Lal, Ruby.
Coming of age in nineteenth-century India: the girl-child and the art of playfulness Ruby Lal. - Cambridge New York Cambridge University Press 2013 - xvii, 229 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-217) and index.
Machine generated contents note: 1. Texts, spaces, histories; 2. The woman of the forest; 3. The woman of the school; 4. The woman of the household; 5. The woman of the rooftops.
"In this engaging and eloquent history, Ruby Lal traces the coming of age of nineteenth-century Indian women through a critique of narratives of linear transition from girlhood to womanhood. In the north Indian patriarchal environment, women's lives were dominated by the expectations of the male universal, articulated most clearly in household chores and domestic duties. The author argues that girls and women in the early nineteenth century experienced freedoms, eroticism, adventurousness and playfulness, even within restrictive circumstances. Although women in the colonial world of the later nineteenth century continued to be agential figures, their activities came to be constrained by more firmly entrenched domestic norms. Lal skilfully marks the subtle and complex alterations in the multifaceted female subject in a variety of nineteenth-century discourses, which are elaborated in four different sites - forest, school, household and rooftop"--
9781107045910
2012023652
Women--Social life and customs--India--19th century.
Girls--Social life and customs--India--19th century.
Domestic relations--History--India--19th century.
HISTORY / Asia / India & South Asia.
HQ1742 / .L346 2013
305.235 / L15
Coming of age in nineteenth-century India: the girl-child and the art of playfulness Ruby Lal. - Cambridge New York Cambridge University Press 2013 - xvii, 229 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-217) and index.
Machine generated contents note: 1. Texts, spaces, histories; 2. The woman of the forest; 3. The woman of the school; 4. The woman of the household; 5. The woman of the rooftops.
"In this engaging and eloquent history, Ruby Lal traces the coming of age of nineteenth-century Indian women through a critique of narratives of linear transition from girlhood to womanhood. In the north Indian patriarchal environment, women's lives were dominated by the expectations of the male universal, articulated most clearly in household chores and domestic duties. The author argues that girls and women in the early nineteenth century experienced freedoms, eroticism, adventurousness and playfulness, even within restrictive circumstances. Although women in the colonial world of the later nineteenth century continued to be agential figures, their activities came to be constrained by more firmly entrenched domestic norms. Lal skilfully marks the subtle and complex alterations in the multifaceted female subject in a variety of nineteenth-century discourses, which are elaborated in four different sites - forest, school, household and rooftop"--
9781107045910
2012023652
Women--Social life and customs--India--19th century.
Girls--Social life and customs--India--19th century.
Domestic relations--History--India--19th century.
HISTORY / Asia / India & South Asia.
HQ1742 / .L346 2013
305.235 / L15