8

RAJMOHAN’S WIFE
A CRITIQUE OF BAN KIM’S FIRST NOVEL

"the mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer

consist in eloquence but in active participation in practical
life, as constructor, organiser, "permanent persuader" and
not just a simple orator..." (1)

TRACING THE PAST:

To restore the past as a living presence, to recreate the image of our eminent
ancestors, rescuing them from the mould into which we have cast them - by design or
through insensibility - are in a sense a self-questioning..

"Let us not be awed and silenced by the imposing authority

of ancient names, or be led by pretended learning or
antiquated jargon. Let us look steadily and boldly into the
face of things; discard falsehood whenever we meet with it,
hoary and hallowed by time though it may be; and if in our
search we meet with truth, let us drag it out of the
darkness under which it was hid, and enthrone it in the light
of heaven. “(2)

There are many ways to commemorate a phenomenon like Bankim, and perhaps the
most urgent need is to bring him back to life, to discuss his art and thought, to debate
about his achievements - a polemic that does not fell into acrimony.(3)

The same perilous swamp awaits us - fee mire is of course our own sensitivity - as
we encounter Banki mchandra, and the confusions we struggle with are, at least
apparently, related to fee nature of his personality and his genius. His life (or
whatever little we know of his life), thought and creativity show puzzling paradoxes:
an epicure (in the current sense) and an ethicist (with a streak of Puritanism); warm
and aloof, tender and detached; an agnostic and a pietist; a rebel and a conformist; a
liberal and as conservative; a crusader for science with deep distrust of deductive

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reasoning and a believer in miracles; a waverer from freewill and predetermination;
an ardent patriot and a critical observer - his criticism often bordering on derision -
of India’s past; a prophet of nationalism (more specifically, of Hindu nationalism),
and a humanist with width of vision and a preacher of universal love; rigidly
dogmatic and an uncompromising rationalist; a zealous advocate of equality... and a
concerned defender of stability, a sympathetic delineator of primal passions and a
stem moralist; a realist with acute - often cynical- observation, and a visionary
portraying the exile and the kingdom to come. (4)

BANKIM AND LITERATURE

I shall begin this chapter with an extract from the Cambridge History Of English
Literature:.In the process we shall perceive what the English feel about a native
writer

"Despite the spread of the knowledge of English among the

educated classes of India, Indians wrote comparatively little
that can be regarded as permanent additions to English
literature. The adoption of English as the language of the
universities had the altogether unexpected, though in every
way desirable, result of revivifying the vernaculars.
Stimulated by English literature and English knowledge,
Bankim Chandra Chatterji, the first graduate of Calcutta
University, created Bengali fiction. Under the influence of
the works of Scott, he wrote successful historical novels,
and followed these with novels of Indian social life. Bankim,
undoubtedly, was the first creative genius who sprang from
the Indian renascence brought about in the nineteenth
century by the introduction of English education. But he
deliberately turned his face away from all attempts to gain a
reputation as an English writer.* (5)

What we find here is a colonial construct Bankim can hardly be categorized as easily.
More intriguing, perhaps, is what Bankim felt about himself:

"Since early youth I have asked myself this question:

'What shall I do with this life? What is worth doing?
All my life I have sought an answer to this question.“(6)

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The fictional writings of Bankim portray in varied lineaments this confused wanderer
lost in a dark wood, riddled with desire. A well-known critic describes the novelist as
a poet of the primal urge. His talent is both creative and intellective. He is known in
Bengal as Sahitya-Samrat (Emperor of the literary realm) and it is in the fitness of
things that we should be mainly interested in his literary achievement Bankim
serially published his first novel Rajmohan’s WIfe.He never brought out this novel in
a bode form. The experience of this novel writing in English made him realize that he
could write most effectively only in his mother tongue.

"As the day looks to the sun’s favour for radiance, this
difficult task seeks your aid and chooses you as the
instrument."(7)

THE MAKING OF THE INDIAN NOVEL

"Those interested in the history of Indian Writing in English

know about the existence of the novel, but even for them it
(Rajmohan's Wife ) has been little more than a dead entry
carried over from one bibliography to another, without
trying to exhume the corpse, or attempting to perform a
post-mortem.a( 8)

It was in 1864 that a 26-year-old deputy magistrate, Bankim Chandra Chatteiji,

started writing his first novel Rajmohan ’s Wife was written in English and appeared
serially in a magazine (Indian Field).From childhood Bankim had been interested in
literature; he believed that writing would be appropriate medium for his particular
gifts rather than government service. And yet, Rajmohan's Wife shows no sign of
genius, nor did it arouse much interest among the readers when it was serialized. This
literary effort by India’s first Bachelor of Arts, Bankimchandra, was in the same
mould as all the other poems, stories and essays that used to be written in those days
by those who had newly been educated in English.(9)

From die journals of nineteenth century Bengal we find how the Caliban Prosper©
identity was created through language.

"If a native is anxious to produce an effect among his fellow

countrymen to put down Koolinism, to urge the remarriage of
widows, to place the medical caste on a level with the
priestly class, or to advance any other social charge, he

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 addresses the public through the medium of the native
tongue. English is now become the classic language of Bengal.
But Bengalee is still its indigenous Anglo-Saxon. The idea
that English will ever supersede the native tongue in Bengal,
and that the language of thirty millions of people will die out,
is both philosophically and practically absurd.

