Date of Award
Fall 12-10-2021
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts - History
Department
History
First Advisor
Dr. Aryendra Chakravartty
Second Advisor
Dr. Court Carney
Third Advisor
Dr. Robert Allen
Fourth Advisor
Dr. Sudeshna Roy
Abstract
Feminist Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain lived a life of seclusion and oppression like many middle-class Muslim women in colonial India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. During this period, Rokeya used writing as a tool to fight against the oppression women faced from the patriarchal society and reimagined their gendered position in society. Rokeya wrote two novels, Sultana’s Dream and Padmarag, both set in feminist utopian societies. In these works, Rokeya expresses that the problem to the oppression of women can be traced to the purdah system or the seclusion of women, the solution is to grow educational opportunities for women, which could lead women to create the ideal feminist utopian society that prioritized greater equality for women. These works give a glimpse of women’s lives during this period and show writing allowed Rokeya to create a legacy as a feminist that envisioned an idealistic society for women.
Repository Citation
Momin, Mashall, "The Political Act of Writing Feminism- Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and the Utopian Vision" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 422.
https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/etds/422
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
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