The Portrayal of Women and Social Oppression in

Rabindranath Tagore’s “The Postmaster” and “The Conclusion”

and Satyajit Ray’s film Two Daughters.

Two short stories by Rabindranath Tagore, adapted later to film by Satyajit Ray, have as their central characters women who have had little or no formal education.  The portrayals of Ratan, an orphan girl in “The Postmaster” and Mrinmayi, a young tomboy forced into an arranged marriage in “The Conclusion,” emphasize that literacy for women is of little importance in a society where their roles as male caretaker, wife, or mother take precedence.  As an innovative educator and path breaker for social reform, Tagore often addresses in his literature issues of oppression among women and the lower class.  Although Satyajit Ray introduces some subtle changes in Two Daughters, he stays very true to Tagore’s stories.  His film was produced some sixty years after Tagore wrote the two stories, yet the issues of social oppression introduced in both stories and film continue in Indian society and elsewhere today, reflecting the very slow progress toward the social reform that Tagore worked so hard to promote during his lifetime.

Tagore’s postmaster is a man who “belonged to Calcutta” and “felt like a fish out of water” after his transfer to his new post in a small village (89).  No amount of work experience nor book learning can help him adapt comfortably to this strange and unfamiliar environment where he has little to occupy his time and no one with which to communicate except the factory people who “were hardly desirable people for decent folk” (89).  He befriends, Ratan, an orphan girl, who is as hungry for attention as is he, yet while his friendship becomes of great importance to her, the postmaster views Ratan as little more than a servant.  Although she cooks for him, lights his pipe, draws his bath water, starts his fire, and is attentive to his every word, he still thinks to himself,  “Oh, if only some kindred soul were near—just one loving human being whom I could hold near my heart” (91).  One day he asks Ratan if she would like to learn to write, yet he feels it not so important that she learn but that teaching her will give him something to fill his empty hours.  She learns very quickly and is a most attentive student which emphasizes that, although she is quite capable of learning, this is the first time she has been given the opportunity to do.  It also appears she is eager to learn not because reading and writing will be useful for her but that knowing how will please the postmaster.  When one day he becomes ill with malaria, her writing lessons are quickly put aside.  She “ceased to be a little girl” and “at once stepped into the post of mother, called in the village doctor, gave the patient his pills at the proper intervals, sat up all night by his pillow, cooked his gruel,” and nursed him back to health (94).  The illness persuades the postmaster that he cannot cope with village life; he applies for a transfer and although Ratan diligently continues to study her old lessons, the postmaster has lost interest in teaching her further.  His only concern now is to return to Calcutta and the comfort of his family.  She begs him to take her with, yet he scoffs at the idea and has no notion of how deep her affection for him has grown.

            Throughout the story, Ratan’s feelings and needs are neglected and overshadowed by the needs of the postmaster.  The  “loneliness of his exile” (92) and his inability to cope with village life and situations that are less than ideal accentuate his weakness, and by contrast, stress Ratan’s strength; although still a child, she has learned to survive independently despite living a life of poverty void of friends and family.  Ray’s film version even more clearly stresses the postmaster’s weaknesses and Ratan’s strengths.  When the postmaster Nandalal arrives at his new post, he is petrified of the village madman who Ratan dismisses as harmless.  He is terrified of night sounds and stormy weather, and calls out for Ratan who has drifted to sleep amidst the same sounds and in her make-shift room that has much less protection from the elements than does Nandalal’s quarters.  He receives a letter from his mother who writes, “It is the first time you’ve been away from me.  Do you have servants or are you on your own?”  This letter reveals that Nandalal has been long dependent not only on his mother but on others to handle his needs.  This becomes clearer still when, after his bout with malaria, he shirks his responsibilities as the new postmaster.  Ratan asks him, “Don’t you like your work?” to which Nandalal replies, “Does anyone like his work?  It’s a habit. Do you like the work you do for me?”  Ratan replies yes, to which Nandalal responds, “Don’t be silly!”  Ratan asks, “Have I ever complained?”  Although she does enjoy working for Nandalal, she has learned not to complain nor shirk her duties, despite having been beaten by previous postmasters.  Ratan does not have the luxury as does Nandalal of resigning from her job and crawling back to her mother at the least little bit of discomfort.