The more we encourage the cultivation of English the more

do the natives encourage the cultivation of their own tongue.
At the present there are thirty-five native presses in
Calcutta independent of the printing establishment of
Europeans, and they are employed almost exclusively in the
production of native works to suit the popular taste and the
national purse."( 10)

After Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) Bankim abandoned his creative project in English
altogether and went on to write novels and discursive prose in BanglaJrlis Bangla
novels, historical as well as social ami contemporary, are being constantly
reinterpreted and deconstructed from new perspectives - for example, feminist theory
or colonial discourse- to unravel new layers of meanings. But his only novel in
English has left behind no such wake. Even those critics who made dismissive
references to the novel, designating it as ‘a false start’, seldom took the trouble to
explain what exactly was wrong with itNirad C.Choudhuri wrote:

"The two men who created modern Bengali literature wrote

their first works in English before they even thought of
writing anything in Bengali. The creator of modern Bengali
poetry wrote his first long poem in English, and the creator
of Bengali fiction his first novel. But both of them found
that to do so was to go into a blind alley, which led nowhere.
For this reason they turned to Bengali...'(11)

Jogesh Chandra Bagal was of the opinion:

"Bankim's literary temperament could not be satisfied with

writing fiction in English...and he began writing
burgesnandinr (12)

In 1894, after Bankim’s death, Aurobindo Ghosh wrote a series of essays in

Induprakash, a Bombay based journal. But his writings only proved his thesis:

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 "To be original in an acquired language is hardly feasible...
something unnatural and spurious about it - like speaking
with a stone in the mouth or walking with stilts. -(13)

THE GENRE

Most of the early Indo-Anglian experiments in literature were done in verse. The
novel was a late entrant One reason for this may be found in the feet that the novel as
an art form came to India with the British and it was new in every Indian literature
even though it must be said that the Indo-Anglian novel came into existence long
after the novel had become an established genre in other Indian languages.The delay
in the development of prose fiction in Indian literature has often been related to the
late emergence of the historical sense among Indians. The novel as it developed in the
western world is particularly concerned with time and space and their effects on
man..Therefore, even if Indo-Anglian poetry could be written by Indians in the
Victorian idiom, fashioned by a sensibility moulded by a culture seven thousand
miles away, the emergence of a genuine Indo-Anglian novel presupposed historical
and geographical awareness of the Indian situation.Since the novelist’s subject is
man-in-society; his subject-matter must also be the texture of manners and
conventions by which social man defines his own identity.The fact that the language
of this definition was English did not automatically secure any guidance of unearned
benefitlndo-Anglian literature may have begun as a colonial venture vaguely aspiring
to continue the great English tradition, but where the Indo-Anglian novel was
concerned, more was needed than great models.( 14 )

There are questions regarding Bankim’s choice of Language. Why did he choose to
write in a language, which would restrict the readership of his novel? One could ask a
few more on his style, subject-matter (an innocuous social intrigue) and dramatis
personae. Before venturing to answer these questions we should fix our mindset on
the nineteenth century backdrop. Bankim was educated in English. He belonged to
the first batch of graduates from the University of Calcutta. By profession, he was a
deputy under the British government Bankim, therefore suited the cast he was being
moulded into. He was the Bengali Saheb to be uplifted before the ignorant millions.
He was to become the indigenous hero, to serve as a model for the natives. Bankim
performed his part well enough. He tried his hand at literary efforts, as was the
fashion of the day.But he was ahead of his peers.Bankim wrote a serialized English
novel in The Indian Field. Today, we surmise several reasons for his attempt It
could be from a desire to earn feme by writing in the language of the colonizer.
Perhaps it was gestures of acquiesce, and Bankim wrote this tract to convince the
rulers that he could write novels. Though Bankim never published this book, yet
Rajmohan’s Wife contains all the seeds of style developed in the later novels of
Bankim.

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Read today, after 140 yeas of its first appearance JRajmohan’s Wife remains a
fascinating text for a number of reasons. In India, the novel as a genre was in its
infancy in 1864 and, while romance was acceptable as a narrative mode, there was no
precedent as yet of mimetic rendering of domestic life in fiction, or of weaving a plot
out of contemporary social and familial situations. Yet Rajmohan’s Wife is very
nearly realistic in its representation of East Bengal middle-class life.

In die following sections I shall attempt a critical analysis of various aspects of this
novel. From the analysis we shall try to deduce theories of colonial myth or
subversion.

REALISM

Rajmohan’s Wife prefigures some of the concerns that surface later in Bankim’s
Bangla novels where he returns to realism and contemporary life - the stealing of a
wi 1 \(Krishnakanter Will, 1876), extra-marital passion(E&Aa-6rfAsAa,l 873) female
initiative {Indira, 1873), childhood attachment growing into adolescent love
{Chandrashekhar, 1875), and several other less worked out motifs.

SOCIAL REALITY

Social reality of the Bengal zeminders strikes the reader straight in the
face.Particularly direct in this aspect is Chapter IV, which is entitled::“Tfte Hstory
Of The Rise And Progress OfA Zemindar Family ”

*It is a notorious fact that many eminent zeminder families

in Bdngal owe their rise to some ignoble origin" (15)

Bangshibadan Ghose who lived "as a menial servant with an old zemindar of East
Bengal* had after the demise of his master, became the ‘lord of his mistress’s
bosom’.Bangshi managed to free the landed possession into ready money and
movables by enthralling the young widow. After his mission was over the widow died
of unintelligible fever. Thus the Khansama Bangshi acquired property without
pedigree. He shifted to his paternal abode; Radhaganj.This village by the river
Madhumati becomes the backdrop of this novel.

SNAPSHOTS OF RURAL BENGAL HEARTH

The scene of reality as witnessed in the oriental household is drawn with deft strokes.

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It is a real picture presented to a foreigner, who would hardly enter the inner citadels
of a typical Bengali household Bankim lares the inner sanctum to the foreigner
through die eyes of a desi writer. I have taken an excerpt from Chapter V:

A Visit To The Zenana:

“Madhav ...hurried into the inner apartments.Jn that busy

hour of zenana life. There was a servant woman, black,
rotund and eloquent, demanding the transmission to her
hands of sundry articles of domestic use, without however
making it at all intelligible to whom her demands were
particularly addressed. There was another, who boasted
similar blessed corporal dimensions, but who had thought it
beneath her dignity to shelter them from view; and was
busily employed, broomstick in hand, in demolishing the little
mountains of the skins and stems of sundry culinary
vegetables which decorated the floors, against which the
half-naked dame never aimed a blow but coupled it with a
curse on those whose duty it had been to prepare the said
vegetables for dressing.

