The changing role of women in Bengal, 1849-1905 9781400843909, 9780691054094

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
List of Illustrations (page ix)
List of Tables (page ix)
Preface (page xi)
Acknowledgments (page xv)
Note on Transliteration (page xviii)
List of Abbreviations (page xviii)
CHAPTER ONE. Traditional Roles of Women in Bengali Society (page 3)
CHAPTER TWO. The "Condition of Women" Issue: The Impetus for Reform (page 26)
CHAPTER THREE. Expanding Horizons: The Education of the Bhadramahilā (page 60)
CHAPTER FOUR. Changing Conjugal Relations (page 109)
CHAPTER FIVE. Motherhood and Child Rearing (page 151)
CHAPTER SIX. Domestic Life: The Role of the Bhadramahilā as Housewife (page 186)
CHAPTER SEVEN. The Erosion of Purdah (page 228)
CHAPTER EIGHT. Between Domesticity and Public Life: Voluntary Associations and Philanthropic Activity (page 271)
CHAPTER NINE. The Bhadramahilā in Public Life: Employment and Politics (page 309)
Conclusion (page 357)
Biographical Notes (page 363)
Bibliography (page 375)
Index (page 393)

Citation preview

The Changing Role of Women in Bengal,

1849-1905 |

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a The © Changing Role of Women in Bengal 1849-1905 BY MEREDITH BORTHWICK

PRIN ‘vRINCETON. ws), PRES ,

Copyright © 1984 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,

: Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,

Guildford, Surrey |

All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book ISBN 0-691-05 409-6

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from The Whitney Darrow Fund of Princeton University Press This book has been composed in Linotron Sabon Clothbound editions of Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Paperbacks,

while satisfactory for personal collections, are not | usually suitable for library rebinding.

Printed in the United States of America by , Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey

History scarcely mentions her. ... Occasionally an individual woman is mentioned, an Elizabeth,

or a Mary; a queen or a great lady. But by no possible means could middle-class women with

nothing but brains and character at their command have taken part in any one of the great - movements which, brought together, constitute the , historian’s view of the past. Nor shall we find her in any collection of anecdotes... . . She never writes her own life and scarcely keeps a diary; there are only a handful of her letters in existence. She left no plays or poems by which we can judge her. What one wants, I thought—and why does not some brilliant student at Newnham or Girton supply it?—is a mass of information; at what age did she marry; how many children had she as a rule;

what was her house like; had she a room to her- , self; did she do the cooking; would she be likely __ to have a servant? ... It would be ambitious be-

yond my daring, ... to suggest to the students of those famous colleges that they should rewrite history, though I own that it often seems a little queer as it is, unreal, lopsided; but why should they not

add a supplement to history? calling it, of course, by some inconspicuous name so that women might

figure there without impropriety? : Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1928

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Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xi Acknowledgments XV List of Tables ix

Note on Transliteration XViil

List of Abbreviations XVIil

Bengali Society 3

CHAPTER ONE. Traditional Roles of Women in

CHAPTER Two. The “Condition of Women” Issue: _

The Impetus for Reform 26

CHAPTER THREE. Expanding Horizons: The Educa-

tion of the Bhadramahila 60

CHAPTER Four. Changing Conjugal Relations Log CHAPTER Five. Motherhood and Child Rearing 151 CHAPTER SIx. Domestic Life: The Role of the

Bhadramahila as Housewife 186

CHAPTER SEVEN. The Erosion of Purdah 2.2.8

Activity 271

CHAPTER EIGHT. Between Domesticity and Public

Life: Voluntary Associations and Philanthropic

CHAPTER NINE. The Bhadramabhila in Public Life:

Employment and Politics 309

Conclusion 357 Biographical Notes 363 Bibliography 375 Index | 393

Vil |

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List of Illustrations

1. Internal layout of houses of the very rich and of the middle class. Redrawn from Government of India, First Annual Report of the Sanitary Commissioner for Bengal for 1868

