Travel Culture, Travel Writing and Bengali Women, 1870-1940

291 Pages·2020·2.576 MB·English

by  Jayati Gupta

TRAVEL CULTURE, TRAVEL WRITING
AND BENGALI WOMEN, 1870–1940
This book chronicles travel writings of Bengali women in colonial India and
explores the intersections of power, indigeneity and the representations of
the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ in these writings. It documents the transgressive
histories of these women who stepped out to create emancipatory identities
for themselves.
The book brings together a selection of travelogues from various Bengali
women and their journeys to the West, the Aryavarta and Japan. These
writings challenge stereotypes of the ‘circumscribed native woman’ and
explore the complex personal and socio-political histories of women in
colonial India. Reading these from a feminist, postcolonial perspective, the
volume highlights how these women from different castes, classes and ages
confront the changing realities of their lives in colonial India in the backdrop
of the independence movement and the Second World War. The author
draws attention to the personal histories of these women, which informed
their views on education, womanhood, marriage, female autonomy, family
and politics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Engaging and insightful, this volume will be of interest to students and
researchers of literature and history, gender and culture studies and for
general readers interested in women and travel writing.
Jayati Gupta has spent her career teaching in Departments of English at
the erstwhile Presidency College, Lady Brabourne College, University of
Calcutta and West Bengal State University among others. She was awarded
the Tagore National Fellowship for Cultural Research (2015–2017) by
the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. She is currently a visiting
professor at Adamas University, Kolkata.
Her recent publications include ‘An Interview with Kalyani Thakur
Charal’ and ‘The Aesthetics of Dalit Literature: a Case Study’ in Dalit Text:
Aesthetics and Politics Re-imagined and ‘Creating Spaces and Identities:
a Hundred Years of American Travel Writing’ in Essays on American
Literature and Art: Multiple Perspectives. She also translated stories from
Bengali to English for A Collection of Partition Narratives.

TRAVEL CULTURE,
TRAVEL WRITING AND
BENGALI WOMEN,
1870–1940
Jayati Gupta
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Jayati Gupta
The right of Jayati Gupta to be identified as author of this work has been asserted
by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
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.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-34057-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-05453-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
This book is dedicated to
Two generations of remarkable women – my mother’s and my
grandmother’s – who taught me what it is to journey through life. . . .

CONTENTS
List of Maps ix
Foreword x
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xx
Introduction 1
SECTION I
Westward Travels 21
1 Sunity Devee (nee Sen) (1864–1932) 33
2 Krishnabhabini Das (1864–1919) 54
3 Jagatmohini Chaudhuri 70
4 Abala Bose (1865–1951) 84
5 Durgabati Ghose (1905–1992) 93
SECTION II
Travels in Aryavarta 111
6 Prasannamayee Devi (Chaudhuri) (1857–1939) 121
7 Nanibala Ghosh 141
8 Hemlata Devi (Sarkar) (1868–1943) 152
9 Subodh Kumari Majumdar 162
10 Shanta Devi (nee Chattopadhyay) (1893–1984) 167
vii
CONTENTS
SECTION III
Japan as a Site of Travel 185
11 Hariprabha Takeda (1890–1972) 193
12 Abala Bose (1865–1951) 218
13 Saroj Nalini Dutt (1887–1925) 224
14 Charubala Mitra 237
15 Shanta Devi (nee Chattopadhyay) (1893–1984) 242
Conclusion 254
Bibliography 258
Index 265
viii
MAPS
3.1 Route to England 71
5.1 Durgabati’s Route to England 95
Intro1.1 Map Showing Sapta-Sindhu 117
6.1 Prasannamayee’s Route 126
8.1 Hemlata Sarkar’s Route to Nepal 156
9.1 Subodh Kumari Majumdar’s Route 163
10.1 Shanta Devi’s Route to Peshawar 169
11.1 Hariprabha Takeda’s Route to Japan 194
ix