Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia
Anshu Malhotra is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delhi and the author of Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab.
Siobhan Lambert-Hurley is Reader in International History at the University of Sheffield and author of Muslim Women, Reform and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal.
Anshu Malhotra is Associate Professor of History at the University of Delhi and the author of Gender, Caste, and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab.
Siobhan Lambert-Hurley is Reader in International History at the University of Sheffield and author of Muslim Women, Reform and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal.
Kailashbashini Debi’s Janaika Grihabadhur Diary: A Woman “Constructing” Her “Self” in Nineteenth-Century Bengal?
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Published:October 2015
Shubhra Ray, 2015. "Kailashbashini Debi’s Janaika Grihabadhur Diary: A Woman “Constructing” Her “Self” in Nineteenth-Century Bengal?", Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia, Anshu Malhotra, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley
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This chapter examines Kailashbashini Debi’s Janaika Grihabadhur Diary (The Diary of a Housewife), which was written between 1847 and 1873, a critical juncture of colonial Bengal’s history, when the “women’s question” was being deliberated. While contextualizing her diary within the larger debates of reformist politics in nineteenth century Bengal, this chapter focuses on the manner in which she “constructs” her self and gives primacy to her voice—however fragmented and elusive it might be. Further, the chapter reflects on the tensions that are generated by her being apparently molded by reformist politics and her contestations of these dominant discourses. The reading is concerned not only with the individual act of a woman writing her “self,” but also with its being determined by the ideas of the possible reception of such a text even when it is not being written with the explicit idea of publication, as is the case here.
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