Exploring Gender in the Selected Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore

St. Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol.4 No.2 July-December 2018

9 Pages Posted: 31 Jul 2019

Date Written: December 9, 2018

Abstract

Human societies, since the time immemorial, have always tended to assign different roles, codes of behavior and morality, and even different feelings and thoughts to men and women based on the biological distinction of sex (between male and female) thereby leading to the construction of the social distinction of gender (between masculine and feminine). As a literary genre, short story developed in the 19th century and by the end of 20th century occupied the role as one of the major literary forms. In the field of academia and literary circles, Rabindranath Tagore is mainly known as a bard, thinker, philosopher, painter and social activist but few know the first Asian Nobel laureate Tagore as a feminist, with gender issues forming the underlying theme in many of his works. Rabindranath Tagore is one of those pioneer short story writers whose writings reflect maturity. He is regarded as one of the progressive modern Indian short story writers. Tagore has been very successful in depicting woman psychology in his short stories and has made very scathing comments against gender suppression. The focus of this paper will be on the female protagonist of the short stories titled, “A Wife’s letter” and “Musolmanir Galpo” or “The story of a Muslim Woman,” by Tagore that how they remained unperturbed although the society in which they lived were dominated by male patriarchal norms and in what ways they have been successful in protecting their rights thereby becoming the champions for women mainly through their progressive thought, courage, and determination.

Suggested Citation

Banerjee, Saikat, Exploring Gender in the Selected Short Stories of Rabindranath Tagore (December 9, 2018). St. Theresa Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol.4 No.2 July-December 2018, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3413241

Saikat Banerjee (Contact Author)

Assam Don Bosco University ( email )

Assam
India

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.dbuniversity.ac.in/

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
233
Abstract Views
1,011
Rank
238,410
PlumX Metrics