A third ensconced herself in the yard which formed the

grand receptacle of household filth, and was employing all
her energies in scouring some brass pots; and as her ancient
arms whirled round in rapid evolutions the scarcely less
active engine in her mouth hurled dire anathemas against the
unfortunate cook...the subject of debate...the quantity of
ghee...the huge bunti severing the bodies of fishes ...elegant
forms flitting across the dalans and veranda with dirty
earthen lamps lighted in their little hands. „.the tinkling of
their silver malL.young girls very clamourously engaged in
playing Agdum Bagdum in the corner of a terrace.

Madhav stood for seme moments in utter hopelessness of

ever making himself heard in this the veriest of Babels."(16)

The magical transformation is achieved through powerful phrases. This change in the
boisterous andarmahal also imply the patriarchal society where the woman is
engaged in all but trivialities and is silenced by the lord of the house.

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The story of Matangmi married to a villainous man is astonishingly rich in detail in
the depiction of interiors and the quotidian routine of women’s lives.

NATURE

"fleecy clouds of white wandered in the solitude of the now

purified blue of the heavens..." (17)

The story is enacted at Radhaganj, an East Bengal village, by the banks of river
Madhumati.lt has the laid back lushness which we experience in the novels of Scott
or Hardy. Like the pervasive Egdon Heath (18), the vicinity of Radhaganj acquire the
importance of a protagonist

“One Chaitra afternoon the summer heat was gradually

abating with the weakening of the once keen ray of the sun;
a gentle breeze was blowing; it began to dry the perspiring
brow of the peasant in the field and play with the moist
locks of village women just risen from their siesta ." (19)

The romanticism of the Deputy pervades the almost lyrical prose, suffused in the
beauty of nature.

“Childhood! That time when she used to lie in the open air
arm in arm with her beloved Hemangini, gazing on the silver
orb that poured the sweet light and the interminable deep
blue ocean on which she sailed!" (20)

The description of nocturnal journey which a young girl of eighteen undertakes would
seem improbable, except for the reader of Christabel. (21)

“Her heart beat as she walked through the jungly path. The
dreary silence and the dark shadows appalled her. The
knotted trunks of huge trees showed like so many unearthly
forms watching her progress in malignant silence. In each
leafy bough that shot over her darkened path, she fancied
there lurked a demon. In each dark recess she could see the

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 skulking form and glistening eyes of a spectre or of a
robber. All the wild tales she had heard of fierce visages
and ghostly grins that had appalled to death the belated
traveler, rushed to her imagination. The light crack of the
falling leaf, the flapping wings of some frightened night-bird
as it changed its unseen seat among the dark branches, the
slight rustle of crawling reptiles among the fallen leaves,
even her footsteps made her heart fainter and fainter. Still
the resolute girl hurried on, taking the name of her patron
goddess a thousand times within her heart, and now ami then
muttering a prayer. (22)

"The paling blue of the starry heavens was now covered by

numbers of deriving clouds, while one dense and settled mass
of black hovered over the distant horizon and shed a sombre
grey over the dimly seen outlines of the far-off tree-tops
on its verge„.Matangini was too deeply absorbed in her own
thoughts to heed the appearance of external nature." (23)

It goes beyond realism in die evocative use of nature -in the account of Matangini’s
secret journey through a dark and stormy night, it uses the descriptive conventions of
Vaishnava love poetry, and in anticipating several of Bankimchandra’s more mature
novels where landscape and nature are employed as narrative motifs.

LANGUAGE

The other aspect of die novel that specially intrigues us today is the language. In
Rajmohans Wife Bankim attempts to negotiate the semantic and connotative hurdles
that are involved in rendering an Indian (in this case Bengali) ethos in die English
Language, without any previous model whatsoever, forces us to think about the
interconnectedness of culture and language, narrative voice and implied readership-
issues that have not ceased to be relevant

It is indeed worth considering the complex circumstances that made Bankim shift
from English to mother-tongue before he could gain national recognition, while in
late twentieth-century India die process may well get reversed. (24)

MELODY AND EROTICISM

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Bankim’s language is melodious in evoking a typical Bengal ambience. The subtle
touch of eroticism, intertwined with the narrative, might be to impress the English
reader.

"Yet her bloom was as full of charm as that of the land-lotus

half scorched and half radiant under the noonday sun. Yet no
sculptor had ever created anything nearly as perfect as the
form half revealed by the neat sari she wore." (25)

THE VOICE OF WOMEN

"Why should you remain in a cage all the day." (26)

The language of the women characters seem a little assertive. Given the physical and
sociological setting of the nineteenth century, the women in real life, hardly had such
a strong voice. Perhaps Bankim wanted to convince the English that die women too
benefited from English education.

RURAL URBAN DIVIDE

There is a constant build up of the rural urban divide.The female protagonist of the
storyJsfatangini,is an urban girLBankim has given her a grace which ,he believed
,was to be found in the urban dweller.

“woman of eighteen' _.'was no daughter of the banks of the

Madhumati, but was born and brought up on the Bhagirathi in
some place near the capital".

Yet, ironically, the novelist proves that however courageous or outspoken Matangini
was, she was still a character belonging to nineteenth century Bengal. She lacks an
identity, a feet proved by the title of the novel whore her identity is as Rajmohan’s
wife.

Later, in chapter 2, Madhab and Mathur discuss the lives in Radhagunj, a rural village
and the capital Calcutta..Bankim deftly weaves the social ethos in his narration;

"Madhav. "Why not? You have spent your life in the shade of
the mango gardens of Radhaganj.I have spent my life in
the stench of Calcutta I love Calcutta.

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 Mathur. "Stench only? The filth of the drains with rotten
rats and cats thrown in. Surely a feast for the gods!"

Madhab smiled and said, "It is not for these that I go to

Calcutta.I have business, too."

Mathur. "Business indeed! New horses, new carriages,

visiting all the sharks of the town, throwing away money,
burning theoil, drinks for anglicized friends, and
pleasures."(27)

EAST MINGLES WITH WEST

The author combines the East and West In his narration. In Chapter 3, we find the
exclamation ‘Go to Jericho coupled with *Durga save me! *

We are also introduced to new phrases such as *indirect agency ofsari government'
(28), which tries to establish the influence of women on men for achieving desired
result The domestic influence of Hemangini, had secured a job from her husband
Madhav for elder sister Matangini’s husband Rajmohan.