As Tagore’s story concludes, Ratan “wanders about the post office with the tears streaming from her eyes” (97), while in Ray’s film, she walks by the postmaster in a dignified manner, refuses to look at him or take the coins he has to offer, and dutifully continues her job as she brings bath water to the new postmaster.  Her attitude is much less pleading and defeatist than is that of Tagore’s Ratan.  She is also much more outspoken as is seen in the way she is introduced to writing lessons.  In Ray’s film, Ratan asks Nandalal to teach her how to write, something that Tagore’s Ratan, who is far more docile and less outspoken, would never have had the courage to ask.  These subtle differences, however, show little progression of social advancement for women except perhaps an opportunity to be more outspoken and less subservient without fear of reprisal, and in both texts, it is apparent that Ratan will continue her lot in life as a servant to a man, regardless of how much she progresses with her writing lessons. 

            Ray also brings to film a slightly more outspoken and less subservient Mrinmayi than the one Tagore portrays in “The Conclusion.”   Tagore’s story begins with the arrival home of Apurba Krishna after he receives his BA degree in Calcutta.  As he steps from the boat, he notices Mrinmayi, a tomboy who keeps the women of her village “in a constant state of alarm” because she is not in the least interested in behaving like a proper Indian woman nor is she perturbed that she remains single when most Indian girls her age have entered into arranged marriages (269).  She refuses to tie her hair back or veil her face like the other women upon the arrival of some “distant zamindar” (269), and this difference is what attracts Apurba to her, although after their marriage, her  unwillingness to conform is what keeps them estranged.  Previous to this marriage, Apurba’s mother has another woman in mind for his bride.  When he asks to see the woman she has arranged for him to marry, she says, “I’ve seen her.  You needn’t give it another thought” (270).  Yet Apurba insists that “[b]ride must be seen before marriage” (271), while his thoughts remain on Mrinmayi who he is certain will become interested in him once she learns he is an “erudite fellow . . . who has spent long periods in Calcutta—not a village bumpkin to be dismissed with a laugh” (291).  Apurba inspects his mother’s choice of bride, and when he asks the “dumbfounded ornamented bundle” what she has read, she faintly replies after a prod from her maid,  “Charuputh-Volume-Two-Grammar-Volume-One-Descriptive-Geography-Arithmetic-History-of-India” (271).  She speaks as if taught by rote and appears to have no more interest in marrying a person of whom she knows nothing than does Apurba.  Mrinmayi interrupts this ceremonial introduction between strangers by precociously whipping off the girl’s “precious” veil, the meeting ends, and the girl is escorted by her maid to the inner rooms (272), no doubt to be kept secluded until the arrival of the next prospective husband.  Before leaving, Mrinmayi steals Apurba’s shoes, and when later she places them in his path, he holds her as she struggles to free herself.  When he gently releases her, Mrinmayi is dumbfounded, feeling that “if he had struck her in anger [she] would not have been at all surprised, but this gentle sentence of punishment . . . .quite baffled her” (273).  This reaction is similar to that of Ratan’s who is more conditioned to the physical punishment of her previous masters than to the gentleness of the current postmaster, emphasizing that abuse to women is a practice of which they have little or no right to object.

