Novels
RavindraNath Tagore
Novels
Tagore wrote eight novels and four novellas, among them Chaturanga, Shesher Kobita, Char Odhay, and Noukadubi. Ghare Baire (The Home and the World)through the lens of the idealistic zamindar protagonist Nikhilrepudiates the frog march of nativism, terrorism, and religious querulousness popular among segments of the Swadeshi movement. A frank expression of Tagores conflicted sentiments, it was conceived of during a 1914 bout of depression. The novel ends in grody Hindu Muslim interplay and Nikhils likely death from a head wound. Gora, nominated by many Bengali critics as his finest tale, raises controversies regarding connate identity and its ultimate fungibility. As with Ghare Baire matters of self identity (jati), personal freedom, and religion are lividly vivisected in a context of family and romance. In it an Irish boy orphaned in the Sepoy Mutiny is raised by Hindus as the titular gorawhitey. Ignorant of his foreign origins, he chastises Hindu religious backsliders out of love for the indigenous Indians and solidarity with them against his hegemon compatriots. He falls for a Brahmo girl, compelling his worried foster father to reveal his lost past and cease his nativist zeal. As a true dialectic advancing arguments for and against strict traditionalism, it tackles the colonial conundrum by portraying the value of all positions within a particular frame not only syncretism, not only liberal orthodoxy, but the extremest reactionary traditionalism he defends by an appeal to what humans share. Among these Tagore highlights identity conceived of as dharma.
In Jogajog (Relationships), the heroine Kumudinibound by the ideals of ?iva Sati, exemplified by Dakshayaniis torn between her pity for the sinking fortunes of her progressive and compassionate elder brother and his foil her roue of a husband. Tagore flaunts his feminist leanings, pathos depicts the plight and ultimate demise of women trapped by pregnancy, duty, and family honour, he simultaneously trucks with Bengals putrescent landed gentry. The story revolves around the underlying rivalry between two familiesthe Chatterjees, aristocrats now on the decline (Biprodas) and the Ghosals (Madhusudan), representing new money and new arrogance. Kumudini, Biprodas sister, is caught between the two as she is married off to Madhusudan. She had risen in an observant and sheltered traditional home, as had all her female relations.Others were uplifting Shesher Kobitatranslated twice as Last Poem and Farewell Songis his most lyrical novel, with poems and rhythmic passages written by a poet protagonist. It contains elements of satire and postmodernism and has stock characters who gleefully attack the reputation of an old, outmoded, oppressively renowned poet who, incidentally, goes by a familiar name Rabindranath Tagore. Though his novels remain among the least appreciated of his works, they have been given renewed attention via film adaptations by Ray and others Chokher Bali and Ghare Baire are exemplary. In the first, Tagore inscribes Bengali society via its heroine a rebellious widow who would live for herself alone. He pillories the custom of perpetual mourning on the part of widows, who were not allowed to remarry, who were consigned to seclusion and loneliness. Tagore wrote of it I have always regretted the ending.