ABSTRACT
In Ghare Baire, translated in English as The Home and the World, Tagore explores the relationships between gender and modernity, public and private spheres, and imperialism and nationalism. Through the tangled story of the divided loyalties of a woman torn between her liberal, idealist husband, and pragmatic, nationalist lover, this extraordinary novel seeks to establish a link between private trauma and public upheaval. Perhaps Tagore's best-known novel outside India, The Home and the World raises powerful questions about nationalism, caste, class and women's position in society. In its exploration of gender issues, the text not only charts the changing status of women in society, but also emerges as a strong comment on the ideas of masculinity in the early twentieth-century Bengal. The action of the novel probably takes place in 1906 or 1907, soon after the Partition of Bengal.