Mrinmayi has no interest in this college educated man, yet it is not necessary that Apurba win her affections in order to receive her hand in marriage.  All he needs is his mother’s consent.  After his mother less than whole-heartedly gives this consent, Mrinmayi is trained by her own mother and the village women to become a proper wife, and they instruct her that “playfulness and frolicking around, loud laughter, gossip with boys, and eating when hungry” will no longer be allowed (275).  Mrinmayi vehemently states she will not marry, but “nevertheless, she did” because she has no choice (275).  She refuses, however, to behave like the proper wife, tells Apurba she will never love him, and then asks, “Why did you marry me?” to which he has no reply (276).  Her mother-in-law locks her up in her room until she agrees to behave, and she feels like a “newly captured bird” (276).  Apurba attempts to cheer her are in vain and he leaves her alone, locking the door behind him as if afraid to go against his mother’s orders.  Mrinmayi dreams of going to see her father, her mother-in-law refuses to let her go, and Apurba, still trying to win her love, offers to take her. 

Having never left the village, Mrinmayi is awed by the many new sights, and so she plies Apurba with numerous questions, ones “whose answers could not be found in any of Apurba’s college books”; unwilling to admit this lack of knowledge, he answers nonetheless, even though his replies “did not tally with the truth” (279).  Tagore often emphasized that learning only from books did not make a well-rounded scholar, and Apurba, even with a college degree, is no more informed about the sights than is Mrinmayi.  During the visit at her father’s, where she is in an atmosphere of love and caring, Mrinmayi falls in love with her husband, but upon their return, when he asks her to go with him to Calcutta while he finishes his schooling, she refuses.  More than likely, she would feel in Calcutta as much “a fish out of water” as did the postmaster  in the village, with no one with which to communicate.  Apurba concedes temporary defeat, leaves her with her mother, and tells her, “I won’t come back until you write me a letter” (281).  After he leaves, she regrets not having gone with him and returns to her mother-in-law “veiled with due respect” (284).  In a short time, this marriage has transformed a free-spirited, non-conforming Mrinmayi into a dutiful, self-sacrificing wife. She painstakingly writes the letter, which reveals that although she is not completely illiterate, the writing is so difficult that “even so much love could not make the lines straight, the letters neatly formed, the spelling faultless”; she is not even sure how to address the envelope, aware that “besides the name, something else is required,” but not knowing what (284-85).  This addresses that even though Mrinmayi has learned how to write, she has had little use for the knowledge, and therefore it is hard for her to recall.  Much like Ratan, their literacy is immaterial to their roles as male caretakers.  Although Ratan has learned how to write, once the postmaster goes away, she will return to her role as dutiful servant.  Mrinmayi’s writing skills are used only to bring her husband back, and that the two are finally reunited without Apurba having seen the letter further reinforces the irrelevance of her lack of literacy.

            Ray’s version of “The Conclusion” more clearly emphasizes both Mrinmayi’s  belligerent attitude toward marriage and the irrelevancy of literacy for women, especially in the role of marriage.  Amulya (Apurba in Tagore’s story) is confronted with his mother who explains to him why Pooty will make a wonderful wife.  She states, “She’s nice looking and a good housekeeper.  She sews and sings.  What more do you want?”, with no mention of Pooty’s formal education.  When Amulya goes to examine this prospective bride, her father proudly displays Pooty’s needlework, and only when Amulya remains unimpressed does he ask Pooty to tell Amulya what she is studying in school.  As in Tagore’s story, she reels off by rote “Reading, History, Geography, Arithmetic, Bengali” after being prodded in the back to do so.  After the meeting, Amulya’s mother states to her son, “What’s wrong with her?” to which he replies, “What is right with her?”   When he continues to insist on Mrinmayi for his bride, she states, “Is he a boy or a girl?  She can’t even read or write,” to which Amulya replies, “It doesn’t matter.”  It does not matter to his mother either, for she is only searching for ways to make her son reject Mrinmayi as his bride.  This becomes clear when, after conceding to the fact that her son is intent on marrying her, she beckons Mrinmayi into her home and drills her, asking, “Don’t you have work to do at home?” to which Mrinmayi responds, “I sweep, I prepare the vegetables, I tend the oven.”  Her future mother-in-law then asks, “Can you cook? What spices do you use?”  Only as an afterthought does she ask Mrinmayi if she can read or write.  When Mrinmayi responds, “A little,” she is not in the least taken aback, and her final comment is, “Shouldn’t a girl your age be more dignified?  Such conduct won’t do here,” referring not at all to her limited literacy but to her tomboyish ways and lack of interest in behaving as a proper Indian woman.

