Published Paper Details:

Abstract: This paper attempts to analyse the gender issues, roles, dimensions, depths and social historical perspectives of and towards women in 'British' India as depicted in Tagore's writings. But before going through that course, it's relevant to comprehend the backdrop of the theme. Since time immemorial, stories have been sources of joy, inspiration, belief, fantasy and more importantly it was to pass time. But such oral traditions later metamorphosed into manuscripts and centuries later into printed literary works. And such work, be it oral or printed, reflected the contemporary nature, environment, flora-fauna, climate, social practices, traditions, customs, rituals, living conditions of humans and societal perspectives of opposite sexes towards each other. My paper shall focus on such literary works of Tagore that explored themes of womanhood and gender. The status of women in any society is the true index of its holistic progress. From cultural, social, religious and 'spiritual' progress to economic and political stability, women and their conditions play an integral, if not always, visible role. However this notion was not always so linear or simple. From the very inception of human civilization especially with the emergence of family systems and private property, gender assigning and stereotypes have largely contributed to the decline in the status of women across borders, races, colours. Civilization have always assigned different roles, codes of behaviour, morality, and even different feelings and thoughts to men and women based on the biological distinction of sex (between male and female) thereby leading to the construction of the social distinction of gender (between masculine and feminine). From the 'mystic' feminine with secrets to create life to the 'divine'; from the witchy heretics to being the "second sex", the journey of women have been celebrated, shackled, marginalized, contested, debated, reassigned, negated and reinstated while the battle rages on. Despite all these, women have come out from the rooms of their own but the inception was not an easy one. And some men have been there by them and most against them in their journey towards liberty. The question of women's issues have been treated differently across varied art forms, literature being one of the most popular and vibrant domains of such depiction and colonial India was no exception to this. And among the literary geniuses who walked the surface, no other writer explored and experimented with the themes of gender better than Rabindranath Tagore. One of the earliest 'feminists' of his times, Tagore successfully portrayed and analysed women psychology and vehemently protested against gender suppression. His stories not only brought to limelight contemporary conditions of women, their unspoken dreams, struggles, humiliation but also credited their contributions to the Indian nationalist movement, their triumph, their challenges to the patriarchal society and so on and so forth. His scathing yet picturesque narrative compelled the then readers, much like today's, to love, admire, cry, laugh with Tagore's 'women and their world' and also rage, contempt, hate some of those fictional women for their daring infidelity, defying attitude towards ironclad patriarchal customs This paper shall explore such themes and try to situate those from a historical perspective.