সমরেশ বসু উপন্যাস : লড়াকু শ্রমজীবী নারী / In Samaresh Basu’s novel working-class women negotiate survival within structures of capitalist patriarchy

Abstract

This research paper examines the precarious and resistant existence of working-class and marginalized women through a close reading of selected novels by Samaresh Basu—Uttaranga, Jagaddal, Ganga, BT Road-er Dhare, and Tanaporen. Samaresh Basu foregrounds the lived realities of class and gender exploitation shaped by economic transformation, industrialization, and capitalist expansion in colonial and post-colonial Bengal, articulating these processes through women’s bodies, labour, and intimate relationships. In his fiction, women are not reduced to passive objects of sympathy; rather, they emerge as active participants in the production system, skilled negotiators of survival, and, in many instances, agents of silent yet persistent resistance.

In Uttaranga, the character of Latifa embodies the illusion of liberation promised by colonial modernity, where the transition from village life to industrial labour does not alleviate women’s oppression but merely reconfigures its form. Jagaddal exposes the brutal politics of the female body, particularly through the figure of the woodcutter’s wife and other women labourers, revealing how inadequate wages and unsafe working environments render sexual exploitation a structural inevitability. In Ganga, characters such as Himi and Pachi articulate the intertwined experiences of poverty, desire, and resistance within the fishing community, producing a nuanced portrayal of female self-awareness. In BT Road-er Dhare, Lotan’s wife stands as a figure of overt defiance against patriarchal language and everyday violence. Conversely, Tanaporen interrogates dominant notions of infertility, creativity, and social morality through the relationship between Tuki and Panchu, destabilizing entrenched gendered assumptions.

The central argument of this study is that in Samaresh Basu’s fiction, working-class women are not merely victims of history; even from its margins, they actively participate in its making. Through a dispassionate realist mode, Basu demonstrates that colonial development and industrialization do not constitute emancipation for women but instead inaugurate new regimes of servitude. His representation of struggling working-class women thus stands as a significant textual archive for class-gender analysis in modern Bengali fiction.