(Calcutta, 1869), p. 321. 8 2. Outer quadrangle and shrine of the house of a rural zamindar. From P. C. Ray, Life and Experiences of a Bengali a

Chemist (Calcutta, 1932). 9 ,

3. Inner quadrangle of the house of a rural zamindar. From

(Calcutta, 1932). | 10

P—. C. Ray, Life and Experiences of a Bengali Chemist

4. Saratkumari Deb (1862-1941). From Saratkumari Deb, Amar , , - Sangsar (Calcutta, 1942). 160 5. Amala (1891- ?) and Santipriya (1885-1933), children of

(Calcutta, 1942). 179

Saratkumari Deb. From Saratkumari Deb, Amar Sangsar a

6. Banalata Debi (1879-1900), an “‘ideal housewife” or ddarsa

| gribint. From Antahpur, October 1900. 195 , 7. Nirmala (1878- ?), eldest daughter of Saratkumari Deb.

From Saratkumari Deb, Amar Sangs@r (Calcutta, 1942). 246 ,

8. Saudamini Mozoomdar (1843-1931), wife of Brahmo mis- Oo , sionary Protap Chunder Mozoomdar. From P. C. Mo-

zoomdar, Stricaritra (Calcutta, 1936). , 2.53 ,

pur, October 1901. | 316

9. Poet Kamini Ray (1864-1933). From title page of Antah-

- List of Tables I. Social classification of the upper and middle ranks, as de- |

fined by the Committee of Public Instruction 77

II. Social background of pupils at schools in Calcutta 78

: | 1X

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Preface The nineteenth century in Bengal was a time of great intellectual excitement. Accepted values were closely questioned as part of the reaction to changes brought about by the imposition of colonial rule. There was heated debate among men

on matters such as widow burning, child marriage, the status | of women, and the merits and demerits of female education. The intensity and volume of this debate has diverted inquiry from the extent to which the ultimate objects of the debate, women, participated in the process of change, or whether their lives were significantly affected by it. This book is part of the slow process of “‘redressing the balance” in historical writing on India, an attempt to reassess the much-vaunted “‘emanci-

pation of women” in the nineteenth century from the per-

| spective of women themselves, and thus illumine our understanding of the process of social change under colonial rule. The bhadramabila, the subject of this book, were, in broad terms, the mothers, wives, and daughters of the many schoolmasters, lawyers, doctors, and government servants who made up the English-educated professional Bengali “middle class”

or bhadralok. The impact of change in the lives of these women was not always dramatic—education broadened their horizons; developments in such areas of health care as childbirth ameliorated some of the hardships of their lives—but a necessary process of adaptation was taking place between the framework of ideals imposed by the colonizing power and the more resistant of indigenous cultural values. Inevitably, such progress was accompanied by losses as well as gains. Conventional historical sources, concerned with public life, are of only marginal use in research in this uncharted area. A series of journals for and by women, beginning with the Masik Patrikd in 1854 and leading up to Antahpur in 1898, which was “‘edited and conducted by the ladies-only,” formed the core of my source material. Many of these ran for a few

| XI

PREFACE

years at a stretch, and often only a few scattered issues are extant. However, the Bamabodhini Patrika, started in 1863, continued uninterrupted for the next forty-two years. Fortunately, I was able to piece together a complete set through the combined resources of the British Museum, the National Library in Calcutta, and the Ramakrishna Mission Library. The journals covered a vast range of subjects concerning women,

| or of interest to them. They set up ideals of behavior and attempted to mold attitudes; published women’s writings, lit-

| erary and otherwise; and carried informative articles on history, travel, science, news, household duties, medicine, and cookery. Admittedly, the purpose of the journals was to instruct, and therefore they do not necessarily reflect social real-

ity; but they were certainly crucial in propagating the bha-

| dramabila ideal. Circulation figures indicate that they were widely read, and women’s keenness to participate in the journals as subscribers or contributors demonstrates that they also provided an important means of communication among women, and performed a mediating function with the outside world.

