Author: Judith E Walsh
Publisher: Yoda Press
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 264
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8190227238
Description
In the late nineteenth century, as dominance of British power in India led to the imposition of an alien culture on indigenous life-ways, the entire world of local domestic life and its most intimate relationships became contested ground.
This anthology offers translated selections from nine Bengali domestic manuals written by both men and women in the course of these debates and contestations. In simple and often colloquial language these how to do it books act as guides to conducting relations within a family context child rearing, and household management.
Often presented in the form of an intimate dialogue between husband and wife in the dead of the night, the translations provide an unusual, and often hilarious, insight into the home of the Bengali bhadralok in colonial times.
The manuals are unique and important historical sources both for the culture in which they occur, for nineteenth-century India in general, as well as when viewed from the global perspective. Indeed, these manuals represent writing which is in the same tradition as the famous Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management published in England in 1861, and Catharine Beecher’s manuals written in the United States between 1841 and 1869. They effectively highlight the process by which the dominant colonial culture of the Raj came to alter the intimate relationships of domestic life.
What relationship should exist between husband and wife, how a mother should raise her children, even how kitchen spices should be arranged along the storeroom wall, all find ample space in these manuals. As one hurtles from one representation of middle-class reformism to another, it becomes clear that this anthology is an invaluable addition to the rather thin collection of translated primary sources of this period.
The book will be of interest to students and scholars of gender studies, history, sociology, lay readers interested in the culture of the colonial period, as well as all informed women readers.
SOME EXCERPTS
HUSBAND: Hold on-let’s first see what training a wife needs to be a partner, fist spending money according to a good policy, second, behaving well with people, third, keeping the house orderly and learning how to do the housework, fourth making one’s husband happy. Fifth-medicine. Can you say how many that was?
WIFE: Five
HUSBAND: Don’t forget them. Another day I’ll tell you how these five should be learned. Today I’ll simply explain the relationship itself. Are you sure you’re not getting sleepy?
Contents
ACKNOWLEEGEMENTS
A NOTE ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLAITERATION
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
PART I: HUSBANDS, FAMILY AND DAILY LIFE: WHAT MEN ADVISED WOMEN
MANUAL 1: CONVERSTIONS WITH THE WIFE
The Relationship of Husband and Wife (selections) About Women
Menstruation
MANUAL 2: A HUSBAND’S ADVICE TO HIS WIFE
Eavesdropping
The Daily Activities of women
Widow Marriage
MANUAL 3: THE BENGALI WIFE
The Proper Age for Marriage
MANUAL 4: THE BENGALI WOMAN
Housework
MANUAL 5: MOTHER AND SON (CHAPER 4)
MANUAL 6: THE LAKSHMI OF THE HOME
Husband and Wife
Reading and Writing
PART II: HUSBANDS AND FAMILY: WHAT WOMEN TOLD WOMEN
MANUAL 7: THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS
Education
General Rules
MANUAL 8: WOMNE’S DHARMA
Duties of the Race of Women
The True Wife
Progress of Degradation
Final Worlds
PART III: THE WELL-ORDERED HOME
MANUAL 9: THE DUTIES OF WOMEN
The Woman
The Home
Food Making Useless things Useful
Handicrafts
Child Rearing
Nursing the Sick
Three Families
The Signs of Lakshmi by Ishanchandra Basu
The Daily Duties of women by Ishanchandra Basu
Brief Glossary
Bibliography
Name Index