ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some of the major writings of Santa Devi and Sita Devi, two well-known early twentieth-century Indian women authors of Bengal. It shows how their perception of womanhood, blended with the concept of middle-class nationalism, defended their feminism and sets its agenda for themselves and for other bhadramahila. The chapter also focuses on women’s education and marriage and married women’s status in their family/society. The writings of Santa Devi and Sita Devi relate to women’s lives and experiences in the domestic sphere and the construction of feminism. Expressions of their beliefs, as depicted in their writings, are comparable to Nancy Cotts definition of feminism. In The Grounding of Feminism, Nancy Cott defined feminism as an opposition to sex hierarchy, a belief that women’s condition is socially constructed and not determined by God or nature, and that women constitute both a biological sex and a social grouping.
