A Window to Feminine Agency: Primary Research and Analysis of Feminist and Digital Humanities Perspectives of Satyajit Ray’s Charulata

Ray’s Charulata (1964) has erroneous recognition duly for capturing a woman’s mental and emotional existence within colonised Bengal. The location of the film situates it only with the period of the Indian nationalist movement, a time soaked in the scandal of colonialism for almost a century. I found that Charulata offers a mixed story that effectively captures its context to explore femininity, liminality, and confinement. Through an interdisciplinary approach combining feminist theory and digital humanities, this article seeks to provide a pristine understanding of Ray’s aesthetic preferences, his subversion of the “male gaze,” and the unique cinematic rhythm that emulates Charulata’s combat with the self. Using scene-based analysis and computational narratology, it delves into Ray’s techniques in framing and pacing to decode Charulata’s psychological alienation and autonomy. By framing Ray’s cinematic techniques in modern critical disquisition, it enshrines Charulata as a canonical feminist text with continued persistence. This article identifies a research gap in existing scholarship, navigating a discursive reconfiguration that underscores Ray’s feminist undertones and his nuanced critique of imperial patriarchy.