The Sati, the Bride, and the Widow
Sacrificial Woman in the Nineteenth Century
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12411677 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sophie Gilmartin (Royal Holloway University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1997 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 141-158 |
| Publication date | 1997-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Victorian Literature and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1060-1503 • E-ISSN: 1470-1553 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1060150300004678 |
| OpenAlex | W2170814650 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 2 |
My title brings together two cultures — Indian and British — and three phases of womanhood — the bride, the widow, and — through suttee — the dead widow. Suttee, or sati, is the obsolete Hindu practice in which a widow burns herself upon her husband's funeral pyre. In this essay I wish to explore how sati was used as a metaphor in British novels and periodicals in the nineteenth century — used both as a metaphor for the British widow's mourning rituals and for the plight of the British bride in an unhappy marriage. I shall argue that sati forms a nexus connecting the seemingly disparate situations of the bride and widow, and that it also in this metaphorical sense forms a nexus or point of comparison between British and Indian culture
Art · Art history · Bride · Hinduism · Literature · Metaphor · Nexus (standard · Theology · Wish · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Philosophy · Religious studies · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · South Asian Cinema and Culture · Religious Studies
| Citations per year | 0.3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2003 - 2025 (23) |
| Highly cited | No |