EXOTIC INTERSPERSING OF PHRASES

“A messenger waiting for him with a letter which he said was

'Zaruri'.
Bankim embodies the characteristics of a typical Indian writer writing in English,
who intersperses native words in the text It adds quaint flavour to his language. It is a
style emulated by the later writers of the IWE genre. The English reader is
deliberately given a native vocabulary, for example, ‘ Vakalatnama to Babvs ’ (29)
which Bankim thought would help the rulers to interact with the ruled.

Language, containing native terms, adds to the tension as the plot unfolds. Matangini
informs Madhav;

"To-night, even now they will make their attack as soon as

the moon will sink in half a danda."

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The preparation for counter attack is typically Bengali, where robust men with oiled
sticks served as personal security of zemindars and the aristocrat

“Before total darkness had covered the face of the earth,

the house -top might be seen full of human forms flitting
against the sky.These were select men from the tenantry
who lived close to the house and from among whom a little
lattial force could be collected at a moment's notice. These
were mostly armed with latties, spears, bricks and other
missiles ready to be hurled at the doomed invader that
durst approach the walls or enter the house." (30)

NARRATIVE MODEL

Rqjmohan’s Wife was Bankim’s initial and tentative attempt to write fiction based on
a Victorian narrative model to which colonial education had exposed a new
generation of urban Indians. This novel predates Bankim’s success in the romance
mode. It attempts a realistic representation of contemporary Bengali life, modified no
doubt by the pulls of other narrative traditions: Sanskrit Kavya (for example, in the
metaphor-laden description of female beauty - ‘charm as that of the land-lotus hay-
scorched and hayradiant by the noon-day*), or the Gothic novel (in the evocation of
terror: dark dungeons lit ‘by a solitary and feeble lamp’ while ‘massive doors
creaked on their hinges’).

There is also an attempt in Rajmohan’s Wife to foreground the ways in which the
home and the world are inextricably linked, a relationship which also happened to be
of some concern to the classic realist novelists of nineteenth-century Europe, by
locating the drama within the conjugal and domestic space in relation to the external
arena of property, legality, crime and the colonial administration. (31) Mathur was
displeased when Madhav objected to discussing the character of Rajmohan’s wife. He
says;

“Oh the college has done for you! It's impossible to talk with
people who have once gone there and recited the jargon of
the red faced sahibs".

“a smattering of English converts our brethren into fiery

sahibs!

"Marriage is called a lottery..."(32)

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The author shows great skill in weaving the psyche ant the physical setting. He relates
Matangini’s psychological restlessness with the,

“sultry heat incident to the season".

The Midnight Plotting creates the suspense on many levels. What could be those
happy hours in the past over which Matangini broods? Whose accomplice is
Rajmohan? What shall the lady do after eavesdropping on such a plot? Perhaps, since
the novel was serialized, it has an element of suspense in every chapter, which is
sustained throughout

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

“A little vermilion adorned her forehead...some betel leaves

dyed her lips. Thus armed a formidable champion of the
world-conquering sex set out with a pitcher in her arm". (33)

How does a writer link living characters and situations? Bankimchandra stresses four
things: wide range of experience of the stratified social reality and of the people of
different categories/classes; sympathy; imaginative power; and restraint. But his chief
emphasis is on sympathetic understanding. Long familiarity with actual world and
with men and women constitutes the substantive base of fictional narratives and gives
them the validity of truth. Again, experience can provide genuine insight only when it
is combined with sympathy. Sympathy, as Bankimchandra explicates it, is akin to
Keats’ negative capability and Hopkins’ thisness. It is not condescension. It means
identification and is something more than projecting oneself into another self, it is a
complete surrender to something outside the self and amounts to self-annihilation.
(34) The elaborate unfolding of the plot and the intricate relationships among the
dramatis personae create the impression that Rajmohan’s Wife was intended to be a
longer novel than it actually turned out to be. The dyadic introduction of die
characters in the first two chapters, two women in one and two men in the other, with
sharply contrasting attributes and the depiction of Matangini’s misery in the third, is
followed by a long and complicated genealogical flashback whose purpose might
have been to provide hereditary or environmental justification for the behaviour
patterns of the characters.

Mathur and Madhav are collaterals descended from a scheming ancestor who
appropriated money through dubious means to rise in society. Though the author does
not state this explicitly, Mathur’s crudity may be attributed to his half-baked village
education (35), while Madhav’s refinement may be the result of die English education
he received in Calcutta. Madhav’s father was actually attracted to the city by the
luxury and profligacy Calcutta promised to young men with money, but the
unexpected by-product of this move was the exposure of his son to the new liberal

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humanist ethos of English education. The dialogic myth of Calcutta that was to
evolve through the nineteenth century (the city as a site for culture and refinement as
well as for debauchery and moral degradation) is already quite visible here, as for
example in the conversation between Mathur and Madhav in chapter 2 and later in the
women’s talk about rural and urban hair styles in chapter 14.

In many of Bankim’s Bangla novels the English-knowing urban dilettante is the butt
of author’s ridicule (for example, Debendra in Krishnakanter Will), but in
Rajmohan’s Wife Madhav’s knowledge of English and his Calcutta background are
set up as signs of moral superiority over Mathur who stares at the women as they
return from the river carrying water, indulges in bawdy gossip and uses illegal means
to satisfy his craving for money.

At a crucial moment in the narrative we find Madhav Ghose reclining on a:

"Mahogany couch covered with satin.A single but well-fed

light illumined the chamber.Some two or three English
books were scattered over the couch and one of them
Madhav held in his hand...", (36)

The English books are obviously signifiers of a more civilized way of life - as is the
western furniture - to which Mathur Ghosh, despite his money, power and mofussil
magnificence’ can never aspire.In Mathur’s bedchamber the varnish of the almirahs
and chests has been ‘considerably ...soiled by time and rough usage’ and the walls
are decorated with two large paintings

"from one glowered the grim black figure of Kali and the
other..displayed the crab-like form of Durga".

