The Birth of the Novel in Nineteenth- Century Bengal

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The Birth of the Novel in Nineteenth- Century Bengal DEAR READER, GOOD SIR: THE BIRTH OF THE NOVEL IN NINETEENTH- CENTURY BENGAL by SUNAYANI BHATTACHARYA A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Comparative Literature and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2017 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Sunayani Bhattacharya Title: Dear Reader, Good Sir: The Birth of the Novel in Nineteenth-Century Bengal This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Comparative Literature by: Sangita Gopal Chairperson Paul Peppis Core Member Michael Allan Core Member Naomi Zack Institutional Representative and Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded March 2017 ii © 2017 Sunayani Bhattacharya iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Sunayani Bhattacharya Doctor of Philosophy Department of Comparative Literature March 2017 Title: Dear Reader, Good Sir: The Birth of the Novel in Nineteenth-Century Bengal My dissertation traces the formation and growth of the reader of the Bengali novel in nineteenth century Bengal through a close study of the writings by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay that comment on—and respond to—both the reader and the newly emergent genre of the Bengali novel. In particular, I focus on the following texts: two novels written by Bankim, Durgeśnandinī (The Lady of the Castle ) (1865) and Bishabṛksha (The Poison Tree ) (1872), literary essays published in nineteenth century Bengali periodicals, personal letters written by Bankim and his contemporaries, and reviews of the novels, often written and published anonymously. I suggest that by examining the reader of the Bengali novel it becomes possible to understand how the individual Bengali negotiates the changes occurring in nineteenth century Bengal—an era in which traditional beliefs collide with the intellectual and technological innovations brought on by colonial modernity. As my dissertation shows colonialism is far from being a disembodied institution operating at the level of governments and ideologies. Instead, it becomes evident that with the novel, colonial modernity enters the Bengali home in the form of changing moral paradigms. What the Bengali reader chooses to read, and how she performs her reading come to have a real import in her quotidian life. iv The three sites of reading I examine—the reader as a textual event in the novels, the reader as imagined in the literary essays, and the anthropological reader writing and responding to the reviews of the novels—revitalises the overdetermined field of the postcolonial novel by shifting the focus from the novel as a stable literary object being consumed by a relatively passive reader, to an active reader whose reading practice shapes both the genre and the subject reading it. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Sunayani Bhattacharya GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene University of South Florida, Tampa Jadavpur University, Kolkata DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, 2017 University of Oregon Master of Arts, English, 2009, University of South Florida Bachelor of Arts, 2006, Jadavpur University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Postcolonial Studies Nineteenth-century Bengal Practices of Reading PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Employee, University of Oregon, 2010-2017 Graduate Teaching Fellow, University of South Florida, 2007-2009 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Doctoral Research Fellowship, Himes Memorial Award, Dear Reader, Good Sir: Birth of the Novel in Nineteenth-Century Bengal, University of Oregon, 2015 Nomination for the A. Owen Aldridge Prize, “Reading as the Censor: J.M. Coetzee and the Politics of Censorship in Apartheid South Africa”, American Comparative Literature Association, 2015 Educational Opportunity Award, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Oregon, 2014 vi PUBLICATIONS: Bhattacharya, Sunayani. “Dear Reader, Good Sir: Practices of Novel Reading in Nineteenth Century Bengal,” PMLA , under review. Bhattacharya, Sunayani. “Racialized Castes: Reading Gora in Light of the Discourses of Race and Caste in Colonial India,” chapter in Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora: A Critical Companion , ed. Nandini Bhattacharya, New Delhi: Primus Books, 2015 Bhattacharya, Sunayani. “Review of Eman El-Meligi’s Symbolism in the Novels of Tawfiq Al-Hakim and V.S.Naipaul,” Journal of Folklore Research, 2014 Bhattacharya, Sunayani. “Review of Fabrizio M. Ferrari's Guilty Males and Proud Females: Negotiating Genders in a Bengali Festival,” Journal of Folklore Research, 2012 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express sincere appreciation to Professor Sangita Gopal in imagining and executing this dissertation. Special thanks are due to Professor Michael Allan, whose familiarity with the subject was invaluable at every step of this project, to Professor Paul Peppis for thoroughly grounding me in the art of reading novels, and Professor Naomi Zack for some very well-directed questions. I also thank Professor Kenneth Calhoon and the Department of Comparative Literature for helping me come this far, both intellectually and geographically. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the graduate students of the Department of Comparative Literature; the intellectual and social camaraderie made this dissertation possible. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, my brother, and friends near and far for always believing in me. viii For ma, baba, Poli, and the dreams of criss-cross greens ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 II. READERS IN BANKIM’S ESSAYS AND LETTERS ......................................... 26 Basic Literacy and Its Consequences ..................................................................... 28 Obscenity and the Cycle of Bad Readers ............................................................... 33 Bad Readers and the Debate Over Education ........................................................ 36 Dearth of Suitable Periodicals and Newspapers .................................................... 44 Reading in Bengali ................................................................................................. 50 III. THE READER IN REVIEWS ............................................................................... 59 Reading Bankim as the Scott of Bengal ................................................................ 69 “Beautiful Despite the Linguistic Anomalies”: Bankim and the Sanskrit Pundits.................................................................................................................... 88 An Archive of Reading .......................................................................................... 99 IV. THE READER IN BANKIM’S NOVELS ............................................................ 106 The Rasik Pathak ................................................................................................... 109 Tillotama the Model Reader .................................................................................. 111 The Sahrday Pathak ............................................................................................... 129 Katha, Akhyayika, and the Bengali Novel............................................................. 136 V. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................... 152 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 158 x CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION “Nabel pari āpan mane cāinā kārō pāne,/ Nirab prāner bhāshātuku nibhe jāy nirab prāne./ Āpni hānsi āpni kāndi,/ Āpan prān āpni bāndhi ” (“I read the novel by myself, I look at no one,/ The language of the silent heart dies within itself./ I laugh by myself, I cry by myself,/ I brace my heart myself”), sings Rukmini, the “Novel Heroine.” 1 The centrepiece of a late-nineteenth century Bengali satire, she is the archetypal novel reader, thoroughly immersed in the imaginative landscape of the text and defined exclusively by the act of reading the novel. The satire, aptly titled Nabhel nāyikā bā śikkhita bou (The Novel Heroine or the Educated Wife ) is set in Basudebpur, presumably a suburb of Kolkata, as it narrates the story of Rukmini who is so besotted with reading romance novels that she is unwilling to tend to either her ailing mother-in- law or her husband, Haradeb. Her devotion to novels jeopardises the conventional family structure, ultimately leading to its dissolution, and the play closes with Haradeb directly addressing his audience, warning them to not buy useless novels for their wives and thus save themselves from a fate worse than death. Rukmini herself is a novel phenomenon in nineteenth century Bengal as the first Bengali novel is published only in 1865, a little over half a century after the establishment of the Mission Press in 1800 in Serampore, a suburb of Kolkata. In this fairly short span of time, print literacy grows and the average Bengali reader becomes acquainted with a range of Victorian genres, including self-help books, domestic 1 Nabhel nāyikā bā śikkhita bou (The Novel Heroine or the Educated Wife ), 717, translation mine 1 manuals, religious treatises, and the novel. 2 By the time Thakorelal M. Desai writes of the Indian reading
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