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Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870–1920 PDF

254 Pages·2013·10.083 MB·English
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ANGLOPHONE INDIAN WOMEN WRITERS, 1870–1920 The result of extensive archival recovery work, Ellen Brinks’s study fills a significant gap in our understanding of women’s literary history of the South Asian subcontinent under colonialism and of Indian women’s contributions and responses to developing cultural and political nationalism. As Brinks shows, the invisibility of Anglophone Indian women writers cannot be explained simply as a matter of colonial marginalization or as a function of dominant theoretical approaches that reduce Indian women to the status of figures or tropes. The received narrative that British imperialism in India was perpetuated with little cultural contact between the colonizers and the colonized population is complicated by writers such as Toru Dutt, Krupabai Satthianadhan, Pandita Ramabai, Cornelia Sorabji, and Sarojini Naidu. All five women found large audiences for their literary works in India and in Great Britain, and all five were also deeply rooted in and connected to both South Asian and Western cultures. Their works created new zones of cultural contact and exchange that challenge postcolonial theory’s tendencies towards abstract notions of the colonized women as passive and of English as a de-facto instrument of cultural domination. Brinks’s close readings of these texts suggest new ways of reading a range of issues central to postcolonial studies: the relationship of colonized women to the metropolitan (literary) culture; Indian and English women’s separate and joint engagements in reformist and nationalist struggles; the “translatability” of culture; the articulation strategies and complex negotiations of self-identification of Anglophone Indian women writers; and the significance and place of cultural difference. This page has been left blank intentionally Anglophone Indian Women Writers, 1870–1920 ELLEN BRINKS Colorado State University, USA R O UT Routledge L E D Taylor & Francis Group G E LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business . Copyright © Ellen Brinks 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Ellen Brinks has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Brinks, Ellen, 1957- Anglophone Indian women writers, 1870-1920. 1. Indic literature (English)–19th century–History and criticism. 2. Indic literature (English)–20th century– History and criticism. 3. Indic literature (English)– Women authors–History and criticism. 4. Women and literature–India–History–19th century. 5. Women and literature–India–History–20th century. I. Title 820.9'9287'0954-dc23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brinks, Ellen, 1957- Anglophone Indian women writers, 1870-1920 / by Ellen Brinks. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4094-4925-6 (hardcover) 1. Indic literature (English)–Women authors–History and criticism. 2. Women and literature–India–History. I. Title. PR9488.B75 2013 820.9'92870954–dc23 2012026158 ISBN 9781409449256 (hbk) Contents List of Figures vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 Translating Hindustan: Toru Dutt’s Poems and Letters 25 2 Gendered Spaces and Conjugal Reform in Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life 59 3 Feminizing Famine, Imperial Critique: Pandita Ramabai’s Famine Essays 91 4 The Imperial Family Begins in the Nursery: Cornelia Sorabji’s ‘Baby-fication’ of Empire 123 5 The Voice of India: Sarojini Naidu’s Nationalist Poetics 171 Epilogue 209 Bibliography 215 Index 231 This page has been left blank intentionally List of Figures 4.1 “John Bull’s Christmas Family Party” (from Punch December 27, 1884), reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd. 129 4.2 “Baby Uganda” (from Punch April 21, 1894), reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd. 131 4.3 “Nurse Gladstone” (from Punch August 25, 1883), reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd. 132 4.4 Watercolor portrait from the cover of Sun Babies (1920), courtesy of Richard Sorabji 163 4.5 “Let the Child Come” from Sun Babies (1920), courtesy of Richard Sorabji 165 This page has been left blank intentionally Acknowledgments This book has been an exciting and rewarding intellectual journey for me for a number of years now. I have received such helpful support from colleagues, friends, and my home institution Colorado State University, and they all deserve my heartfelt thanks. My first thanks go to Jim and SueEllen Charlton for their outstanding leadership on a Fulbright and Department of Education sponsored trip to India with fellow educators back in 2003, including a substantive, rich seminar on Indian culture and history in the months beforehand. This trip not only opened my eyes to the diversity of the Indian subcontinent and gave me the subject of this book, but it made me want to share my deep interest in South Asian cultures with others afterwards. Both the English department and the Dean’s office in the College of Liberal Arts funded my attendance at many conferences over the past seven years, as I was drafting different portions of the manuscript. They generously supported summer research and writing, including funding for travel twice to the British Library in London. Bruce Ronda, Louann Reid, and Ann Gill have been especially committed advocates of this project over the years and deserve special acknowledgment. I would also like to thank the Program for Women’s Studies and Gender Research at Colorado State for their acknowledgment of the project’s value and the award of the Patsy Boyer Scholarship lecture. To Bruno Navasky and Rudrani Sarma I owe the beauty of the cover design. I am incredibly fortunate to have many wonderful colleagues at Colorado State. Without their conversations, this project would have been stalled at various points. A big thanks especially to Mary Vogl, Maricela DeMirjyn, Leif Sorenson, Carol Mitchell, Roze Hentschell, and Pattie Cowell. My largest debt of gratitude is owed to my colleague and friend Aparna Gollapudi, who has been an incisive reader and enthusiastic champion of this project over the years. She has improved this manuscript immeasurably. Ashgate Publishing has been a delight to work with at all stages of the production process. Beatrice Beaup, Whitney Feininger, and Gail Welsh responded quickly and professionally to all my various queries. I especially want to single out Ann Donahue and Pam Bertram for their hard work, responsiveness and valuable expertise. Earlier versions of Chapters 2 and 3 appeared in academic journals. Most of Chapter 2 appeared in “Gendered Spaces in Kamala: The Story of a Hindu Child Wife,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts 30.2 (2008) © Taylor and Francis. For permission to reprint material from “Feminizing Famine, Imperial Critique: Pandita Ramabai’s Famine Essays,” South Asian Review 25.1 (2004), I thank K.D. Verma, editor of South Asian Review.

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