Woman-Speak: Ventriloquizing Femininity in the Poetry of Radharani Devi

Abstract

Challenging critic Pramatha Chaudhuri’s claim that Bengali women authors lacked a genuinely feminine voice, the writer Radharani Devi embarked on a literary experiment – adopting a nom de plume, “Aparajita Devi,” she started writing poetry in a markedly “feminine” style about women’s experience of everyday domestic life. Aparajita’s language, buoyancy, and humor introduced a new esthetic into Bengali poetry. And her poems were wildly popular. This paper makes a two-fold examination: First, it demonstrates Aparajita Devi’s originality by addressing how her narrators’ vocalization of everyday worlds, delivered in ordinary language voicing common people and circumstances, blew a gust of fresh air over the serene, decorous landscape of Bengali women’s literature. And second, it asks what makes her poems so compellingly feminine. While Aparajita was applauded for restoring the feminine to women’s writing, did it come instinctively to women writers or was it a persona that any writer could adopt? Radharani Devi’s artistic concerns frame the question of the authentic feminine voice against the wider issue of the sources of the poetic impulse in the modern writer.

Keywords:

• Radharani Devi
• Aparajita Devi
• Bengali Poetry
• Twentieth Century Women’s Writing
• Indian Literature

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the late Nabaneeta Dev Sen for approving my translations. For their comments and discerning observations on this paper, I thank Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, the anonymous reviewers of SAR, and Spencer A. Leonard.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Born Radharani Ghosh, she was married to Satyendranath Datta at thirteen and widowed a few months later. She used her married name “Radharani Datta” in her publications until her marriage to Narendra Dev in 1931, following which she switched to “Radharani Devi.” Since the discussion with Chaudhuri occurred in 1930, I use “Radharani Datta” for events prior to her re-marriage, and “Radharani Devi” elsewhere in this paper.

Radharani started writing poetry at a young age. After her widowhood, she pursued her literary interests with support from her in-laws. Her writings were published in distinguished literary periodicals. Further establishing her in the Bengali literary world, was the publication of her first poetry collection Lilakamal (Magic Lotus) in 1929. (For more on her biography, see Mitra (2004).)

2 “Abhisarini” is included in Lilakamal/Magic Lotus (1929) and “Nishith Kalaha” in Booker Beena/Heart’s Lute (1930).

3 Page numbers for Radharani Devi’s poems refer to her collections Lilakamal and Bonbihogi. Page numbers for Aparajita Devi’s poems refer to Aparajita Rachanabali. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Bengali are mine.

4 Together with the appreciation of critics, there was a huge popular demand for Aparajita’s poetry and her books were reprinted many times over. For this reason, following her withdrawal of Bichitrarupini, her publisher set out to find her carbon-copy (more on this later). Further, Dev Sen notes, “The immensity of Aparajita’s success and popularity are proven not only in the many editions of her poetry but also in the abundance of imitations” (1984, xi). She was an inspiration for aspiring poets (mostly young men, from what is documented): Jagadish Bhattacharya (2002) modeled his “Aparajito Collegeboy” (“Undefeated College Boy”) series on her work; the influence of her poem “Natun Ma” (“New Mother”) is clear in Jyotiprasanna Sengupta’s poem of the same name; also, Ashok Mitra confesses to attempting to write like Aparajita, rather than Tagore (Bhattacharya and Dev Sen). In 1986, her collection Aparajita Rachanabali received the Rabindra Puraskar, the highest literary honor awarded by the state of West Bengal. It continues to remain in print.

5 Boudi, literally “bride-sister,” is the Bengali address for sister-in-law, specifically, the wife of an older brother. Rather than using “sister-in-law” which sounds cumbersome, I chose to retain the Bengali address.

6 “Sejdi” refers to the third older sister.

7 “Rangadi” refers to the fourth older sister.

8 Bulletwood/Mimusops elengi.

9 Appendix to Aparajita Rachanabali, 186.

10 Former monetary unit of India, worth one sixty-fourth of a rupee.

11 For discussions on the bhadramahila, see Bannerji (2001), Borthwick (1984), Chatterjee (1993), and Sarkar (2002).

12 From Roy’s poem “Pantha Jugal” (“Two Wayfarers”) in Alo o Chhaya. Cited in Purokait (1963), 265.

13 Excerpt from Sarajubala Sen’s Basanta Prayan (The Passing of Spring/Basanta’s Demise, 1914) translated by Edward J. Thompson in Macnicol’s (1923) Poems by Indian Women, 97. The poem mourns the death of Sen’s first husband Basanta Ranjan Das.

14 Radharani Devi, “Dedication,” Aparajita Rachanabali. xiii.

15 Essentialist thinking has been challenged by post-structuralist feminists who reject the idea that male and female are identities entrenched in “fixed ontological essences” (Finke 1992, 3). See also Moi (1987).

16 See Hélène Cixous(1976) “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Also, Moi 2009, Richard (2004), and Sengupta (2014).

17 Saratchandra Chattopadhyay (1875–1938) ranks among the most popular fiction writers in Bengali.

18 See Das (1995).

Additional information

Funding

Research for this work was supported by a Mini Grant from James Madison University.

Notes on contributors

Debali Mookerjea-Leonard

Debali Mookerjea-Leonard is Professor of English and World Literature at James Madison University in Virginia. She is a gold medalist in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University, Calcutta and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Mookerjea-Leonard is the author of Literature, Gender, and the Trauma of Partition: The Paradox of Independence (2017), coeditor of The Indian Partition in Literature and Films: History, Politics, Esthetics (2014), and the translator of Sunil Gangopadhyay’s novel Rakta/Blood (2020). Her work has appeared in Feminist Review, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Social Text, and elsewhere. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the American Association of University Women, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.