            Mrinmayi’s own mother has much the same attitude.  She tells her daughter, “How lucky you are they like you.  Stay home and do some housework.  What good fortune to be part of a well-respected family.”  Her mother shows little or no concern for Mrinmayi’s feelings of marriage; she only sees this as an opportunity to escape poverty and be seen as respected citizens of their village.  Mrinmayi tries to be obedient as she tediously but with no enthusiasm works on a needlepoint project.  She tires of it quickly and in retaliation, chops off her hair, to which her mother responds to her with a beating

Despite her efforts to escape the marriage, the wedding pursues, and Ray’s depiction of  the wedding night conversation clearly reveals a very outspoken Mrinmayi:

Mrinmayi:  Why did you marry me?

Amulya:   Because I wanted to, I suppose.  Is that wrong?

Mrinmayi:  Doesn’t what I want matter?

Amulya: Is it marriage you object to . . . or being married to me?

Mrinmayi:  Why was I forced into it?  Am I a child?

Amulya:  If you were, force would be wrong.  But you are not a child, or so I thought.

 

Amulya’s last statement reflects his attitude that marrying a child is wrong, yet he does not recognize the wrong in marrying a woman against her will nor can he come up with any answer as to the reason he married her.  That he states she is not a child means that he expects her to behave like a proper married woman which contradicts the reason he was attracted to her in the first place—because she was different and refused to behave like the other women of the village.  Amulya was very much unwilling to be forced into marrying Pooty, but he feels it is perfectly acceptable for a woman to be forced into an unwanted marriage.

            Their conversation continues, and she mentions that her father never beat her.  He responds, “Do you think I will?”, to which she mentions that she knows that his milkman beats his wife.  “He tore away her nose ring,” she says, and Amulya replies, “Do I look like a man who’d tear away—even an earring?”  She responds by pulling off her earring, a gesture that demonstrates that she knows nothing about this new husband of hers and so is unwilling to take any chances.  She refuses to sleep in his bed to which he replies, “There are many things—new things—in life that we have to get used to.  As we mature, circumstances change, and we must change them.  We discard old habits.  We require new ones.  Usually things happen naturally.  If not we must make them happen.”  Amulya has to change nothing about his life, now that he is married; he will continue to pursue his law degree and later start a career.  Yet he expects his wife to totally transform into someone who she is not:

Mrinmayi:  Why am I locked in?

Amulya:  Listen . . . you just got married . . .

Mrinmayi:  I didn’t.

Amulya:  So you didn’t.  I mean you did—but you didn’t want to.  Anyway, you’re a married woman.  You’ve seen married women?  Do they run about the streets?  Do they play on swings or climb trees?” 

Mrinmayi:  I do  I like to.  It’s fun.  We’re not all alike.

Amulya: That’s not the point.  You have to act your age.  If your conduct is abnormal, you know what people say?

 

Again, what he found most attractive in her in the beginning—her abnormal conduct and lack of conformity—is immaterial now that she is his wife.  Now he is worried how that difference will reflect on him as a husband.

As in Tagore’s story, Amulya gives up on gaining his wife’s affections and tells her he is going back to Calcutta where he will remain until she writes him a letter requesting his return.  Meanwhile, Mrinmayi lays in bed, refuses to eat, her mother scolds her for not being a proper wife, then later, when she realizes her daughter is suffering, says, “Tears will not help us.  Don’t cry. Such is our fate.  We’re like the refuse floating on the river.  We have nothing—we are nothing  That is why everyone scorns us.”  Their poverty emphasizes the combined oppression experienced by women of a lower class who have little or no chance for upward mobility.  Although Mrinmayi later realizes she loves her husband and painstakingly writes him a letter, had she not fallen in love, she would have had little choice but to remain trapped and unhappy in the marriage.  When she and her husband finally reunite, she has transformed into the dutiful and respected wife.  When Amulya asks how she got into their room she replies, “The tree . . . I won’t do it again,” evidence that she is willing to sacrifice all that she was before in order for the marriage to work.  The letter she wrote, as in Tagore’s story, did not bring her husband back, for he does not find it until after his return, again an implication that literacy is of little importance for women and especially to the success of a marriage relationship.

