07 Rajmohan's Wife

Happy Literature

Rajmohan's Wife by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay is the first ever English novel in India. Apart from that, this novel is the novelist's first novel ever.

Published in 1864, Rajmohan’s Wife is infact argued to be an allegory of modern India, of the kind of society that can rise out of the debris of an older, broken social order and of the new, albeit stunted, possibilities available to it under colonialism.

To explicate this allegory, Rajmohun’s Wife provides a backdrop a traditional Indian society and all its complex ideological, political, social, and cultural aspects. He then places the protagonist of the story, Matangini, who is the flesh and blood equivalent of Bankim’s vision of Modern India in her courage, strength, spirit and righteousness, against the limiting, unjust and socially judgmental society of old India. This contrast beautifully illustrates the differences between confining, patriarchal Indian society of that day and age and the newly emergent, liberating Modern Indian society of the kind that Bankim envisions.

About Author - Bankim Chandra Chatterjee also known as Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was one of the greatest novelists and poets of India. He is famous as author of Vande Mataram, originally in Sanskrit, the national song of India, personifying India as a mother goddess and inspiring activists during the Indian Independence Movement.

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/happy-literature/message