Debi Chowdhurani দেবী চৌধুরানী

by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay

Debi Chowdhurani is a Bengali novel written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and published in 1884. It was later translated to English by Subodh Chunder Mitter. Very importantly, Bankim Chandra saw the struggle being led by a woman, the protagonist, in a time when most women remained behind purdah and did not even show her face to men outside her immediate family. This was a tremendous inspiration to scores of women who gradually came out of their homes and actively joined the independence struggle in the decades to come. Some feminists see the ending as a disappointment, however, because the protagonist prefers to build her home instead of continuing with the independence movement