| Biographies and autobiographies were fruitful sources of information. Although many displayed a tendency to idealize,

they also provided a wealth of detail about lifestyle, feelings, , and emotions. Instructive literature was examined for information on sexual relations, pregnancy, child rearing, medical treatment, and allied domestic subjects. Again, this was largely

prescriptive material, but corroborative evidence was found to show that advice given in manuals was often followed. Moreover, these manuals also gave some insight into the values of the authors and their vision of an ideal society. I had hoped to be able to locate more collections of private papers, but found that very few have been preserved. The type of materials by women that had been kept by their families were assorted memorabilia—books, scrapbooks, and songbooks—that I made some use of. I also conducted a number of interviews with women who were born either before 1905 or shortly after, in order to gain an immediate sense of the changes that had taken place and how women perceived them. XII

PREFACE

Although I provided a list of questions, the interviews were | conducted informally, following leads given by interviewees.

In this way, I was privileged to share memories that often illuminated in a very personal way the issues I was dealing with. My choice of the dates 1849 to 1905 may need a word of explanation. The first government school for girls was founded

in 1849, and 1905 was the year of the partition of Bengal and the beginning of the swadeshi movement. As domestic history is a process of gradual change, not clearly marked by public events, these dates have to be regarded as convenient cut-off

points rather than definite limits. Only a handful of women were directly affected by the opening of the Bethune School —s—© in 1849, but in the long term, literacy and education had a profound effect on the position of women. 1905 was not a crucial year for most bhadramahila, but it represented the beginning of a significant interest among women in political |

activities. :

It is hoped that this study will provide some insight into the position of women in India today. During the latter part

of the nineteenth century, there was a gradual growth in awareness of outside activities, which made it possible for women to become prominent in public life in this century. Traditional domestic roles were modified to enable women to

| engage in public activity, without a radical redefinition of | female roles. The progressive model of public participation for women that has generally been followed had its roots in

: the period of this study. I am aware of many gaps and limitations in the book that, _ for reasons of time and space, have been unavoidable. The Bengali Muslim bhadramahila has not been mentioned, and deserves a separate study. The importance of religion in a

: woman’s life has only been touched upon. The fertile field of literary works by and for women should be analyzed in order to extend our understanding of their consciousness and “‘inner

life.” I hope that the present work will help to generate interest | in women’s history among scholars of South Asia, and that

XU

PREFACE

they will proceed with further research into other aspects of women’s lives.

The experience of working on the lives of women cross-

| culturally has been a rich and rewarding one, forcing me continually to reexamine my own values and assumptions. I am grateful to the bhadramahila for providing me with that opportunity.

| XIV |

Acknowledgments

This book is based on my doctoral thesis, for which I was

awarded a degree in Asian Studies from the Australian Na- ,

tional University in April 1981. Research was carried out in Calcutta, London, Canberra, and Melbourne’ from 1977 to 1980. It would not have been possible without the help and

| attention given by librarians and library assistants in these places. Eight months were spent working in Calcutta, where the bulk of my research was carried out in the pleasant surroundings of the National Library. I was fortunate in that the library of the Ramakrishna Mission, where I was staying, held an almost complete set of the Bamabodhini Patrika, the main women’s journal used, and that the librarian gave me per- mission to microfilm some of their holdings. I am grateful to Sri Dilip Biswas for letting me have access to the S. D. Collet collection of books and manuscripts held in the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj Library. I obtained some material at the Bangiya Sahitya Parisad Library in north Calcutta, and also found a few useful items in the Jaykrishna Mukherjee Library at Utterpara. Dr. Manashi Dasgupta arranged for me to see private papers belonging to some members of the Tagore family at Rabindra Bhavan Library at Visvabharati University, San-

- tiniketan. During three weeks in London I worked in the Oriental Manuscripts Reading Room of the British Museum, and in the India Office Library. In Australia, there was a great deal of relevant official government material at the Victorian State Library, and a diverse assortment of literature from nineteenth-century Bengal in the Benoy Ghose Collection in the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne. Census reports and reports of native newspapers were consulted at the National Library of Australia. All other material was obtained from the Menzies Library, Australian

