Resumen de Unbinding Bodies and Desires.: Re-searching the home, the world and the in-between in Nara-Naree, the only Bengali journal on health, hygiene, sex (1939-1950)
In Bengal and across the world, the early twentieth century witnessed a growing interest in sexual reform through sexual science.
Transnational discourses on conjugal science and birth control also became widespread and connections between Western advocates and Bengali experts asserted a new vision of modernity in the context of changing notions of the female body and sexuality. During the interwar period, two distinctive figures, the Modern Girl and the New Woman, became prevalent in public discourses across the globe, and debates over the legitimacy and respectability of their social and sexual autonomy raged.
So far, there has been no study of the global interconnection in the overlapping features of modern women in Bengal and how they were interlaced within the intertextual discourses on modern sexual reform around the world. The purpose of this study is to understand the ways in which Bengali womanhood was portrayed in the vernacular magazine Nara-Naree from 1939 to 1950. The overall aim of the project is to highlight the key issues regarding marriage and reproduction and the salient features of new womanhood, including gender equality, chastity, divorce, education, hygiene, birth control and the women’s movement.
This thesis seeks to draw attention to the paradoxes of modernity that emerged when the Western encounter in Bengal gave rise to new attitudes, behaviours and values in the twentieth century and brought new choices, challenges and alternatives in the social arrangements of the gender system.
To address these problematic issues, I posed two research questions:
i. In what ways did the contributors to the Bengali periodical Nara-Naree (1939-1950) renegotiate and reconceptualize notions of the female body, sexuality and conjugality as expressed in the global dialogue and transnational social movements on modern sexual reform? ii. How did the reappropriation of ideas about the female body and sexuality in Nara-Naree register cultural tensions and changes in the portrayals of the Bengali Modern Girl and the Bengali New Woman? Since these two questions involve a complex interplay between gender, sexuality and culture, I have used intertextuality as a tool to explore the interconnected histories of the conceptualization of modern women in Bengal. By analyzing the Bengali magazine NaraNaree I have concentrated on the conflicting and ambiguous notions of sexual and social autonomy available to Bengali women, which problematized the discourses on sexuality, conjugality and interrelated issues of the emergence of the Modern Girl and the New Woman.
Disrupting the homogeneous notion of the non-West as opposed to the West, I have addressed the complexities in the global sexual reform which impacted upon the question of sexual freedom for Bengali women, its competing dynamics and the dangers related to socio-moral transgression.
By examining the problematic ideas about women’s sexual emancipation and social autonomy I have addressed the complexity of transnational interconnectedness in the Bengali magazine NaraNaree and explored the multifaceted restructurings of various aspects of social and sexual life and the acceptable or appropriate social/sexual norms for women in Bengali society. I have also analyzed how far Bengali women were modernized as a result of the male-initiated reform movement concerning marriage, intimacy and sexuality.
This thesis demonstrates that gender is an important factor in social movements for sexual reform and establishes global connections between discourses on female body and sexuality and debates on women’s socio-sexual autonomy which goes beyond the scope of previous studies. Cultural contentions were writ large in the social control of the female body and desire and the moral regulation of sexual behaviour.
XI The findings also show that the tropes of the Modern Girl and the New Woman were part of the modernizing discourse and that new expectations about the social role of women were fraught with tensions between cosmopolitanism and an emerging nationalism.