            Although Ray’s Ratan and Mrinmayi appear more independent than Tagore’s, the overpowering theme in both representations rests on the helplessness these women face in an atmosphere where women, especially women who live in poverty, have little chance for upward mobility or independence.  “The Postmaster” emphasizes the issue of poverty and subservience, of a young woman who is brilliant enough to forge ahead if given a chance, but the small chance she is given by the postmaster is quickly torn away from her, and there is little hope that Ratan will ever escape her present role.  Although Mrinmayi is able to escape poverty through marriage, to make the marriage work she has to bury the once independent thinker who refused to bend to the societal restraints placed on women.

As stated previously, many of Tagore’s works present issues surrounding both women and lower class oppression, yet they do not so much support his own personal views but those of society.  Tagore himself was married to a woman only nine years of age, and the “choice was limited, because a girl had to be found from the brahmin sub-caste of demoted rank to which the Tagores belonged:  other brahmin families would not give their daughters to the Tagores” (Dyson 56).  This is similar to the case of Amulya and his mother’s choice of bride, thus her determination to prevent his marriage to Mrinmoyee, a woman of a lower status.  Tagore  was against child marriages, yet as Dyson states, “it was part of the times and mores.  His father wished him to get married, and he did not go against that wish” (58).  Some of his earlier poems, states Edward Thompson, “make a frontal attack on those social rules, and especially on the abominations of child-marriage of girls” (19).  Even though Tagore was ahead of his time in his support for women’s rights and abolishment of oppressive acts against women, he still lived in a society where many either opposed his views or were not ready for change, and so at times he flitted between the ideal of woman in the traditional role and the progressive woman breaking away from that mold.  And although he was a proponent for women’s education, he still felt strongly that a woman’s place was in the home.  This view is fully expressed as quoted in Education for Fulness: 

Whatever is worth knowing, is knowledge.  It should be known equally by men and women . . . . Knowledge, has two departments:  one, pure knowledge; the other, utilitarian knowledge.  In the field of pure knowledge, there is no distinction between men and women; distinction exists in the sphere of practical utility.  Women should acquire pure knowledge for becoming a mature human being, and utilitarian knowledge for becoming true women . . . . It is the nature of women to be a wife and a mother.  (47)

 

Tagore strongly admired women, both those within and outside the academic field, and although his mention that it “is the nature of women to be a wife and mother” sounds very much in keeping with an attitude that does not promote advancement for women, it does reflect the social attitudes of the time and the limited opportunities available for women outside the home.  Therefore, Tagore’s stories would have seemed either unrealistic or representative of a minority if Ratan or Mrinmoyee had broken free from current social conventions and become successful independent women.  What makes his stories strong is his incorporation of elements that bring to light these issues, that women, such as Ratan, do have the ability to write but are not allowed to do so, that women such as Mrinmoyee should not be forced into marriage, and that not all women are made from the same mold.

