Abstract
Women’s autobiographical writings — memoirs, diaries, and autobiographies — are no longer archival outliers. In the last 30 years historians and literary critics have enthusiastically embraced them as legitimate archival material. This chapter, drawing on this critical scholarship, explores the construction of an ethic of care within the autobiographical writings of three Bengali women during the first half of the twentieth century.
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Notes
Forbes G. (1994) Medical Careers and Health Care for Indian Women: patterns of control. Women’s History Review 3: 515–530.
Lal M. (1994) The Politics of Gender and Medicine in Colonial India: The Countess of Dufferin’s Fund, 1885–1888. Bulletin for History of Medicine 68: 29–66.
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Deb C. (1998) Mahila Daktar: Bhin Graher Bashinda, Calcutta: Ananda Publishers.
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Ibid., p. 3. There are a number of autobiographies and memoirs by Indian women writers for whom becoming literate and educated, and being able to write were turning points in their lives. See Forbes G. and Raychaudhuri T. (2000b) The Memoirs of Dr Haimabati Sen: From Child Widow to Lady Doctor, New Delhi: Roli Books.
Bandyopadhyay A.K. and Sen A. (1998) Purnashashi Debir-r Nirbachita Rachana (Selected Writings of Purnashashi Debi), Calcutta: Deys Publishing.
See also Gupta R. (1999b) Smritimanjusha: Priyabala Gupta, Calcutta.
There were women from elite and well-known families who faced no apparent restrictions as far as their education was concerned and went on to become active and prominent literary, social reform, or political figures. Forbes G. (2005) Women in Colonial India: Essays on Politics, Medicine and Historiography, San Francisco: Chronicle Books.
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Karlekar (1986) Economic and Political Weekly XXI: 25–31.
I use the term ‘new knowledge’ from Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s essay where they discuss how ‘agency’ becomes central to discussions of women’s autobiographies. See Smith S. (1998) Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, Madison: University of Wiscons in Press.
Gupta R. (1999a) Alor Abhimukhe: The Life and Times of Priyabala Gupta, Calcutta: Dey’s Publishers, p. 133.
Debi P. (1941) Smritimanjusha, Calcutta: Dey’s Publishers.
Bandyopadhyay A. (1998) The Way I Have Seen Purnashashi, Calcutta: Dey’s Publishers, p. 27.
Gigliotti S. (2002) Technology, Trauma and Representation: Holocaust Testimony and Videotape, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
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Petersen A. (1997a) The New Public Health: Discourses, Knowledge, Strategies, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Bagchi J. (1999) Preface, ‘The Light of Your Life’. In: Gupta R. (ed.) Smritimanjusha. Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing.
Debi P. (1963) Mone Pare, Calcutta, p. 223.
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© 2015 Srirupa Prasad
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Prasad, S. (2015). Imagining the Social Body: Competing Moralities of Care and Contagion. In: Cultural Politics of Hygiene in India, 1890–1940. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137520722_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137520722_4
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