Amar Jiban as a Feminist Text

Amar Jiban was written and published in two parts. The first consisted of sixteen
rachanas or compositions. The second part came out in the year 1906, consisting of
fifteen rachanas or compositions. Every composition is preceded by a devotional
poem dedicated to her Dayamadhav, the Vaishnav godhead whom Rassundari
Devi had chosen.

Written in chaste Bangla, Amar Jiban narrates the life story of a nineteenth

century woman’s struggle for literacy. It portrays the changing world of rural
Bengal and situates women there.

Rassundari has narrated her life story in two ways. On one hand, she writes that
God’s mercy and benevolence towards her has made it possible for her to achieve
literacy. On the other hand, she also shows how she has made her own decisions in
life by learning to read despite the fear of family disapproval and social ostracism.
She praises God’s leela, but also recounts all the hard work and self-determination
she has put in to learn reading.

Scholars like Tanika Sarkar and Meenakshi Malhotra have observed that
Rassundari Devi creates the persona of a “bhakt” (devotee) for herself, and
presents all the small and big events of her life as exemplars of God’s mercy or
leela, including her access to the written word. Thus her transgressive act of
learning to read becomes an instance of godly intervention, a divine purpose, a
consequence of God’s will and mercy.

Rassundari Devi has written Amar Jiban in retrospection. The struggle to learn

to read is being described when she has already mastered the art of writing. She
describes the past in terms of vivid immediacy of feelings, she ignores dates, time,
and other factual details, and focuses on descriptions of her every day household
life. And yet sentimentality is not something Rassundari would indulge in while
writing. Amar Jiban is written in a dispassionate, objective style.

Rassundari Devi’s life is a series of actions and decisions that are serious
departures from the patriarchal social norms of her time and are, therefore,
‘transgressions’ punishable by the society.

Rassundari Devi learned to read and write amidst the popular belief in those days
that women who gained? Literacy brought disaster upon their families and were
punished by God with widowhood. Not only did she learn to read, but she also
decided to record the events and details of her everyday domestic life in a book and
got it published. She had the audacity to disclose her life in print. By doing this, she
entered the public sphere which was strictly forbidden to upper class Hindu
women. A published work no longer remains a private act of writing but enters the
public domain where it is open and available for perusal and interrogation by
anyone. So there are three major ‘transgressions’ that Rassundari Devi commits
according to patriarchy reading, writing and entering the public sphere.
Rassundari also made a notable departure from the common patriarchal belief
that female worship can only be expressed in the form of rituals like vrats (fasts),
penance, and cooking bhoga (food for god). Rassundari rejected these
conventional, ritualistic forms of woman’s devotion that served in maintaining the
patriarchal social structures, and established an intellectual relationship with her
God by learning to read Chaitanya Bhagavata. She chose to engage in a kind of
worship where she is an active participant (like her husband and other men), not a
passive devotee.

Many Bengali male authors and poets who came after Rassundari Devi wrote
about the greatness of a housewife by positing her as ‘grihalakshmi‘ or the
domesticated goddess. Patriarchy has always presented the figure of
a grihalakshmi as an ideal woman whose salvation and satisfaction lay in her
servitude, and whose happiness lies in the happiness of her husband and children.
Rassundari Devi, in her writing, demystifies the figure of the grihalakshmi by
presenting her domestic duties as labour which is tiresome, repetitive,
unrecognised, and far from emotionally fulfilling. Her assertion that

 “I did everything in a spirit of duty” is indicative of her emotional detachment]

from the household work. “Instead of viewing labour in an aesthetic and
romanticized way as male writers like Tagore tended to do, Rassundari
deconstructs the iconic figure of the housewife in Amar Jiban.” (Malhotra, 2016)
She also demystifies the nurturing maternal figure by describing her work of
feeding and looking after children as physically laborious. In this manner,
Rassundari’s life writing contests the male representation of women in literature.

Rassundari Devi’s life writing is a testimony of the odds against education of

women of her generation. After describing all the steps she took to gain literacy
including the stealing of sheets and palm leaves, she writes:

“Wasn’t it a matter to be regretted, that I had to go through all this humiliation just
because I was a woman? Shut up like a thief, even trying to learn was considered
an offence. It is such a pleasure to see the women today enjoying so much freedom.
These days parents of single girl child take so much care to educate her. But we had
to struggle so much just for that.”
In the words of Debarati Sen,

“Child marriage and the deep scar that it left on its young victims had probably
never had a better spokesperson than Rassundari. She exposes the shallow motives
behind this evil practice which were the fear of female sexuality and the anxiety to
control it.”
Rassundari describes her child marriage and the agony of separation from
her mother thus:

“If I am asked to describe my state of mind, I would say it was very much like the
sacrificial goat being dragged to the altar, the same hopeless situation, the same
agonized screams.” She adds, “People put birds in cages for their own amusement.
Well, I was like a caged bird. And I would have to remain in this cage for life. I
would never be freed.”

