International Journal of Research e-ISSN: 2348-6848 p-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at https://pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/ Volume 05 Issue 22 November 2018 Feminism and Colonialism in Tagore’s Relationships Krishma Research Scholar,Department of English,Kalinga University, Raipur Abstract Relationships can be studied as a novel Discussion of post colonialism and feminism. Marriage in Relationships, chronologically this novel becomes the focal point to study published after The Home and The Word in marriage as an institution of colonialism. Just 1929, is comparatively a much less discussed as in colonialisation the colonizer attempts to novel of Tagore. Contextualized in the decline usurp and appropriate the native’s mind and of the feudalist order and rise of new body, so in marriage the husband tries to entrepreneurial class, the novel depicts a conquer and control the mind, body and soul of conjugal relationship based on force rather than his wife. Madhusudhan’s marriage with consent. It offers scope for investigation into Kumudini is a strong reminder of the fact that how woman and nation have been equated in the natives are subjected into submission and the critique of patriarchy and colonization. defeat by the sheer use of force. Tagore focuses It tells the story of two feudal families on these colonization tendencies in this novel. (The Ghosals and the Chatterjees) over a The role and significance of education is also period of three generations. The surroundings given very important space in the novel. where the action takes place may no longer Education leads to the decolonization of mind. exist but the analysis of human relations and Keywords: Feminism, Post colonialism, personalities are of lasting importance. Tagore Colonialism, Education, Patriarchy, Soul, depicts the plight and ultimate demise of Body, Decolonisation, Exploitation, women trapped in pregnancy, duty, family Subjugation. honor and Bengali’s putrescent landed gentry Available online: https://pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/ P a g e | 43 International Journal of Research e-ISSN: 2348-6848 p-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at https://pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/ Volume 05 Issue 22 November 2018 (Mukherjee 32). Hence the novel offers a sensibilities and they need to be wooed, not critique of the society at the intersection of just claimed through force. The idea of wife as feminism and post colonialism. Madhusudhan captive under patriarchal system is presented in Ghosal, from the impoverished Ghosal family, a discourse which establishes Tagore as a becomes a wealthy man and a director of a severe critic of patriarchal exploitation of prosperous company with his own efforts. He women. Women’s body is appropriated and sends a marriage proposal to the last unmarried subjugated for production. daughter (Kumudini, the sister of Biprodas) of The author has portrayed the zamindar Chatterjees, who are now reeling Mahdusudan’s behavior before and after his under financial debt. The marriage tie is used marriage in a manner that puts him in the as an instrument by Madhusudhan to impress category of the colonialist. The colonial and insult the Chatterjees. Besides focusing on aggression with in marriage is also poignantly the frustration of domesticity, the novel is an presented through Kumu’s reactions. The use evaluation of the rising Bengali bourgeoisie. of pigeon and hawk imagery is highly Tagore’s own emotional and ideological suggestive. The defeat of Kumu at the hands of investments are critically involved and her lustful husband is questioned by the author. contrasted with a decaying aristocracy in this The husband’s occupation of woman’s body is novel. Relationships represents a society which symbolic of colonization in which the colonizer existed some hundred years ago and tells the can appropriate the land/body but cannot story of how patriarchal order treated women vanquish the spirit/soul of the native. Hence as colonial subjects and their bodies as colonial though the feudalist order declined, the sites. Tagore’s message here is that men like domination-subordination equation continued Madhusudhan treat women simply as chatted to even under the new capitalist order that be kept and used. Women have particular emerged in the post-colonial India. The novel, Available online: https://pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/ P a g e | 44 International Journal of Research e-ISSN: 2348-6848 p-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at https://pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/ Volume 05 Issue 22 November 2018 therefore, presents pluralistic nature of ages, and two worlds. Her native countryside colonization. Relationships is a powerful culture creates a shadowy world in which she feminist text despite the fact that it ends with a was born and brought up. It was ruled over by woman’s defeat (Mukherjee 18). The plot Siddheswari, Gandheshwari, Ghentu, Shashthi, contrasts the social fortunes of a decaying the goddesses of women’s household rites. aristocracy (Chatterjees) with those of a rising Contrasted with her countryside is the post