Saint or sinner? Suttee in the depiction of Flora Annie Steel and Cornelia Sorabji
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9002272 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Susmita Roye (Delaware State University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 281-299 |
| Publication date | 2015-08-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0021989415593401 |
| OpenAlex | W2475645664 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 21 |
Suttee is a well-discussed and widely researched topic and yet the literary representations of it are not sufficiently probed into. Suttee, if merely understood as the rite of widow burning in India, is one of the cruelest practices of female subjugation. Hence, women’s attempts at articulating their views on such a practice are significant. This becomes more arresting when two women writers come from different (even opposing!) cultures and stand on different rungs of the colonial hierarchy. Moreover, given the flexibility of fiction as a mode of expression, it can arguably best be used as a powerful tool for one’s own propaganda. Several questions emerge. How does each writer see and show suttee? How does an awareness of their respective status in an imperialist world shape their creative imagination? What kind of politics of representation is involved in their writings in face of the charged politics surrounding the topic of suttee in a colonial world? In depicting this rite, how and why does each bring in the argument of sainthood that is inevitably related with any suttee-death? Endeavoring to find answers to these questions, I will examine one work of fiction each by two contemporaneous women writers, one British (Flora Annie Steel) and one Indian writer (Cornelia Sorabji), to see how the concept of ‘suttee’ has been used in each case
Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Art · Art history · Colonialism · CONTEST · Depiction · Face (sociological concept · Hierarchy · Literature · Mode (computer interface · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics · SAINT · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · History · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South Asian Studies and Diaspora
Dwelling in the Archive
Real and Imagined Women
Contentious Traditions
Woman and Empire
Unruly Subjects
Becoming Imperial Citizens
Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory
Ideologies of the Raj
Sati
The Memsahib and the Ends of Empire
Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque by Fanny Parkes
Delusions and Discoveries
Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse
Sati
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,13 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2018 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |