of the possible reasons why her work faded from the literary memory of nationalist India. Some of that context is hinted at in the back pages of her collection of short stories in English, published in 1919 by Ganesh and Co., Madras. Reminding us of the inescapable connection between capitalism and knowledge, these back …

Charting The Anger Of Indian Women Through Narayan's Savitri, Teresa Hubel

Department of English Publications

From the introduction:

Written in the late 1930s, when a new irascibility crept into the largely female-produced discourse on the status of women in India, The Dark Room is about a particular woman's indignation and revolt. Savitri is a Hindu wife following in the glorified footsteps of other Hindu wives, such as her namesake from the Mahabharata and Sita of the Ramayana. Although she lives up to the ideals of servitude and devotion implicit in these powerful feminine figures, Savitri of The Dark Room is betrayed by a patriarchal system that allows her husband the freedom of infidelity but denies …