ABSTRACT
This chapter undertakes the literary and sociological analysis of the works of the early women Urdu novelists to investigate their gendering of the Urdu domestic novel, which were addressed primarily to the young readers. The narratives of respectable women’s struggle with economic adversity in Muhammadi Begum’s writings contested the elitist nature of the reformist discourse on domesticity propagated in the Urdu domestic novels and treatises written by male reformers in late 19th century North India. The author’s articulation of the tensions created by a young Muslim heroine’s practice of medicine with the observance of purdah re-imagined the concept of womanhood that sought to restrict the exercise of woman’s agency within the confines of home. How Indian Muslim women’s exposure to British culture impacted the formation of their identity in early 20th century colonial India is investigated in Abbasi Begum’s portrayal of the female protagonist of her novel, marking a departure from the nationalist construction of an authentic Indian woman in the 1890s. This chapter seeks to demonstrate how Abbasi’s descriptions of an aristocratic palace and nawabi lifestyle were aimed at highlighting the incarceration and subjection of women in that class. The tragic deaths of the heroines in the Urdu fictional narratives written by Indian Muslim women questioned the 19th century reformers’ exaltation of the institution of marriage. This chapter also attempts to establish a link between the literary representation of the issue of conjugal incompatibility and the question of women’s agency in the age of feminism, nationalism, and communitarian politics.
