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Unconventional relationships—a married woman in love with a younger brother-in-law; a love triangle between a man, his wife, and his sister-in-law; an intimate affair between a married man and a distant cousin—are the subject of Rabindranath Tagore’s three novellas Nashtanir (The Broken Home), Dui Bon (Two Sisters), and Malancha (The Garden and the Gardener).
In these three novellas—written between 1901 and 1933—Tagore focuses on the subtle nuances of unsanctioned relationships, exploring feelings of loneliness and worthlessness in middle-class housewives in colonial Bengal. They display Tagore’s remarkable understanding of a woman’s psyche, with all three works underlining the incompatibility between husbands and wives, and how the ensuing void lead to forbidden relationships. In Charulata, Sharmila, and Neeraja—the three strong yet vulnerable heroines—Tagore presents emerging ‘new women’, with thoughts and desires of their own.
While Sukhendu Ray’s new translations retain the cultural and linguistic ambience of the original, Bharati Ray’s Introduction places these works in the social context of early-twentieth-century Bengal.
ISBN - 9780198068884
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