A Genre of Her Own

A Genre of Her Own offers an alternative account of literary beginnings in modern India through a surprising range of self-fashioning by women in genres such as pamphlets, letters, travelogues, essays, autobiographies and novels. Paying close attention to style and intentionality, this study traces mixed affective notes of pride, despair, lament, nostalgia, anger, hope and celebration in texts written in Marathi, Bengali, Urdu and English. These include Savitribai Phule's Kavya Phule (1854), Tarabai Shinde's Stri-Purush Tulana (1882), Anandibai Joshee's letters (1883 – 1884), Rukhmabai's "Reply" (1887), Krupabai Satthianadhan's Saguna (1888), Rashsundari Debi's Amar Jiban (1897), Swarnakumari Debi Ghosal's Kahake (1898), Dosebai Cowasjee Jessawalla's The Story of My Life (1911), Binodini Dasi's Amar Katha (1912), and Atiya Fyzee's Zamana-i-Tahsil (1921).
These writers crafted a full-fledged, introspective and formally sophisticated aesthetic in conversation with a normatively male literary milieu. In doing so, they overtly engaged with the centrality of writing, the dangers and secrecies involved, against an emerging proscenium of world literature. The narrative motifs encompass marriage and motherhood, domestic labour and caretaking, romance and sexuality, public service and intellectual prowess, religious quests and scrambles for livelihood, illness and aging, and often in the mode of wit, vigour and ingenuity.