National University. I am grateful to staff there for arranging | interlibrary loans and for ordering microfilm. XV

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS , I was financially assisted in carrying out my research through

a Commonwealth Post-graduate Research Award. This was supplemented by a travel grant from the Faculty of Asian Studies that enabled me to travel to Calcutta and London. The manuscript was completed during my term as Third Sec-

- retary in the Australian Embassy, Bangkok. | | Many people have contributed to the progress of the book , by commenting on early drafts. I am indebted to the two supervisors of my doctoral thesis, Dr. $. N. Mukherjee and Dr. J.T.F. Jordens, for their encouragement, help, and intellectual inspiration throughout. In addition, I would especially like to thank Professor Barun De, Professor J. H. Broomfield, Dr. Stephen Henningham, Dr. Tapan Raychaudhuri, Dr. Hiren

Chakrabarti, Dr. John McGuire, Dr. Gail Minault, and Dr. Dipesh Chakrabarty, for their patience in reading through part

or all of my material and for their comments and criticism. Dr. Margaret Case, of Princeton University Press, gave helpful

editorial comments. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my debt to S. N. Ray, former head of the De-

partment of Indian Studies, University of Melbourne, for arousing my interest in Indian history generally and Bengal studies in particular. Professor A. L. Basham, former head of the Department of Asian Civilizations, Australian National University, was unfailingly kind and encouraging. A number of people gave me access to references or material

that I would not otherwise have come across. I extend my thanks for this to Pauline Rule, Mr. and Mrs. A. K. Moitra, Sati Kumar Chatterjee, Dr. Gholam Murshid, Santa Deb, Dr. Manashi Dasgupta, Sanjay Sircar, Dr. Gail Pearson, and Arundhati Mukherjee. Apart from this, I am grateful to many others

in Calcutta who arranged for me to interview members of their families, and to those who granted me interviews. I enjoyed listening to their reminiscences, and would like to extend my special thanks to them for helping to bring the subject to life, providing me with a sense of continuity between the bhadramahila of the nineteenth century and of the present day. Many Bengali speakers helped me in my attempts to capture _

XVI |

| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS oe | the nuances of the language in translation. Their advice was | invaluable. I am grateful to Margaret Tie, Faculty of Asian - Studies, and Lyn Hayes, Australian Embassy, Bangkok, for typing an often confusing manuscript so ably. Finally I would like to thank my parents, Alex and Rosemary Borthwick, for fostering my spirit of enquiry into the world in general and Asia especially; my husband, John Hannoush, for his help in proofreading and constant encourage-

demic pursuits. : |

ment; and our son Theo, for providing diversion from aca-

| XVI

Note on Transliteration

As there are numerous Bengali references throughout the book, an explanation of the transliteration system I used is required.

All Bengali words are italicized in the text, except for those that have been accepted into the English language (such as pandit, purdah). Whereas in some cases the common Anglicized spelling has been used (mofussil, zamindar, zenana), in all other instances I have attempted to give a literal transliteration. However, for reasons of convenience I have omitted

, all diacritical marks except to distinguish between long and short vowels. Diacritics have only been employed for Bengali words and phrases, and for titles of books, journals, and news-

papers. I have not used diacritics for any proper nouns— names of persons, places, or associations—as in many cases a variety of Anglicized spellings, more familiar to the reader, were adopted in the nineteenth century. In the footnotes and bibliography, the full name and surname of authors writing in Bengali have been given, but initials have been substituted for the first names of authors writing in English.

