Volume-XI, Issue-VI, November 2025 |
Bengali Renaissance and First Indian Novel in English: A (Con)Textual Study of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife Purbita Garai, Assistant Professor of English, Behala College, Behala, Kolkata, West Bengal, India |
Received: 21.11.2025 | Accepted: 27.11.2025 | Published Online: 30.11.2025 | Page No: 69-73 | ||||
DOI: 10.29032/ijhsss.vol.11.issue.06W.158 | |||||||
ABSTRACT | ||
Renaissance as a marker of intellectual awakening on a large scale touched different areas of Globe at different times and brought a fresh lease of life in different aspects –social, cultural and political. In India, this happened in the 19th century under the influence of Western education brought by the British colonial power and ushered colonial modernity in Indian culture and literature. In fact, in Indian perspective the term ‘renaissance’ is coterminous with the term ‘modernity’. The influx of Western ideas created a heavy imprint flowering new type of literary output in the field of native culture. Novel as a literary genre made itself conspicuous at about this time in India. Since Bengal was the first part of the country to welcome English education, it was in the able hands of such pioneers as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee that the new genre tasted its first success. In keeping with his background of Western education, Chatterjee wrote the first English novel Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) in India. This can be interpreted as an inevitable issue of colonial modernity. In the proposed paper, I want to discuss Rajmohan’s Wife as the direct product of renaissance in India, particularly renaissance in Bengal. During my discussion, I shall focus on those characteristics of the novel which specifically were shaped by the immediate influence of Renaissance on indigenous literary traditions. I shall also try to see and show whether and how far Chatterjee’s assay was derivative and/or deviant considering his ambivalent status as an Indian functionary within the colonial system. I shall also zoom in upon the issue of modernity as reflected in the novel. | ||
Keywords: Bengal Renaissance, Novel, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Rajmohan’s Wife |