'A Bengali Lady in England' (1885)
Victorian Diversities reading group
Friday, February 28th at 3pm
Join the Meeting
Professor Nadia Butt, Professor of Global Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Goethe-University Frankfurt will lead a discussion of Krishnabhabini Das' 'A Bengali Lady in England' (1885). The reading group will focus on Chaps 1, 2 & 7 but reading is not required. All are welcome to join and learn about this fascinating travelogue, the first by a Bengali woman in Britain.
You can find the text here: A Bengali Lady in England.
Brief synopsis of the text:
Englandey Bangamahila is the first travel writing by a Bengali woman in England, published in 1885. A Bengali Lady in England is the annotated translation with a critical introduction by Prof. Nabanita Sengupta. This book is a documentation of the 19th century England—its strength and prejudices, as seen through the eyes of a twenty-year-old Krishnabhabini Das, a housewife belonging to an orthodox Hindu family. Krishnabhabini did not believe in social taboos and went against quite a number of them like travelling abroad, educating herself, not adhering to the 19th century views of motherhood. Her book too was iconoclast in a number of ways because it was not normal for a woman belonging to a subject race to dare criticise the British in such bold words. The book is an exceptional study of the Indo-English relationship, postcolonial studies, 19th century nationalism and gender studies.
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