Sisterhood in A Wife’s Letter: Tagore’s Visionary Outlook on Feminist Causes in Contemporary Bengali Patriarchal Society

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the efficacy of ‘sisterhood’ or “female bonding” between the two female characters, Mrinal and Bindu, in Streer Patra (1914) or, A Wife’s Letter, a short story of Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore envisioned sisterhood as a ‘Family Model’ in A Wife’s Letter, a tool to combat patriarchy, long before second-wave feminists adopted sisterhood in the 1960s. Using close reading and viewing A Wife’s Letter through the lens of “sisterhood” theory of the American feminist bell hooks (1986) in her seminal work From Margin to Center, the study observes the worth of sisterhood in the lives of Mrinal and Bindu as a source of solace, support, and solidarity in a patriarchal family, and as a means of establishing female voice, identity, and emancipation. Thus, the study endeavours to provide food for thought for conscious and concerned readers, encouraging them to make use of sisterhood to support and express solidarity for feminist causes through scholarly writings, literary works, and real-life scenarios.