The unusually negative charge in the description of the goddesses is surprising

because in Bankim’s Bangla writing we never find these icons treated in such a
dismissive manner. These instances make one return to the question posited earlier -
how much does the choice of the writer’s language (hence of audience) determine his
tone and attitude?

While in most of Bankim’s Bangla novels die Englishman is either the abductor or
the adversary ,in Rajmohan’s Wife the white man is ascribed a positive and
stabilizing function. When the seemingly invincible local alliance of patriarchy,
criminality and money more or less destroys Matangini by the end of the novel, the
only redressal, almost as divine retribution, comes from the fair-minded white
administrator - a shrewd and restlessly active Irishman. Nowhere in Bankim’s Bangla
corpus do we find die justice end efficiency of imperial rule so unequivocally, if
briefly, proclaimed as in his solitary English novel.

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The criminals are duly punished at the end of the novel, but even the British legal
system is powerless to redeem Matangini.When in the last chapter just deserts are
meted out to all the characters according to the conventions of British Victorian
novelists,Matangini poses a problem for the author. She cannot be returned to the
conjugal space from which she has dislodged herself through an emotionally
sanctioned but socially unforgivable act. Sending her back to her parents’ home is a
temporary solution, after which an early death becomes expedient for the tidiness of
the closure as well as resolution of the author’s own moral dilemma. By making her
confess her love for a person not her husband

"Ah hate me not, despise me not...Spurn me not for this last

weakness; this, Madhav, this, may be our last meeting; it
must be so, and too, too deeply have I loved you-too deeply
do I love you still, to part with you forever without a
struggle". (37)

The author pushes Matangini into an uncharted and ambiguous territory from which
neither romantic sympathy nor colonial justice can deliver her to a positive future.

Matangini:

“I am your wife'. She had hitherto known him as a man of

mad heart and brutal temper, but she recoiled with horror
at the recollection that the accomplice of robbers, himself a
robber perhaps, had hitherto enjoyed her innocent
bosom.And the future?...". (38)

Matangini is impetuous and brave, but the author weighs down her confession with
rhetoric of guilt (‘sinful’, ‘impure felicity’, ‘you cannot hate me more than I hate
myself, etc.) so that she already stands condemned. Whatever may have been the
author’s moral design, despite his correctness of conduct, the passive and indecisive
Madhav gets quite overshadowed in this text by the fiery heroine.

Matangini is the first in a series of strong and transgressive women in Bankim’s

novels(Ayesha in Durgesttandini, Rohini in Krishnakanter Will, Shaibalini in
Chandrasekhar are some of the others, who have to be relentlessly punished even
tough the author and the reader may understand and admire their rebellion.

Matangini gains universality in her confessions to Madhav.She values love before

morality.Her code of conduct has made her a human being of flesh and blood

193
 "A sweet and sober pensiveness still mantled her tender
features, but it was not the pensiveness of deep-felt
enjoyment, for the wild current of passion had hurried her
to that region where naught but the present was visible, and
in which all knowledge of right and wrong is whirled and
merged in the vortex of intense present felicity...for a
moment the memory of duty, virtue, principle ceased to fling
its sombre shadow on the brightness of the impure felicity
in which her heart [reveled]1*. (39)

Madhav:

The object of her love Madhav, has been refined by his English education into such a
paragon of scrupulous virtue that, when Matangini confronts him with her passion.

‘..for a moment the memory of duty,virtue,principle ceased

to fling its sombre shadow on the brightness of the impure
felicity in which her heart [reveled].There was a fire in that
voluptuous eye..." (40)

All he can do is to weep and implore her to forget him

‘At your father's house the flame was kindled which seems
fated to consume us both and which then we were too young
to quench by desperate efforts, but if even then we never
flinched from the path of duty, shall we not, now that years
of affliction have schooled our hearts, eradicate from them
the evil which corrodes ami blisters them? Oh! Matangini, let
us forget each other. Let us separate. "(41)

"...you have made many sacrifices, make one last sacrifice.

Root out the feeling from a heart on which no impurity
should leave a spot. Forget.' (42 ).

It is this philosophy of culture that Bankim expounds in his later novels. This extract
clearly reveals the author’s fascination with refinement and the English taste.

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PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE

"Sensibility and refinement of the heart lend to the passion of

love the form of a fervent and etherialized feeling which finds
its gratification in the communing of heart with heart; while, in
grosser natures, it degenerates into the yearnings of desire or
perhaps into a blind obedience to the mystic power of female
lowliness; but the strength of the passion can be equally great
in either case .It was not strange therefore that Mathur loved
Champak, or if we may not use the word love, was fond of her
blindly and ardently. * (43 )

English education imparted Madhav with a refined taste which his cousin Mathur
lacked.

"The house of Mathur Ghose was a genuine specimen of

mofussil magnificence united with mofussil want of
cleanliness. * (44)

They strive at a culture beyond their sensibility.

"On the two remaining walls, and placed lower than the
terrific Kali and the gorgeous Durga, might be seen arrayed
a few specimens of European art, and the exquisite
conception of the Virgin and Child might itself be seen
adorning the chamber the inmates of which had little
knowledge what the artist's genius and engraver's skill had
strove to represent.." (45)

Mathur and Rajmohan are rubbished at the end of the novel. Rajmohan is variously
described as ‘the clown’ or ‘the veiy image of Death’. They manifest the puny
individual lacking the refinement of English education and thus perish.

Characterization is not Bankim’s forte in this apprentice novel.Matangini only

occasionally gets illuminated as a character. The other characters remain sketchy by
and large, but what really disturbs the reader is the abruptness of the end.