colonial capitalist (Ghoshals), while metropolitan culture of Kolkata where she is focusing on the sexual and moral frustrations brought by her positivist intellectual brother, of domesticity. Biprodas. She is given such kind of education which would make a Bhandramhila out of her. The advent of colonial rule and Reading Relationships in the new millennium, subsequent acculturation of the colonized it is difficult to ignore a historically situated brings forth the importance of ideas like reomanticism that volarized soul over body. ‘romantic love’. But the eventual rise in prostitution in Kolkata as a result of mercantile Tagore focuses on the colonization bourgeois capitalism – often treated as ‘signs’ tendencies of the rising capitalist order in his of moral degeneration of the ‘modern’ times – presentation of Biprodas’s character. The necessitated the additional emphasis on the manners and pragmatism of the new capitalists virtue of ‘Chaste devotion’ (paatibrotya) to be is juxtaposed with the compassionate, artistic strictly observed by Indian wives. Kumudini, liberal character of the old order. Tagore the heroine of the novel Relationships, is as portrays Biprodas’s character in a manner that much a product of colonial modernity as instead of blaming Biprodas for not managing Madhusudan but it has a completely different his property better, we are expected to praise impact upon her. She had been educated at his sainthood. One also notices a grief for the home and lived in the twilight between two disappearing landed gentry who were supposed Available online: https://pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/ P a g e | 45 International Journal of Research e-ISSN: 2348-6848 p-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at https://pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/ Volume 05 Issue 22 November 2018 to have been the guardians of art and to impress and to insult them. For Kumudini, refinement, and an unconcealed contempt for the marital relation soon becomes one of the rawness of new money. The present intolerable oppression as elder brother generation might question this crypto-feudal Biprodas suffer. Biprodas possesses the spirit perspective but it is necessary to recognize the of a liberalist and a true feminist who is inevitability that shaped this attitude at the subjected to repeated humiliation and anxiety beginning of the twentieth century, given the on his sister’s behalf. Since Tagore had class composition of the literary community of intended to carry this story forward to at least that time. the saga of Kumu’s son, Abinash Ghosal, the novel opens on Abinash’s thirty – second The Ghoshals lose their fortunes and birthday, though readers hear nothing more of estates and move away; the Chatterjee’s him in the text’s course. There is just a continue as ‘zamindars’ of Nurnagar. reference to him at the end of the her return to Generations later, Madhusudan Ghosal, Ghosal household. brought up with the bitter taste of poverty in his mouth, makes his mark, entirely by his own After being subjected to subordination efforts as a man of extraordinary energy and and subjugation by her husaband and her financial acumen. Ultimately he received the consequent rescue by her brother, Kumudini on title of Raja Sahab and Rai Bahadur. Powerful learning of her pregnancy, returns to her enough, now he first buys up the Chatterjee’s oppressor. She is forced to choose this option debts (since the family has fallen on hard despite her high education and fine sensibilitip. times) and then sends a proposal of marriage to Kumudini returns to her husband’s home the daughter of the Chatterjee family, despite all the sufferings and miseries at the Kumudini. For Ghosal, this relationship with hands of her husband has been seen as author’s Chatterjee is an instrument to be used equally failure by a number of critics. In the novel, Available online: https://pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/ P a g e | 46 International Journal of Research e-ISSN: 2348-6848 p-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at https://pen2print.org/index.php/ijr/ Volume 05 Issue 22 November 2018 Kumu’s failure shows that Tagore seeks to The final entrapment, unsatisfactory contract not the western model of a person in though it may seem as a narrative resolution, whom identity and history ideally coincide, but return us to marriage itself as the novel’s a struggling, obstinate conviction of self-worth problematic theme. The marriage is a sexual in the knowledge of a deep mistaking of and psychological encounter between two identity. This also shows how the oppressed persons as it is a contractual negotiation having internalized his/her inferiority lacks or between two persons and two families. finds it extremely difficult to win back self It is through Kumu that this worth and self agency to revolt and overthrow examination of marriage is conducted. the hegemonic control. Kumudini is not simply the representative of an At another level, Kumu’s rejection of individual in history but she is also the locus her husband is incorporated in the series of where a conflict of class and subject position wrongs and slights that marks the historical takes place.