Three Women and Their Men: Comparing Tagore's Bimala with James's Isabel and Forster's Lilia

??? COHVARATlsr THREE WOMEN AND THEIR MEN: COMPARING TAGORE'S BIMALA WITH JAMES'S ISABEL AND FORSTER'S LILIA Amiya Bhushan Sharma I. Aims and Methods It is not surprising that Goethe, with his idea of primordial unities—the Urpflanze, the vegetable form from which the other species would evolve —should have coined the word Weltliteratur. In India Rabindranath Tagore talked about visvasahitya ("universal literature") among a host of other world or universe related words. More recently, George Steiner, Oxford's foundation professor of comparative literature, stated in his 1994 inaugural address that "Weltliteratur seeks to articulate ideals, attitudes of sensibility which belong to the universalizing civilities, to the international freemasonry of liberal spirits characteristic of the Enlightenment " (146-47). Comparatists inquire into the core of the human condition , at a primordial level beneath culture and custom, religion and politics, even language and national tradition, so as to enrich awareness ofthat condition. "It is," said Steiner, "integral to 'free trade' in an intellectual and spiritual sense. In the life of the mind, as in that of politics, isolationism and nationalist arrogance are the road to brutal ruin." Somewhat in tune with this "international freemasonry of liberal spirits," comparatists such as Susan Bassnett and Amiya Dev talk about gender and thematic study, or Sio/jf-criticism and thematology. "Stoff criticism," Dev points out, "is not exploration into 'source'. [. . .] [S]ource terminates at the gates of text, it is extraneous. Stoff is not; it belongs to the sanctum sanctorum of text" (235). Sio/f-criticism or thematology fosters inquiry into the elemental or fundamental human experience. Dev writes: "our ultimate commitment is not to literature or lore, but experience ; and whatever fosters our understanding ofexperience, whether literature or lore or any other discourse, is welcome to us" (234). The study of national literatures, as Swapan Majumdar, Sisir Kumar Das, and Shivarama Padikkal have all recently pointed out, focuses on a single tradition. These literatures are influenced by the same historical factors and celebrate or react against the same religious beliefs in ways that we discover in the literatures ofthe various languages of Europe or of India. Such a strategy does offer a few insights. When K. R. Srinivas Iyyengar, a Brahmin English professor ofTamil origin, looked at Tagore's The Home and the World in purely traditional terms, he concluded: "If Nikhil is the satwik nature, silent, long suffering , reconciling, and Sandip's is the rajasik nature, voluble, impetuous, violent, then Bimala's is to start with—the tamasik nature" (107). To judge characters in a novel today, or for that matter people around us, Vol.26 (ZOOZ): 17 TAGORE'S BIMALA, JAMES'S ISABEL, FORSTER'S LILIA in light of the three gunas ("qualities") is like a doctor treating a patient according to the theory ofhumors. Such an attitude, it is not inapposite to remark, allows a biased opinion. Bimala is called tamasik; and Sandip , who is much worse than her, rajasik. But if Sandip is avaricious, concupiscent, and timid, Bimala has none of these qualities; she shares the besetting flaw ofcontemporary Indian womanhood, that of being denied the freedom enjoyed by their men. Her flaw is innocence or simple mindedness. Her nature or prakrity cannot be called tamasik. While Iyyengar's medievalist stance has limitations, a pan-Indian or pan-European approach has more to offer. Comparative Indian or European literature inquires into a common heritage amid a plurality of languages , exploring the ramifications ofcertain ideas and themes throughout India or Europe. Shivarama Padikkal calls early novels in India "the epic of the colonized" (238), which is also an apt epithet for The Home and the World. His conclusion about the treatment of women in these novels applies as well to Tagore's Bimala: "A woman is the central character [. . .] and is usually presented as the object of reform" (232). Moreover , he writes, the Indian novel ofthe first half ofthe twentieth century belongs inextricably to the development of Indian nationalism, "which constructs its own narrative" (222). "Whether the novels," he goes on, "are reformist or revivalist in content, their fundamental shaping force is rationalism." Sandip and Nikhil are indeed both rationalists, and Tagore's novel includes intense debate over nationalism. Bassnett...