Abstract

Pioneering women’s periodicals in Bengali in the second half of the nineteenth century eloquently deplore the social confinement of women. Contesting this paradigm of female immobility, travelogues written by Bengali women simultaneously start to appear in the pages of such journals as Bāmābodhinıī Patrikā, Bhāratıī, Antaḥpur, etc., from the 1860s onwards. Unlike the famous nineteenth-century Bengali travelogues by Krishnabhabini Das and Svarnakumari Debi, these other writings have only very recently drawn attention. After laying out the state of the art, I will first introduce two of the established travelogues. Thereafter I will look at these still largely unknown writings, measure their significance for a women’s public and the Bengali literary sphere, and evaluate their setting in terms of gender and class. Shorter and less spectacular, the accounts in these periodicals are nonetheless a significant body of literature. They furnish detailed insights into the travel conditions and social framework women in those days experienced, and amply bear witness to the literary sentiments travelling inspired.

摘要

十九世纪下半叶，孟加拉的先驱妇女期刊雄辩地谴责了妇女对社会的限制。反对这种女性不动产的范式，孟加拉妇女写的旅行日记同时开始出现在诸如BāmābodhinıīPatrikā，Bhāratıī，Antaḥpur的期刊页面上等等，从1860年代开始。不同于Krishnabhabini Das和Svarnakumari Debi的著名的19世纪孟加拉语游记，这些其他著作直到最近才引起人们的注意。在介绍了最先进的技术之后，我将首先介绍两个已建立的游记。此后，我将研究这些仍然鲜为人知的著作，衡量它们对女性公众和孟加拉文艺界的重要性，并根据性别和阶级来评估其背景。这些期刊中的叙述虽然简短且不那么引人注目，但却是重要的文学作品。他们对当年经历的妇女的旅行条件和社会框架提供了详细的见解，并充分证明了旅行所激发的文学情感。