"As to Madhav, Champak and the rest .some are dead and the
others will die. Throwing this flood of light on their past and
future history, I bid you, good reader, Farewell".(46 )

195
SUFFERING OF WOMEN

Inscribed in the text we also find an early statement about tbe helplessness and
claustrophobia of women in incompatible marriages that was to be a recurrent
concern in Indian fiction for many years to come. Given the rigidity of the power
structure within the family among upper-caste Bengalis in the nineteenth century, it
seems surprising that the first Indian novel in a contemporary setting should have
focused on a woman of uncommon vitality ,who refused to be completely subjugated
either by her brutal husband or by the expectations of society. Matangini’s unrequited
love for her own sister’s husband is presented with authorial sympathy, but the
abruptness and the ambivalence of the ending may be the result of anxiety that such
women of energy generated by posing a threat to the social order and creating a moral
dilemma for the author. (47)

It is not merely a coincidence that several major European writers also have women
as their protagonists, (eg. Emma, Vanity Fair, Jane Eyre,Madame Bovary^Anna
Karenia,Mlddlemarch, Portrait of a Lady, Tess of the DubervUles).Classic realism,
which was the dominant fictional mode of the time,attempted to convey in concrete
and specific details the complex relationship between individuals and society by
whose code they were expected to live.Although in the present novel Rajmohan
interests us very little s a person, Matangini’s identity ,as announced in the title is
irrevocably connected to her marital status.

Apart from this beautiful and spirited woman wasted on a brutal and surly husband,
there are other female characters in the novel-Kanak married to an absent and
polygamous husband who, according to custom of Kulin Brahmans is not obliged to
provide her with a home. Tara, the wife of powerful landlord is a victim of wifely
misery. Compared to the later heroines of Bankim’s Bangla novels -
KapalkundalaJPrafulla or Shanti - these women seem somewhat perfunctorily
sketched Two chapters stand out The mock-serious account of the bustle and
commotion in chapter2, and the more relaxed scene in chapter 14.,when the slanting
rays of the later afternoon sun fell at regular intervals through the balcony rails in an
upstairs veranda where women sit around dressing each others’ hair or painting their
feet with ‘red lac’, discussing the different ways of braiding hair in Radhaganj and
Calcutta. But both these engaging scenes are suddenly shattered by the unexpected
arrivals of the masters of the houses, abruptly silencing the women into awe and
making them scurry and hide from the authoritarian male gaze Compared to this
predictable man-woman relationship, the equations among the women across the
classes have a more nuanced texture in the novel - of mutual bonding, subtle rivalry,
friendship, sympathy or betrayal. Suki’s mother and Karuna,domestic servants
both,become,within the limited frame of this brief novel, as concretely realized as the
landlord’s wives.( 48)

196
PROBABLE READER

When Bankim, who was in the first graduating batch of the newly founded Calcutta
University, began to write Rqjmohan’s Wife, he must have known that the English-
reading population of Bengal was not very widespread. Did he visualize clearly who
was going to be his reader? The half-hearted attempts at textual explanations of
cultural details suggest a vague awareness of readers who may be outsiders to the
Bengali way of life - possibly the British administrators in India, I have tried to select
a few such cases where the reader is given explanations in the foot-note.

"The other laughed and said, * Oh, its Oidi. * What kindness!
Whose face was it that X first saw on getting up this
morning?"

* Literally, "elder sister*: used also to address or refer to

friends or acquaintances older than oneself, Ed.

"The conch-shell worker was no doubt a descendant of

Visvakarma+ himself*

God of the handicrafts.Ed. *

The writer tries to explain not only words and phrases, but also discusses social
customs as if in an aside. He explains, Hemangini belonged to

"that tender age when wives in her country speak always

timidly to their husband . * (49)

Bankim comes in and out of the story. After describing the wrath of Rajmohan, he
says:

‘It is unnecessary to try the patience of my readers by

reproducing all of his Billingsgate.. * (50)

Bankim incorporates in his style English idioms like ‘Billingsgate’ with typically
tribal rural Bengali words. Apadevata is the evil; spirit and khirki the postern gate of
the house. (51) An analysis of these words shows their rural origin:

• brass kalsi-pitcher
• blue mishi-tooth-powder
• anchal-skirt
• thenthe-plain hemless c!oth(Chaptr Xii, p.49.
• tat screens- split bamboo

197
 • pan-beetel leaf
• gola-handi-pot of cow dung plaster
• go down-warehouse( 52)

Even in his romantic descriptive passages the novelist tries his best to introduce
native birds.

"The still lingering water-drops on the leaves of trees and

creepers glittered and shone like thousand gems as they
received the slanting rays of the luminary. Through the
openings in the thick-knit boughs of the groves glanced the
mild ray on the moistened grass beneath. The newly
awakened and joyous birds raised their dissonant voices,
while at intervals the papta * sent forth its thrilling notes
into the trembling air..."(53)

The author not only familiarizes the English reader with the Indian species of singing
bird, but perhaps like the papia tries to establish himself as an native writer who can
write like the English colonizer.

Mathur’s house abounds in indigenous elements. These reveal to the readers the
sectors of native life that demand refinement through English association.

"Numerous sketches in charcoal, which showed, we fear,

nothing of the conception of boys and indigenous girls who
contrived to while away hungry hours by essays in the arts
of designing and of defacing wall."

Now in the last decade of the twentieth century, when many more Indians are writing
in English than before, we are so accustomed to this literary phenomenon that we
seldom pause to reflect on why, and for which audience, a Bengali or a Marathi or a
Tamil writer should want to write in English (54)

THE COLONIZER’S AGENDA

In the busy society, which extended out from Calcutta to encompass the villages of
Bengal, English usage predominated. It was after all, Bankim explained, the language
of government and of earning a livelihood,

“a vessel of much learning, and the ladder to the acquisition

of knowledge. “

198
Furthermore, Bengalis learned English from infancy, and the language had earned a
place of honour as a second mother tongue. Finally - and here he narrowed his focus
to those in the group with literary ambition - it was through the use of English that
Bengalis earned respect from the English*.

“If there is no respect from the English/ he said, ‘there is

no respect at all, or whether there is or isn't any is all the
same. What the English don't hear is howling in the forest;
what the English don't see is ghee in the ashes. " (55)

In this serialized novel Bankim subtly introduces issues which he later developed to
their fullest in his Bangla novels. The rural urban division is a construct, which the
rulers would relish The city is the reconstruct of culture. Even though the cousins
have the same forefather, yet the city polish enables Madhav to survive the
tribulations of social intrigue.

