On the 8th of January the media and social media celebrated the birth anniversary of Ashapurna Devi, a prolific novelist of Bengali language who never ceases to fascinate her readers by the sheer volume of her work and by the fact that she was an unschooled and prepubertal bride married off by a conservative father and yet rose to a status where she could appreciably fill up the emptiness left by the demise of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee. Those who knew her personally remember her writing even in the kitchen. But more informed sources say that she wrote sitting at a desk of her own in the deep hours of the night’s dense silence.

Ashapurna did not use her surname, but she came from a Bengali Baidya family, a caste that especially seems to have emerged as a distinct social group through the opportunities offered by the British rule. Economic prosperity and cultural modernity did not always go hand in hand as the guilt of material wellbeing found a compensation in the hardening of the conservative shackles upon the women of the family. Women found their escape, many times in the politics of the freedom movement but mostly in the printed books and journals. As a part of this pattern, Ashapurna’s mother was a voracious reader of books, and it was this atmosphere at home that propelled her to teach herself to read and write. Her inspiration was of course Tagore to whom she wrote once a fan mail. Tagore wrote back to her with his best wishes and blessings but in that letter, he addressed her as Sampurna. That began her soul’s journey from the aspirant fulfilled of dreams as in Ashapurna to the complete realization of the self, as the name Sampurna meant. What is interesting is that her novels, if arranged chronically would reflect the journey of an aspiring woman to one who wholly evolved into emancipation. To my mind, this journey of evolution from a suppressed woman to a fully liberated one should be the principal focus of feminist research.

Scholars with interest in women authors find in Ashapurna Devi a feminist because of the trilogy namely Prothom Protisruti, Subarnalata and Bokul Katha. But as she matures her novels become progressively patriarchal. Agni Pariksha lionizes child marriage, working women are often exiled from families, liberated women from fashionable families are the villains and are found as templates of present-day soap serials. Beyond the trilogy, Ashapurna seems to be done and dusted with oppressed women trying to find windows of assertions as humans. She now emerges upon the world of her readers, as one who is indeed free of the domestic bonds and transcends the world of the bride into the world of a genderless observer, distanced and dispassionate, not of women but of families, the world of institutions, architecture of the city, rise in new professions and the rule of modern law based upon rights but low on responsibility. Here she critiques a modernist view of liberation, which she finds individualistic and selfish, loathing ambitions and even a desire for consumerism. She is aware of the vulnerability of the family as an institution, seeks the fulfilment of this as an establishment, acknowledges its desirability and along with such realizations, starts to tread carefully conscious that a feminist assertion of women’s rights and individualities can wreck the system. Her writings veer increasingly towards a search for stability of the family and what gets more interesting is she lets the man off the hook and instead lays the burden of protecting the family upon the woman. She starts to look upon men as vulnerable, plagued by modernity, pathetically emaciated and dangerously stripped of their selves, who can only be saved by women of merit, will, strength, talent and empathy through adjustments, compromise and even camouflage of their talents. Here, she starts to read like a make chauvinists dream, and this is why, bland feminist scholars are wont to discuss her works beyond the trilogy.

 I am not decided whether I would wish to take to Ashapurna as a feminist writer; I would like to consider her as a dispassionate judge who does not a prioritize situations and instead, likes to discover a woman as a bundle of responsibilities instead of voices asserting rights. Through her depiction of failed women, failed in family, failed in career, failed in education, failed as a ahomemaker, she searches for the impossibility of a successful woman; her women remain Ashapurna, the Sampurna elude her readers in her novels. But the writer in her is emancipated because she can write along with a husband, in laws, sons and daughters in law. That alone speaks volumes for her personal success. I wonder whether the scholars would like to retrieve her as a career woman and a homemaker through intensive interviews of her surviving heirs. I am not aware if such a project has ever been attended.