            Not only Tagore but his whole family was ahead of its time in issues of social progress.  He states in My Boyhood Days, “No purdah was observed in my sister-in-law’s apartment” and that at the time it was an “unimaginable depth of novelty” (84), much the same as is demonstrated by Mrinmayi when “the women pulled their veils down to the tips of their noses, thus concealing their faces like curtains on a stage” while she would arrive veil-less “holding a naked baby to her chest, her unbound hair hanging free” (269).   The character of Mrinmayi may even had been inspired by a young woman Tagore met on a journey who he mentions in a letter to his niece written two years before “The Conclusion”: 

One girl attracts my attention.  She must be about eleven or twelve; but, buxom and sturdy, she might pass for fourteen or fifteen . . . .She has a child in her arms and is staring at me with unabashed curiosity, and certainly no lack of straightforwardness or intelligence in her glance.  Her half-boyish, half-girlish manner is singularly attractive—a novel blend of masculine nonchalance and feminine charm.  I had no idea there were such types among our village women in Bengal.  (Glimpses of Bengal 38)

 

His description of this woman is very similar to Mrinmayi, and Tagore’s mention in the above quote that he “had no idea” that women like that existed clearly points out that women like Mrinmayi, outgoing and willing to deny social conventions, were of the minority. 

Tagore also relates that his sister-in-law was “one of the first pioneers who made the road to education easy for girls” (My Boyhood Days 84), and one of his own sisters became the “first woman writer of fiction in a modern Indian language” (Dyson 21).  Tagore spent the better part of his life promoting fuller education, both for women and the poverty stricken.  In a speech on co-education, Tagore states, “In education, as in politics, if we do not give the hearty support of women we shall be lacking in strength and conviction,”  that India “is deprived of the great strength that women potentially have, because our household taps it,” yet that to “serve the whole world cannot be the work of an individual like me—it is the work of the whole India” (Tagore the Educator 38-39).  Too often it was Tagore alone, with little support from the masses, who promoted education for women, especially women of the lower class who were more valuable to their families in the home as caretakers.  This situation remains unchanged today for many women in India.  In a recent statistical report on women’s education in India, Victoria A. Velkoff states that often poor families “keep girls at home to care for younger siblings or to work in family enterprises.  If a family has to choose between educating a son or a daughter because of financial restrictions, typically the son will be chosen.”  She also states that “parents may see the education of daughters a waste of money because daughters will eventually live with their husbands’ families, and the parents will not benefit directly from their education.”  Tagore depicts this attitude toward educating women in both stories.  Ratan has the ability to learn but is seen by the postmaster not as an intellectual but as a household servant with “no philosophy” of her own (97), and therefore a woman who has no real need for formal education..  Mrinmayi also has the ability to learn but her mother’s only interest is that she marry to escape poverty, and her husband’s only interest is that she behave as a proper wife.

Kalpana Bardhan, who compiled an anthology on Bengali short stories addressing the issues of the oppressed, states of  Tagore’s stories:

[T]he oppressor is ultimately some aspect of the cultural ideology and the social situation in which both men and women feel themselves trapped because of some socially bred dysfunction of the individual will and psyche.  The tragedy lies in the distortion that their personalities and relationships suffer under the tyranny of social mores and beliefs, in the havoc that ingrained ideas can play on human mind and behavior.  The climax comes with the realization that habitual notions have led one to blindness, to barriers from more humane choices, ultimately to becoming one’s own jailer.  It is then too late to change the rules, even though the nature of the problem has been perceived.  All that remains is the shattering knowledge that the ideas one has always lived by are wrong, oppressive, and mindless.  (14-15)

 

Although “The Postmaster” and “The Conclusion” are not included in Bardhan’s anthology, they both reflect this same ideology.  Ratan, who expresses her wish to go with the postmaster to Calcutta, perhaps her only chance to break free from oppression, is left behind.  Mrinmayi, because she at first refuses to follow the social mores and beliefs of her society, is “jailed” by Apurba who is “ingrained” with the idea that once married, his wife has to give up all that attracted him to her in the beginning so that she can become the proper wife.  Bardhan states, “Rabindranath’s  wife and the wives of his older brothers entered the family as brides of ten or twelve, and Rabindranath was acutely aware of the wrenching transplantation, the pain and vulnerability of a young girl torn from her own family” (17), so it is easy to see how Tagore can so true to life portray the same emotions in his character of Mrinmoyee.  Bardhan also states of the Tagore  stories in her anthology: 

“[T]he oppression of the female is seen through male eyes and reflected in male actions and reactions.  The importance of this perspective is pivotal in the perpetuation of or the resistance to patriarchal oppression. The failure of the male to live up to his own self in relation to the female, the recognition of his own defeat and degradation in hers, is a potentially powerful basis of transformation for him.  We know that this perspective was important in Bengal in the nineteenth-century male-led reform movement” (32).

