Abstract
Following the footsteps of Raja Rammohan Roy and Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Tagore advocated the emancipation of women through his novels, essays, poems, and plays. In order to study their problems closely, he projected women as protagonists in almost all his novels except Gora. For the study of a modern feminine subjectivity within the androcentric matrix of middle-class Bengali society, the author has selected Shesher Kabita (1929; Farewell, My Friend, or The Last Poem). Though, as in his other novels, Tagore does not propose a clear solution, he asserts through the vivid depiction of women that “the relationship between man and woman should be rooted in mutual freedom.” Through the cultured yet colloquial tone of the conversations and the essential lucidity of his prose, Tagore deftly focuses on the multifarious roles of women in the domestic life of Bengal.
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Chatterjee, M. (2015). The Delineation of the Female Subject in Rabindranath Tagore’s Novel Farewell, My Friend . In: Banerji, D. (eds) Rabindranath Tagore in the 21st Century. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 7. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2038-1_11
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