The Girl Child in the Life, Lore and Literature of Bengal by Sen, Nivedita;

Short description:

Contemporary children’s literature in Bangla celebrates irreverent and deviant boys whose subversive doings critique how they are reared, while the girl child is neglected and marginalised. This book—a compilation of translated works of the author, critic and academic, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay—focuses on gender and childhood in Bengal.

Long description:

Contemporary children’s literature in Bangla celebrates irreverent, defiant and deviant boys whose subversive doings critique the parenting and schooling they go through, while the girl child is neglected and marginalised. The rare fictional girls who show resilience and demand a normal childhood are consciously silenced, or contained and assimilated within unwritten masculinist norms. This book –a compilation of translated works of the author, critic and academic, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay –focuses on gender and childhood in Bengal.

The book includes a translation of his Bangla Shishusahityer Chhoto Meyera (Little Girls in Bangla Children’s Literature), as well as a translated essay on Thakurma’ Jhuli (Grandma’s Sack), a collection of Bangla folk tales and fairytales from early twentieth century that underscores the subaltern role of adolescent female characters with hardly any agency or voice in the oral legends and folklore of Bengal. The translation of the piece ‘An Incredible Transition’ from Bandyopadhyay’s Abar Shishushiksha (On Children’s Education Again) applauds the role of Indian social reformers and British educationists in initiating women’s education in Bengal, while questioning the erasure of protagonists who are girls in the nineteenth-century primers.

Interrogating gendered constructions in diverse genres of literature while revisiting the subject of female education, this book will be of interest to students of children’s literature, comparative literature, popular literature, gender studies, translation studies, culture studies and South Asian writings.

Table of Contents:

Author’s Biography viii Foreword ix Acknowledgements xvi Author’s Introduction xviii Translator’s Note lxii 1 Thakurma’r Jhuli (Grandma’s Sack): A Chronicle of the Past or a Premonition of the Future? 1 2 Abishaswya ek Sangbadal (An Incredible Transition): A chapter from Abar Shishushiksha (On Children’s Education Again) 20 3 Bangla Shishisahityer Chhoto Meyera: The Little Girls of Bangla Children’s Literature 30 Works Cited 97 Glossary 102 Index 105