Bangshi the menial servant had three sons, the eldest son Ramakanta

"viewed with eyes of jealousy the encroachments that were

being made in the ancient manners and usages by the
influence of western civilization"

He had bequeathed his share in the hands of his son Mathur, but

"steadily forborne to send his son to an English school, which

he condemned as a thing not only useless but as positively
mischievous"..

The second son of Banshibadan ,Ramkartai had shifted to Calcutta.

"Influenced by the example of the metropolitans, he had

bestowed on his son Madhav as good an education as he could
receive in Calcutta"

The author draws a tonal difference between the nature of education-indigenous and
Engiish.Madhav is a young babu who jests with dignity on seeing his sister-in-law
enter his room, a ritual not often repeated in those days, he says:

"I wish you were an English Memshahib, sister-in-law...that I

might offer you a seat".

In contrast we have illiterate Kanak showing more vivacity.“Ma gow!” said Kanak
with a shudder (56) Once again in the domestic discussions and daily chores; we can

199
feel repeated references to the high taste and culture of the English elite, which
Bengali natives could well strive for.

Bankhn perfectly fits in with the hegemonic construct that the words of Macaulay had
predicted thirty years ago in 1835.He is the fullest embodiment of the Indian,
“English in taste, in opinion, in morals, and in intellect”.

Bankim was one of seven students in the first graduating batch when the University
of Calcutta was set up. Before he went up to Hoogly College he had already studied
English from two Englishmen Stydd and Sinclair in Midnapore School, While
studying English in college he started publishing poetry in Bangla journals like
Sambad Prabhakar and Sambad Sudhiranjan, but he chose English for his first
sustained piece of prose - which was written six years after he came out of
college.Bangla did not have a model of novel writing at that time - he was obviously
emulating examples from English literature.

Letters between fathers and sons were written in English when both were ‘educated’
with colonizer’s idiom. Nirad Choudhuri with his eye for cultural incongruities
observes how Bangla almanacs, normally consulted for astrological information
necessary for regulating daily life, came by the end of the century also to include
model letters in English for the use of fathers and sons. As an example of how
language can transform modes of thought and behaviour, he cites one such letter
where, in response to a request for money from the son studying in Calcutta,the father
writes: ‘Your mother, like myself, feels grieved’ at such extravagance.Chaudhuri
comments:

"No Hindu father would refer to the mother in discussing

money matters with his son and if he did, it would be “I and
your mother" rather than "your mother and I" which the
language necessitates. We could not merely pay the tithe of
mint and anise and cumin to the language and omit the
weighty matter of revising our attitudes towards our wives
and husbands." (57)

It may not be easy to determine how much of this revision was merely a matter of
surface adjustments to temporarily accommodate the demands of English
phraseology, and how much actually percolated to the level of perception or
consciousness. This question occasionally surfaces while we read Rajmohan’s Wife.
When an unsophisticated village woman of East Bengal is made to claim, ‘Go to
Jericho!’ as a phrase of friendly remonstrance, or when the author chooses certain
lexical items external to the ethos of the story (e.g. ‘olive’ to describe a woman’s
complexion, or ‘Billingsgate’ to describe low or vituperative language) the reader is
troubled by the thought that a second hand and bookish predilection is regulating
expression. A more serious question arises about the compatibility between culture

200
and language arises when Matangini is made to articulate her illicit love for he
brother-in-law in the passionate language of English Romantic poetry.

Was Rajmohan’s Wife a false start because the author chose to write in English, or
was it because it deployed an narrative model which, for whatever reason turned out
to be unsuitable for his purpose at that moment? Does choice of language - hence
inescapably of audience - inadvertently condition the semantic connotations of a text
or implicitly determine its ideological base? As the novel was being serialized, was
the writer himself affected by the awareness of the lack of a sizeable reading
community, a suspicion that gets confirmed by the author’s declining involvement in
the events of the novel in the later chapters and an undue sense of haste at the end? In
literary discourse causes and effects can never be conclusively established but
questions like these have been tried to be explored in this brief analysis of the novel.

His subsequent decision of never again writing in English may have had as much to
do with his realization of the illusory nature of his audience as with his nationalist
ideology, or his honest artistic self appraisal.(58)

PRODIGAL SON

"Captious critics raise a clamour of censure. Ducgesnandini

was filled with foreign sentiments.Bankimchandra had
incorporated foreign ideas, Bankimbabu was crazy.But this
censure was drowned in a country-wide acclaim that rose to
the skies.There is evidence enough of foreign influence in
burgesnandini."

After Rajmohan’s Wife, Bankim never attempted to write imaginative literature in

English, though he continued to write essays and discursive pieces in English and
actively participated in various debates about religion and culture in the columns of
local English newspapers. Bankim never made any literary statement either about his
decision to write in English or about his return to his mother tongue .If he did so in
personal correspondence or conversation, these have not survived. Even after he
abandoned English as a medium for imaginative literature, he remained alert to the
political possibilities of English as the language of national consolidation. In the first
issue of Bangadarshan, the journal that he founded in 1872, he wrote:

“There are certain issues that do not pertain to the Bengalis

done,where the whole of India has to be addressed.Unless
we use English for such discourse how will the rest of the
country understand?. " (59)

201
But elsewhere we also find him exhorting creative writers not to write only for the
educated few (which writing in English evidently implied) and to address a wider
range of readers. If the use of English had a distinctly elite bias that excluded the
lower class, lower castes, and rural people, it also left out the women .In a remarkable
satiric sketch Bankim makes fun of the English - knowing Bengali Babu who is
contemptuous of books in his mother tongue, taking pride in his familiarity with
English literature. In contrast, Ms wife emerges as a more authentic and integrated
person, who-uncontaminated by the enslaving language - enjoys Bangla fiction
enthusiastically and without embarrassment. Bankim reminded his fellow-writers in
Bengal of this large and vital readership.