 

Although Tagore’s postmaster is mostly oblivious to Ratan except where it concerns his own needs, an awareness of Ratan’s oppression is conveyed through Ray’s postmaster when he asks her if the past postmasters had beaten her, in his asking his successor if he could continue to help Ratan with her writing, and in his confused but also questioning look when Ratan refuses his offer of money and silently passes him by.  In Tagore’s story, Apurba’s failure to live up to his own self is seen in his jealousy when he thinks, “What did it matter if she had momentarily reduced him to a laughing-stock, then ignored him in favour of some ignoramous named Rakhal?  Must he prove to her that he reviewed books for a magazine called Visvadip and carried in his suitcase cologne, shoes, Rubini’s camphor . . .” (273), in his attempt to cheer her by suggesting she play with Rakhal when he realizes the marriage has made her unhappy (276), and also in his willingness to take her to see her father when his mother refuses to do so (278).  In Ray’s film, Amulya’s observance of Mrinmayi’s oppression and his recognition of self-degradation is most evident in  their wedding night conversation.  He wants to maintain the patriarchal authority but is very much aware of Mrinmayi’s unhappiness and resistance.  He lacks an authoritative voice because he can give her no justifiable answers as to why he forced her to marry or why she is kept locked in their room, so instead he refers to how other women behave in hopes the dictates of society will convince her to conform.

            Tagore fully represents in his stories issues of both gender and class oppression. While Ray stays true to Tagore’s stories, he introduces a slight progression of social change in the more outspoken voices of Ratan and Mrinmayi while at the same time suggesting, more clearly than does Tagore, how little value is placed on the importance of women’s literacy.  Both  Tagore and Ray bring out the essence of human behavior and how heavily society influences that behavior. Tagore once said, “Society takes the burden of thinking so fully and completely on itself that I am not even conscious that it is thinking . . . . Society has a place for conduct that is false and no place for what is right” (Glorious Thoughts of Tagore 228).  To the reader and viewer, Tagore and Ray bring a questioning of this conduct that, however objectionable, continues to progress very slowly toward what is right.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Bardhan, Kalpana.  Women, Outcastes, Peasants, and Rebels.  Berkeley:  Univ. of California Press, 1990.

Dyson, Ketaki Kushari.  I Won’t Let You Go. Newcastle Upon Tyne:   Bloodaxe Books, 1991.

Mukherjee, Himangshu Bhushan.  Education for Fullness.  Bombay:  Asia Publishing House, 1962.

Sarkar, Bhupendra Nath.  Tagore, The Educator.  Calcutta:  Academic Publishers, 1974.

Tagore, Rabindranath. “The Conclusion.”  Rabindranath Tagore:  An Anthology.  Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, eds.  London:  Picador, 1997.  268-287.

----.   Glimpses of Bengal.  Calcutta:  Macmillan, 1960.

----.   “A Poet’s School.”   Rabindranath Tagore:  An Anthology.  248-261.

----.  “The Postmaster.”  Stories from Tagore.  Calcutta:  Macmillan, 1958.  89-97.

Thompson, Edwards.  Rabindranath Tagore:  His Life and Works.  Calcutta:  Association Press, 1921.

Two Daughters.  Dir. Satyajit Ray.  Sony Pictures, 1961.

Velkoff, Victoria A.  “Women’s Education in India.”  27 Feb. 1999.  U.S. Department of Commerce:  Economics and Statistics Administration, Bureau of the Census 26 Feb. 1999 http:/www.census.gov/ipc/prod/wid-9801.pdf