In fact, the metaphor of a bird being caged is quite dominant in Rassundari’s

autobiography. She saw herself as a prisoner of marriage from where she
wished to break free and transcend her worldly duties as a wife, mother, and
daughter-in-law to meet her God.

Rassundari Devi has described her experiences of pregnancy and child birth in a
very detailed and frank manner at a time when they were considered taboo topics
for women to speak. Writing about her pregnancy and sharing it with the public by
publishing is certainly a very feminist thing to do. Moreover,

“she recalls with great wonder how her body flowered and bore fruits through
divine intervention, which could be also a veiled reference to her satisfied sex life.”
Rassundari Devi, while writing about the hardships she had to face as a child bride
and the risks she had to take to gain literacy, rejoices in the fact that the times are
changing and some parents have started educating their daughters. Rassundari
Devi is definitely an advocate of women’s right to education though she doesn’t
mention it explicitly in her autobiography. Rassundari Devi’s life story is an
inspiration and a testimony of a woman’s will power to fight all odds in order to
gain education and liberation.

Summary of Amar Jiban by Rassundari Devi

Amar Jiban, or My Life talks of Rassundari’s life on a whole: instances from

childhood, the advent of her marriage, married life and the like. On a deeper plane,
it portrays the dissatisfaction, fear and even frustration she felt at being forced to
follow a certain path- being a woman, that is. Her marriage, her household chores,
her everyday life all form the narrative, which at once gives us a window into the
life of a feudal house wife in 19th century reformist Bengal but also delves into the
issues of inequality, oppression and lack of opportunity for women. The book
creates a picture of the changing world the status and role of women and
Rassundari’s own views on the changing times.

Taking into consideration the society she was born in, lived in and was part of her
very desire for learning to read and write was an act that challenged the norms. In
fact, she writes about how public controversy on the issue of female education
made her tremble with fear.

She was fourteen when her wish to learn how to read and write first developed. As
she was already a married woman, she performed all the requisite duties of a
traditional Bengali housewife.
However, society at the time was vehemently opposed to female education and
hence her previously mentioned fear took shape.

And yet learn she did all on her own. As a child in her mother’s home, she had the
habit of observing from a distance when boys studied Bengali and Persian letters.
Not allowed to handle even a quill or a palm leaf, she had memorized these symbols
by sight. After all these years, she tried to remember those signs and learnt to write
by trying them on a blackened kitchen wall. She tried and so this timid, extremely
busy and fearful housewife managed to learn to read and write.

Throughout the book Rassundari talks of the happenings in her life from the most
significant to the most commonplace. Interestingly, many of these instances reflect
a deep unrest with respect to the status she had being a woman and further, a
sincere desire to someday see womankind with more freedom than she was
allowed. An analysis of these thoughts of hers makes it quite pellucid just why her
desire to study amounted to such passion and why she pursued it against all odds.

One such example comes in the form of her objections towards being called her
father’s daughter. Rassundari’s father passed away while she was very young and
hence she grew up believing herself to be her mother’s daughter. However, it was
her father’s name that was used to refer to her in accordance to common usage of
the time. She has written about how this saddened her and was a cause of great
anxiety. Clearly, she had a fierce sense of her own identity and desired to protect it.
Such references were commonplace – they were the norm, in fact. And yet she
found herself unable to accept these unsaid rules and this caused her great
discomfort. In this scenario, it is this discomfort, perhaps, that could be seen as
what differentiated her from most Bengali women

Another instance where we see her struggle between the throes of common practice
and her own thinking is the time of her being borne away in a palanquin after
marriage. Knowing that she must now leave what has been her home and go to an
entirely unknown place, she is terrified and weeps uncontrollably. It is the imagery
she forms of herself being like the sacrificial goat however, which is interesting. In
her usual understated tone, she seems to have commented upon the helplessness of
the woman when it came to marital affairs. Wed to an unknown person, snatched
away from home and now forced to live with and serve complete strangers, it is
not her pain but her expression that makes her unique.

