Exploring the Depiction of Women in Bengal in the Novels of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee: Patriarchy in Bengali Society

Abstract

Sarat Chandra Chatterjee has portrayed female characters from southern Bengal who struggle in a conservative patriarchal society. His female characters are in the interposed stage of decomposing feudalism and initial industrialization. He delineates boldly the pain and torment of lower-middle class women. Sarat demonstrates many widows as “fallen women” in Srikant and Charitrahin which projects their space as a reinforcement of purity amidst a grovelling atmosphere of general dirt. The women must have purity, virtue and integrity otherwise they become victimized by the conservative patriarchal society. Most of his women characters share an extraneous relationship with society. Sarat demonstrates the complex conundrums of widows’ sufferings, child-marriage, disease, poverty, public bias and fallen women’s victimization which focused his perception of social realism. He also satirically represents the prevalent system of child-marriage and dowry which has infested the so-called modern society asserts to bring the estimation of women at par with that of men.