List of Abbreviations BP Bamabodbint Patrika CR Calcutta Review GRPI General Report on Public Instruction in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency

IMS Indian Mirror, Sunday edition RNNB_ Report on Native Newspapers, Bengal

XVIII ,

The Changing Role of Women in Bengal,

1849-1905

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| > ONE EIGHT NINE ~W4v

The Bhadramahila in Public Life:

Employment and Politics

There has recently been a lively debate among social scientists

concerning the use of the domestic/public dichotomy in discussing the lives and status of women across cultures.‘ Some _ maintain that the two spheres are not distinct: in certain rural societies, the domestic world is the public world; elsewhere,

the two constantly interact—domestic matters have important , repercussions in the public world, and vice versa. The issue is certainly a complex one. However, in nineteenth-century Bengal the division between the female domestic world and the male public world was clearly defined in spatial as well as ideological terms. The domestic world of women and the | family was physically delineated by the boundaries of the

antahpur. In contrast, the exclusively male public world was a spatially unlimited and concerned with broad matters, in-

cluding the family. In this chapter, “public life’ covers the , involvement of women in activities or issues outside the tra- _

ditional realm of the domestic world and the limits of the | conventional female role, particularly in the areas of employment and political participation. Moves toward public life did not necessarily entail the expansion of physical horizons beyond the antahpur, but meant contact with and awareness of

events taking place in the once exclusively male “outside” world dominated by the colonial administration and econ-

, omy.

Society. , 309 |

t M. Z. Rosaldo, ““Woman, Culture, and Society: A Theoretical Overview’’; S. C. Rogers, ““Woman’s Place”’; L. Tilly, ““The Social Sciences and the Study

of Women...” in M. Z. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere, Woman, Culture, and

EMPLOYMENT AND POLITICS

Employment In the Calcutta Census of 1901, 725 women registered themselves as employed in what could be termed “professional” occupations. These included the categories of principals, professors and teachers (587), administrative and inspecting officials (6), qualified medical practitioners (124), photographers (4), and authors, editors, and journalists (4). Even though the number of bhadramabhila registered was minuscule in proportion to the number of employed bhadralok, it had in fact doubled since the 1891 Census, and represented an extremely significant trend.3 Census figures on female employment can only partially indicate the extent of employment among the bhadramahila. Many were engaged in part-time, semiformal, or short-term work arrangements, and would not have been registered as employed. Nor do the statistics give any infor-

mation on the religious, caste, or marital background of professional working women. One can only assume from other available evidence that most would have been single or widowed Christian and Brahmo women.

| For the first time, the bhadramahila were brought into contact with the economic world of wage labor based on formal contract. The phenomenon of independent earning power began to affect the lives of women by giving them a greater sense

of individuality. It also extended the boundaries of their ex- | perience by bringing them into contact with the realities of the male world of colonial administration as it was experienced by the bhadralok. The increase in employment among the bhadramahila paralleled the growth in public institutions catering for women, especially in the fields of health and education. In order that more women could take advantage of the new services offered, it was necessary to have females provide those services. While

the limits of the separate world of purdah were widening,

2 rg0r, Calcutta. Town and Suburbs Census. | : , 3 Proportions of females to males in relation to the above categories are, respectively, 10.3, 24.7, 9.6, 3.7, and 3.2

310

| EMPLOYMENT AND POLITICS female officials were needed to act as mediators between it and the expanded world of males. At the same time, the provision of education for women, and the continued expansion of the upper limits of female education, raised women’s expectations for something addi-

tional to marriage. The admission of women to university degrees did not necessarily distract them from the traditionally

expected role of wife and mother, but it did give women with higher qualifications cause to think that their lives should be | different from those of their mothers and grandmothers, and that they should give others the benefit of their advancement through various forms of public service. A longer process of education and a rising age of marriage, especially in the Brahmo

community, meant that some women entered the workforce

for a short period before withdrawing from it on marriage. _ Indeed, a very small number of women did not marry but

became independent career women. | The bhadralok had to come to terms with the increased

number of educated and well-qualified bhadramahila. Rather than let women follow their own course of development, which was immediately perceived as threatening, it was asserted that “it behoves the leaders to yield to the inevitable, and adopt means to regulate within proper bounds the legitimate aspirations of Indian women.’’4 When the first two women graduated from Calcutta University, an editorial comment in the New Dispensation voiced similar words of caution:

Whatever may be said against the university policy of _ admitting girls to the degree examinations, we are bound

