Contents – New Woman: Then and Now (Issue 47)
Contents - New Woman: Then and Now (Issue 47)
Nov 25
Guest-Editorial: New Woman: Then and Now
By Priyanka Chatterjee and Sanchayita Paul Chakraborty
‘New woman’ is to be moved out of the pages of the literary, out of the cold storage of academic ambitions and is to be experienced, while opening up its possibilities of extension beyond knowable grounds. As the concept moves through a continuous process of evolution, we are extremely thankful to all our contributors for being a part of this journey of conferring meanings and perspectives to understand the malleable frames of ‘new woman’.
Vasantasena in Mrcchakatika: A ‘New Woman’ in Sanskrit Drama?
By Pritha Kundu
The ‘new woman’ in Anglo-American literature is a character-type corresponding to the topical cause of women’s emancipation in society, whereas Vasantasenā is sui generis as an individual character, who is both traditional and unconventionally dynamic at the same time.
‘New Woman’ then: A Study of First Light (2001)
By Bikash Chandra Mandal
The “New Women” distinct from the dominant construct of the “New Woman” in their new roles, who were conscious about their individuality deconstructing the patriarchy to reconstruct and affirm their individual female subjectivity. They tried to project their womanhood in their own individual way. They sought to construct their own female subjectivity beyond the space of patriarchal hegemony and resisted the patriarchal formulations to create their own version of self-freedom.
The Chronicle of the Caged Bird: Gender, Quotidian, and “New Women” in Post-Partition Literature
By Anuparna Mukherjee
This essay explores the discursive category, “new women”, in a more restricted and localized context to speak about those whose contribution does not lie in revolutionizing the public world, but in the silent assertion to stand their ground within the inner domain of their homes as a way of resisting the debacle of Partition. It delves into the journey of the unnamed protagonist within the textual space of Hasan Ajijul Huq’s novel, Agun Pakhi (The Bird of Fire), to talk about a rural housewife whose life, like several others, was suddenly catapulted by the Partition.
Half-Women or Half-Dreams? The Lives and Afterlives of Ismat Chughtai’s ‘New Women’ in India
By Ismat Chughtai
From her rebellious insistence to attend school at Aligarh and later earning her B.A. degree at the Isabella Thoburn College in Lucknow, to taking up the principalship of a girls’ school in Bareilly, choosing her own profession, and then falling in love and marrying the person of her choice and being banned and persecuted for some of her provocative writing, Chughtai courageously took on the Muslim prejudices and attitudes of her time towards female education, space and work, both at home and society at large, always carving out her own space, and being recognized for it.
Between the ‘home’ and the ‘world’: The ‘New Woman’ in Bollywood
By Nandita Dutta
In a poster of the popular 2012 film English Vinglish, the protagonist, Shashi, appears against the New York skyline with a resolute look on her face. She has been photographed and frozen amid a stride – a meaningful one, as opposed to loitering – with a Starbucks coffee in her hand, bestowing on her a modern and professional look.
‘Charulata’, ‘Mahanagar’ and Two Epochs of the New Woman in Bengal
By Madhubrata Bhattacharyya
Charulata (1964) and Mahangar (1963) are both films centering on striking female characters. They are both predicated upon instances of ruptured domesticity. Temporally disparate in their settings as they may be, they both represent a time when traditional ideals of femininity are undergoing transformation. However, unlike popular discourse that would place the brunt of this disrupted domesticity upon women – particularly, the modernized “New” Woman – Ray depicts the complex social processes that lead to such a change.
Mapping the ‘New Woman’ through the eyes of Cinema and Society
By Amarinder Gill
The slow rise of the new woman seems to be initiated by Mother India (1957), where Nargis is the poor mother raising two sons, while her husband is a helpless weakling who does a quick disappearing act. She is the sacrificing mother who ultimately kills her own son as he tries to abduct the daughter of the moneylender Sukhilala.
Pondering over Birsa Dasgupta’s ‘Crisscross’
By Priyanka Chatterjee
Trying to claim the ‘new’, women are always confronted by the threatening silhouette of the ‘old’, which devises alternative modes of operation to become assimilated. Is discarding the old an only way to acclaim newness? Is it possible to leave the old behind, against which we define the new?
Writing Women, Writing Life: A Study of the ‘New Woman’ in Ranu Uniyal’s Poems
By Firoja Parvin
Ranu Uniyal is one of the prominent figures among the new breed of feminist poets of twenty-first century. She is the representative figure of ‘New Woman’ who gains her individuality and subjective position while developing her own ideas, therefore, becoming a powerful voice for the voiceless.
Nov 25
Book Review: Temsula Ao’s ‘On Being a Naga: Essays’
By Priti Mandal
On Being a Naga: Essays is a collection of essays on Nagas and their way of life by Temsula Ao, an Ao-Naga woman writer. The essays contemplate on “the dichotomies in Naga life and lore” (Introduction xiii), which leads to rethink and re-evaluate the Naga worldview and values.
The Madwoman and the Market: Of ‘Third World’ Literary Feminisms
By Debaditya Bhattacharya
Have South Asian women writers today, in keeping with the historico-political agency granted by a resistant postcolonial aesthetic, been able to live past the stereotypes manufactured by patriarchal literary canons in the West? Or, does the pathological bi-partitioning of the nineteenth-century literary woman as the ‘monster’ or the ‘whore’ fracture itself into a potential infinity of social others at the moment she encounters the contested modernity of the postcolony?
The ‘New Woman’ and ‘Mobile Legends: Bang Bang’
By Rubina Thapa
Mobile Legends is a shift from old games featuring only dominant male characters making it gender neutral game. If analyzed critically, faults can be extracted, but it is truly a form of 'new-game' representing 'new-women'. What is new must not be withheld and must be shared.
Two stories: Dancing between risk and responsibility
By Usha Raman and Sai Amulya Komarraju
The guilt that is so familiar to women of my generation is fed by old and new expectations. I am the keeper of tradition in the home, I am the mover of the daily machine that is family life. I am the sole feeder of my ambitions, such as they are, and I must face their consequences, consequences that the world throws back in my face as being of my own making.
Writing Woman, Resisting Woman: A conversation with Sarmistha Dutta Gupta
By Sanchayita Chakraborty and Priyanka Chatterjee A feminist writer, historian, and an activist of women’s movement, Sarmistha Dutta Gupta pleasantly agrees to share with us her experience, her journey towards gendered understandings of history and culture in this ‘alap’, a candid conversation for the current Café Dissensus issue, “New Women: Then and Now”.
Photo-Essay: Womaniya
By Yudhajit Basu and Ipsita Deb
The shots of women in diverse spaces from the tea gardens of North Bengal to the Nouvue Cafes of the metros have been generated like visual staccatos and the montage of them have been based on the photographers’ personal association (in some cases) with them rather than any grand/ predetermined narrative in mind.
