Unheard Voices and Deprived Agencies: Girlhood in Nineteenth-Century India

Contemporary references to gender include ‘gender sensitization,’ ‘gender planning’ and ‘gender training.’ The nineteenth-century witnessed some major movements in this political sphere such as the Bengal Sati Regulation (1829), Hindu Widows’ Re-Marriage Act (1856) and the Age of Consent Bill (1891). In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the boy child was given preferences in various matters right from birth. This was reflected in the literature of the period as well. This paper analyses select literature from early twentieth-century India. It argues that the representation of girls in Indian literature of the past deals with the absence of a sense of childhood associated with innocence and freedom. Social attitudes and caste discrimination had a major role in this absence of girlhood. Through an analysis of three texts— Rashsundari Debi’s Amar Jiban, Binodini Dasi’s Amar Katha and Muktabai’s Mang Maharachya Dukhavisayi, the paper attempts to understand the discrimination and silencing of the girl child characters in Bengali literature.