- Published: October 1, 2022
- Updated: October 1, 2022
- University / College: University of Bristol
- Language: English
- Downloads: 40
jogendra singh’s nur jahan: the romance of an indianqueen(1909), svarna kumari ghosal’s the fatal garland (1915) and A. Madhviah’sclarinda(1915).
The historical periods covered vary greatly from tamil times ( adive for death) to maratha history while the locale ranges from the south to agra and delhi and to the fifteenthcentury of bengal. True to the saying that there ismaterial for at least one novelin the novel in the life of every person, someof this early fiction is palpably autobiographical. Krupabai sathhianadhan’skamala: a story of hindu life( 1895) and saguna: a story of native chrsitian life ( 1895) arefrankly autobiographical in fictionalform. Even in toru dutt’s Bianca(1876), an unfinished love story set in thenineteenth century england, the heroine who is of spanish parentage, appears tolarge extent, to be a self- portrait, in view of her “ dark colour” ” darkcolour brown eyes…
large and full” andher “ long black curls” . k. s.
ramamurthi maintains that theearly indian english novelists ” were by no means ‘ imitators’`but consciousexperimentors who adopted an alien form and medium to socia-cutural situationswhich are specifically indian”. This claim is hardly tenable. If, as alreadynoted, the strong element of fantasy in some of this fiction establishes itslinks with the ancient sanskrit fictional tradiotion, there are clearindications of its debt to scott, bulwar-lytton and also G. W. M. Reynolds- afabricator of gaudy melodrama who doesnot even find a place in a standard literary history of england but who, as T.
W. Clark has pointed out, enjoyedgreat opportunity among indian youth of the early twentieth century. It is alsopossible to suggest that the sentimental romances of mrs. Henry wood( 1814-87) the author of the much admired EastLynne(1861) and mary elizabethbraddon(1837-1915), who wrote Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) and numerous other highly successful novels of thecirculating library fiction type could very well have influenced early indian-english social novelists, for their work generally shows the same appetite fora world in which issues are generally simplified, with innocence meeklysuffering to triumph in the end, while vice flourishing for a time, meets itsdesserts.
The only possible evidence of experimentationin this earlly fiction isw to be found in Rajmohan’sWife, which uses indian wordsliberally in the descriptive passages. But it is pertinent to note that chaterjee’suse of idianisms is genrrally limited to pointing objects alone.