By 1870s Bankim was convinced that English was the language of polemics in India,
but not of creative literature. It is well-known that he admonished Romesh Chandra
Dutt for not writing in his mother tongue:

“You will never live by your writing in EngIish...Look at others,

Your uncles Govirtd Chandra and Sashi Chandra and
Madhusudan Dutt were the best educated men of Hindu
College in thei dayirovind Chandra and Sashi Chandra's
English poems eill never live, Madhusudan's Bengali poetry
will live as long as the Bengali language will live.. * (60 )

These words must have created an impression on the young I.C.S. officer, because
two years later Romesh Chandra wrote his first novel Banga-Btjeta in 1874,and went
on to write five more that have secured him a permanent place in the Mstory of the
Bangla novel.

In the next chapter I shall try to discuss the Bangla novels of Bankim.The aim is to
analyse the extent to which they fulfill the colonial agenda and the degree to which
they deviate from it

REFERENCE NOTES

l.Gramsci.A.(1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks ,Q..Hoare and G.N.Smith

(eds), LondontLawrence and Wishart

202
2. Chatteiji, Bankim Chandra .Letters on Hinduism, Bankim Rachanabali,edited by
Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Sahitya Samsad.

3. Bankim Chandra .’Essays In Perspective, Sahitya Academi; edited by Bhabatosh

Chatteiji, 1994; Introduction, ppxvii-xviii

4. Bankim Chandra :Essays In Perspective; Sahitya Academi; edited by Bhabatosh

Chatteiji, 1994; Introduction, (xx)

5. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-

21). Volume XIV The Victorian Age, Part Two. X. Anglo-Indian Literature.§
5. Banfdn Chandra Chatteiji.

6. The Master in Banfdmchandra’s Dharmatattva

7. JBAaravfjKirataij uniyam,3;50 Bankimchandra And Modem Bengal;

Rameshchandra Data p. 74

8. Mukheijee, Meenakshi; The Perishable Empire:Essays on Indian Writing In

English, Chapter 2,p.33

9. Gangopadhay,Sunil; Bankim Chandra .’Essays In Perspective; Sahitya Academi;

edited by Bhabatosh Chatteiji,

10. Friend of India, 7* June 1855,Ghose BenoySelections From English

Periodicals of 19^ century, Volume iii: 1849-56, Papyrus, Calcutta.pp.77-78.

11.Opening Address’, The Eye of the Beholder, Maggie Butcher (ed.),

London, 1983.

12. Bankim Rachanabali, vol 1, Calcutta: Sahitya Samsad, first pub. 1955,
present edn. 1980, p.xiv, translated by Meenakshi Mukheijee.

13. Bankim Chandra Chatteiji by a Bengali, Induprakash, 16 July to 27 August

1894.These articles were signed ‘Zero’.The present quotation is from the fifth article,
‘His Literary History’, reprinted in The Harmony of Virtue, p.90.

14. Mukheijee; Meenakshi: The Twice Bom Fiction,Themes and Techniques of the
Indian Novel in English, 2005;Chapter 2,The Literary Landscape:p.29

15. Rajmohans Wife: p.10 Bankim Rachanabali,edited by Jogesh Chandra Bagal,

Sahitya Samsad.,p. 10

16.1bid; Ch V, p.18.

17. Ibid; Chapter Xii, p.48

203
18. Hardy Thomas; The Return of The Native.

19. Rajmohan’s Wife, Chapter l;The Drawers of Water. 1 Bankim Rachanabali,

Sahitya Sangsad.

20. Ibid; Charter VI, p.20

21. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: Christabel.

22. Rajmohan’s Wife, ChapterVH p.27

23. Ibid;Chapter X, p.39

24. Mukheijee, Meenakshi; The Perishable Empire:Essays on Indian Writing In

English,Chapter 2,p.32

25. Rajmohan’s Wife ;Chapter l,p.2

26.Ibid;Chapter l,p.3.

27. Ibid;Chapter 2, p.6

28.Ibid;ChapterIV,p.l4

29. Ibid, Chapter V, p.17

30. Ibid;Chapter VII, p.34

31. Mukheijee, Meenakshi; The Perishable Empire:Essays on Indian Writing In

English,Chapteir 2,p.31

32. Rajmohan’s Wife ;Chaptei2, p.7

33. Ibid;Chapter 1, p.l

34. Bankim Chandra :Essays In Perspective, Sahitya Acadetni; edited by

Bhabatosh Chatteiji, 1994; Introduction, p xxii

35. ”an exceedingly apt scholar in the science of chi cane,fraud and torture.”:
Rajmohans Wife.BdsMm Ractianabali .edited by Jogesh Chandra Bagal, Sahitya
Samsad.,Chapter IV, p. 11

36. Ibid;ChapterVTH, p.32

37 Chapter IX ,p.37,

204
38. Chapter VII ,p.25

39. Chapter IX, p.37

40. Chapter IX,p.37,

41. Chapter ix, p. 3 8

42. Chapter IX,p.38,

43. Chapter Xiv, p.57.

44. Chapter XIII p.52.

45. Chapterxiii, p.54

46. Conclusion, Rajmohart’s Wife, p.88

47 Mukheijee, Meenakshi:; The Perishable Emplre:Essays on Indian Writing In

English, Chapter 2,p.39

48.1bid; Chapter 2, Rajmohan’s Wife:The First Indian English Novel, p.31

49. Chapter IV, p.13

50. Chapterm, P.9

51. Chapter VO, P.29

52 Chapter Xiii ,pp52-53

53. Chapter Xii, p.48

54 . Mukheijee, Meenakshi: The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing In

English, Chapter 2, Rajmohan’s Wife:The First Indian English Novel, p.32

55. Bankim, ‘Patrasuchana’, Bangadarshan, April- May,p.8

56. Chapter XII ,p.49

57. Chaudhuri ,Nirad C;in The Eye of the Beholder, p. 10

58. Mukheijee, Meenakshi: The Perishable Empire : Essays on Indian Writing In

English, Chapter 2, Rajmohan’s Wife:The First Indian English Novel, p.32

205
59. Banktm Rachanabali, vol.l,edited by Jogesh Chandra Bagal: (Calcutta
Sahitya Samsad,1955), p.xvi.

60. Bankim Rachanabali, vol. 1,edited by Jogesh Chandra Bagal: (Calcutta Sahitya
Samsad,1955), p.xxvii

206