- to accept facts, and the fact is that we have already a certain number of she-B.A.’s. What are we to do with them? If left to themselves and to their degrees, they will —

rot as teachers and will have nothing except their own conceit to feed upon. We do not know how far this policy of letting lady graduates alone will contribute to the mor-

| 311

4 Hindoo Patriot, 1 February 1902 in RNNB 8 February 1902.

EMPLOYMENT AND POLITICS

als of the community. The best principle would be to utilise them in the interests of the public.s Prior to this explosion in education, the social reform movement had generated among the bhadralok a heightened awareness of the oppressive restrictions imposed on women. Some perceived that this handicap was often connected with women’s total dependence on male support. The plight of widows was of particular concern. The inability of widows to maintain

themselves after the loss of a male protector led the Masik Patrikd, in 1854, to advocate vocational training for the bhadramahila. This did not mean professional training, but skill in various forms of craft that could be sold commercially to bring in a small income. It was said in encouragement that middle-class women in England did embroidery and dressmaking for sale. At a later date, a series of articles in the

| Bamabodbhini Patrika discussed various ways in which widows could earn their livelihood. As was often the case, many of the suggestions lacked thought as to their practicability in the Bengali context. The suggested range of occupations was diverse: wood engraving; embroidering insignia on soldiers’ uniforms; operating a printing press; bookbinding; painting; zenana education or teaching in the mofussil; picklemaking; gardening; lacemaking; making fans; making dolls for sale at fairs; dressmaking; midwifery; and medicine. The estimated possible earnings from most of these occupations were very low, and would have been barely adequate to support a family. For instance, from making decorated fans by purchasing ordinary palm-leaf fans in the market and adorning them with fringes and ribbons, it was thought that a widow could earn herself five or six rupees a month.” By 1904, Lilabati Mitra

was concerned that the kinds of traditional crafts widows practiced to eke out a living were no longer popular with 5 New Dispensation, 8 July 1883. 6 “Grihakatha,” Masik Patrika, 3 (16 October 1854). 7 “Bharater bidhaba o anatha strilokdiger jibika labher kata prakar upay hoite pare?” prize essay, anonymous, BP, 4:2, 290 (March 1889); “Dukhini bidhaba o anatha diger jibikar upay,” BP, 4:2, 291 (April 1889).

312 :

EMPLOYMENT AND POLITICS : consumers. She recommended the adoption of more commercially oriented enterprises catering for new tastes, such as the manufacture of stockings. A machine could be purchased

from England for 200 rupees that would produce a pair of stockings every fifteen minutes. It could make half-stockings, full stockings, and thick Darjeeling stockings, all catering to the reformed dress of the “new woman.” She calculated that the seller would earn twenty-five to thirty rupees per month.

Other suggested occupations included typewriting, picture framing, making cardboard cartons, photography, basket weaving, applique work, crochet, woolwork, and the embroidering of mottos on cloth or card. All of these new occupations could conveniently be followed within the home, after some training from a skilled practitioner or male rela- _ tive.®

A number of bhadramahila were beginning to face the prob-

lem of finding ways to lessen the total dependence on men that left women helpless if they fell on hard times. A plea for equal vocational training for men and women was made on the grounds of the likelihood of having to cope with such an eventuality.? In an article in Antahpur, Prabodhini Ghose suggested that every woman should learn to weave her own cloth rather than be told by men to manufacture useless handicrafts or embroidery to sell for a pittance. She lauded as an example of self-sufficiency the Assamese custom of having a loom in every house to weave all cloth for domestic use. Although a

woman would not actively earn money by this means, she could considerably reduce the size of the family budget and

I..

acquire a useful practical skill.t° There is no evidence that any of these vocational ideas were taken up, although none of them required high levels of ed8 Lilabati Mitra, “Strilokdiger arthakari silpasiksa,” Antahpur, 7, 3 (July

| | 313 ,

*. 4 odin: Sengupta, ““Asmadesiya balika-jiban,” Antahpur, 3, 9 (October

19 Prabodhini Ghose, “‘Bangamahiladiger arthakari silpacarcca,” Antah-—

pur, 4, 1 (February 1900). ,

EMPLOYMENT AND POLITICS

ucation, and most were easily adapted to the domestic situation. Women would not have been drawn into a much deeper > understanding of the wider economic situation by such piecemeal genteel pursuits, where any commercial exchange would probably have been handled by an intermediary. Professional occupations were distinct from these vocational skills in that they required specialized training and relatively advanced educational qualifications. They also involved work outside the

home, and brought the bhadramahila into a direct economic relationship with the colonial administration. In all these ways professional employment extended the narrow limits of the world of the bhadramahila, even while it depended on the existence of this separate world. Purdah meant that a field of employment was opened to women without necessitating competition or even contact with men. As a result, women could rise to high-status positions in the fields that were open to them, rather than accepting positions of subordinate status in the same occupations as males, as tended to happen in the

west.7? |

| Teaching was considered to be one of the most acceptable | professions for women, and it employed the largest number of bhadramahila. In the earliest days of female education the services of male teachers were used, but that was perceived as an obstacle to its wider social acceptance, and the expansion

of female education created an urgent demand for women teachers. Some of the first generations of educated women decided to extend the benefits of their knowledge to others by taking up teaching as a vocation, at least for some time. Training schemes for teachers were haphazard, and there was no uniformly accepted qualification during this period. Following suggestions made by Mary Carpenter on her visit in 1866,* proposals were presented in 1867 for a Government Female Normal School in Calcutta. Protracted negotiations

never reached a satisfactory conclusion, however, and the 1x H. Papanek, ‘““Men, Women, and Work,” p. 104; “Purdah,” p. 311.

12 Mary Carpenter, Six Months, pp. 123-124. | ,

314

EMPLOYMENT AND POLITICS scheme was eventually discarded.t3 A Government Training

College of a reasonable standard was not set up in Calcutta | until 1906.*4 A Female Normal School was set up in Dacca | _ in the 1860s with greater success. The main burden of teacher

training in the nineteenth century was borne by Christians | and Brahmos, with minimal government assistance. The flex-

ibility of the situation probably provided more women with | the opportunity to teach than if there had been greater stress | on qualifications. Many women who felt that they had been - reasonably well educated at home went on to open schools and to teach without specific training. The report of the Director of Public Instruction in 1904-1905 announced that of.

80 women teaching in upper girls’ schools, 12 were graduates, | 28 had passed lower-level university examinations, and only | 8 were trained teachers. In the middle schools, the respective

, figures were 2, 13, and 14 out of a total of 142. Of 466 upper | primary teachers, 1 was a graduate, 8 had passed lower university examinations, and 53 were trained. For lower primary, out of 3,853 women the respective figures were 1 B.A., 1 F.A.,

19 E.A., and 186 trained teachers." , oe , One of the first recorded instances of a bhadramahila taking

up teaching was that of Bamasoondoree Debee of Pabna. She | had been educated at home by her husband; yet in 1863, at _ the age of twenty or twenty-one, she set up a female school | in which she trained other girls to become zenana teachers. | Whether the school was a financially profitable wage-paying

enterprise or not is unknown.'* Monorama Majumdar, the

_ first woman preacher in the Brahmo Samaj, was also among %3 Letter from the secretary of the Bamabodhini Sabha on “‘Siksayitri bidyalay,” BP, 3, 53 (January 1868); ‘““Gabarnment siksayitri bidyalay,” BP, 6, 90 (February 1871); GRPI 1869-70, p. 42; U. Chakraborty, Condition of

Bengali Women, p. 56. , 4 Daily Hitavadi, 24 March 1906, Hindi Bangavasi, 26 March 1906 in RNNB 31 March 1906; U. Chakraborty, Condition of Bengali Women, pp.

| | 315 |

7 Strisiksd o gabarnment,” BP, 8:2, 509 (January 1906). 7 16 Somprakdas, 14 December 1863 in RNNB 19 December 1863; ibid., 9 ,

May 1864 in RNNB 14 May 1864.

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