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The Struggle of Women in Post-Partition Bengal as Portrayed by Narendra Nath Mitra

Abstract

This paper follows the change in the social and psychological paradigms of the woman hailing
from low middle class Bengali families in post-partition Bengal as portrayed by Narendranath
Mitra. Mitra hails from an immigrant low middle class family and drawing from his struggles
against dire economic realities and those around him, he provides a sort of unique perspective
into the thinking and behaviour of this section of the society. The study reviews four of his
famous short stories, viz. Setar (Sitar,1945), Abataranika (The Prelude,1949), Cheque (1948)
and Bandhabi (The Girl-Friend,1963) to trace the evolution of women’s thinking and their
struggles towards emancipation from a predominantly patriarchal family and its boundaries.
From a life of compromise, subjugation and sacrifice, the author traces the gradual emergence
of the self identity and the determination to challenge the odds and succeed, attempting to
crystallize a potent perspective of the archaic nature of middle class value and the hypocrisy of
the male ego as it swings between acceptance and derogation of women’s rights, based on their
economic realities. But Mitra’s women are able to gradually break the psychological and social
barriers to emerge as independent entities.
Even written in the mid-90s, his stories bear a remarkable and strong similarity to the status of
women in low middle class Bengal and significant parts of India today. The gradual emergence
of women from the backgrounds to the foreground, participating more actively in pursuing
extraneous aspirations that shatter the opportunistic values and morals of a society that still
lingers in the fossilized traditions of yesteryears, follows very similar progress as we see
portrayed in Mitra’s characters. This paper tries to crystallize this journey in light of Mitra’s
chronicles of the society