One must understand, however, that Rassundari Devi was not agonized by every
single malpractice. She was a product of her environment and also possessed an
agreeable disposition in general. For example, she held her new family and the
people there in high regard. She comments that she must admit that the people
there were very good. They are fond of her. Whenever she was physically ill they
were so concerned that she forgot all her discomfort. Even the neighbors and
servants were kind. It was as though sod had asked them to be particularly nice
her.
Here we see the same person who saw herself as a ‘caged bird when it came to
marriage, did at the same time respect her new family and held them with
affection.

In fact, this pattern repeats itself throughout the book: despite feeling caged and
subdued she did not resent the people around her. She used that energy to learn to
read and write. This remarkable quality of hers is perhaps what allowed her to
continue on the difficult path she had chosen for herself.

Returning to instances where her free-thinking and rebellious streak found

representation, we look at the time she became a widow. Her husband died in
February 1869 and keeping with the prevalent humiliating customs of that age, her
head was shaved. This experience was “more painful than death” for Rassundari.
Again, remarkably, her personal agony inclined her towards acknowledging the
pitiable situation of wives in general.

She laments upon her misfortune of being a woman: unable to tend to her beloved
mother while she was dying. Being very close to her mother, she deeply resented
the fact that she wasn’t allowed to go and care for her when she lay dying merely
because the housework would have suffered. Such scenes were quite common in
that era in fact.

Also, we see that Rassundari again chose her writing as a refuge from the harsh
reality. It was her escape, her method of fighting for herself as is evident by the
aforementioned incident. Recounting details of events which occurred several
decades earlier, Rassundari’s memoirs are alive with the tensions and anguish she
had to silently bear. They also speak of a single-minded determination to overcome
the situation

One sees through countless references throughout the book that she had an
unshakeable trust in the Almighty and this belief was a source of infinite strength a
source she counted upon quite often. All her pains were bearable as God willed
them to be, and it is God’s name that gave her the strength to persevere and
continue despite the difficulties she faced. In fact it can be recalled that it was her
desire to read religious books that was the primary reason for her learning to read.
It was her firm belief that god wanted her to learn to read and write, and hence all
common usage and oppression ceased to hold her back.

Conclusively, Amar Jiban gives the reader an insight into the life of a housewife

in the house of a prosperous East Bengali Zamindar. It chronicles the saddening
realities of a girl child in the 19th century. It talks of pain, subordination and
oppression. It reflects angst, loss and a cry for help.

It also, however, talks of resilience. Of the perseverance of a woman determined to

live her own life despite being held back by custom and usage. Amar Jiban speaks
in lucid prose of a woman that taught herself to read and write beneath the veil of
her saree. It talks of the woman who wrote the first published autobiography, a
woman who practised letters on a kitchen wall.

Aamar Jiban (An Autobiography) By Rassundari Devi

Aamar Jiban, published in 1876, is an autobiography by Rassundari Devi. It is
the first autobiography written by an Indian woman and also the first written by
any Bengali male or female. It tells us about the status of women in the 19th
century Indian society. It was the first full length autobiography published in the
Bengali language.

The Nineteenth century education viewed a traumatic  experience as it uprooted a

child from the security of her own home and exiled her forever to the mercy and
control of other strangers.

The title in itself mentions all about a woman, Rassundari Devi, that depicts her
pain, struggle, determination, hope and success that she has faced in terms of
education.

Her life story focuses on issues such as child marriage, caste, education,
superstition and discrimination because her writing and her life stood in a
peculiarly significant relationship to each other. This was so because she being
fourteen was unwillingly thrown into the marriage ritual for which she was not
developed both physically and mentally as it was a superstition that if a woman
reads and writes, then she is destined to be a widow. It felt to me as if a meek and
submissive woman has committed a crime by bringing up the idea of education
and also as if she was going against the grain of familial and social expectations.
Moreover, in my opinion, a kind of paradox is set in the society that women’s job is
to maintain the unending flow of domestic chores of cooking and child rearing.
Therefore, it can be said that she in a way has proclaimed her predicament to the
whole world through print and by reserving the image of a self-effacing wife who
suffers her deprivations with smiling forbearance.

Rassundari Devi had an irrepressible urge to read but was forbidden from the path
of education because she was a woman thus highlighting the idea of inequality.
But, she holds a strong position in terms of education by the talent of her writing
skills thus creating equality in the society by becoming an inspiration for many
other women. Thus, it can be concluded by the very famous quote that a feminist
author Virginia Wolf has said “A woman must have money and a room of her own
if she is to write a fiction.” And lastly, it also states the concept of Bildungsroman
as she from a lower stature has successfully developed herself into a published
writer.