Literature

Curious Subjects focuses on the relationship between women, curiosity, and the rise of the novel, using the lenses of scientific, legal, and “fictional” curiosity to examine the changing definitions of the subject within these various discourses. Texts range from eighteenth-century fiction to classic Victorian “heroine texts,” to contemporary revisions of realist forms, with an emphasis on the always-doubled and duplicitous nature of both female curiosity and the realist project. The book rethinks the question of female knowledge from within the form of the novel, using not just the metaphor but the history of curiosity after the Enlightenment. It begins with the wanderings of curiosity from medieval pilgrims’ relics to private collections to public museums, and interweaves this history with the origins of the modern legal subject, arguing that the most intriguing version of that subject is the curious heroine. So, from the beginning of the book, the rise of the novel, the evolution of curiosity, and the enfranchisement of women are deeply intertwined. Central literary figures include Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and Henry James, with examples ranging from Paradise Lost and Clarissa to The Sadeian Woman and The Handmaid’s Tale, from Freud to Bluebeard’s wife.

This book is a story of two outstanding Bengali women fighting for a cause, so similar and yet so strikingly different at multiple levels. It presents a historical evaluation of Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. It specifically determines the similarities and differences in the ideas and activities of these women from two different communities in colonial Bengal, Hindu-Brahmo and Muslim, and thus also sheds some light on contemporary Hindu and Muslim societies, their patterns of change during the colonial encounter, and the emergence among both the communities of a new generation of women. It concentrates on their concern and work around women’s issues. It first introduces the lives of Sarala and Rokeya. It then investigates the steps Sarala and Rokeya advocated or adopted to enhance the lives of women. It concludes by addressing how their contemporaries viewed Sarala and Rokeya, and how are they regarded today.