‘কঙ্কাবতী’র পথরেখায় বাংলা অভিযান কাহিনির মেয়েরা/ Women of Bengali Adventure Tales in the Footsteps of ‘Kankabati’

Abstract

One of the most popular branches of Bengali children’s and young adult literature is adventure stories. These narratives fall outside the conventional frameworks of children’s fiction. The moral standards that typically regulate writing for young readers are often violated in works of this kind. Bengali adventure stories show a predominance of adolescent male groups. As in other branches of children’s and young adult literature, girls are more or less marginalized here as well. In this article, we will primarily seek to explore the reasons behind such a position or role of girls in adventure narratives. In the second part of the article, we will focus on Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay’s novel ‘Kankabati’ and attempt an alternative reading of it.  

In the first half of the essay, our main topics of discussion are —  

1. Definition and analysis of the nature of adventure narratives  

2. Characteristics of Western adventure narratives  

3.The distinctiveness of adventure narratives written in the East, particularly in the Bengali language  

4. Colonial consciousness and adventure narratives  

5. Notions of family in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries  

6.The position of women in the social and cultural spheres in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries  

7. The position of girls in adventure narratives  

The central focus of the second section of the article is an attempt at a parallel reading of the conventional interpretation of Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay’s novel ‘Kankabati’. In this context, the novel will be analyzed from Kankabati’s perspective. How the earnest aspirations of nineteenth-century women developed within Kankabati’s dream world will be presented through appropriate explanation. It will be established as a substantiated fact that Kankabati was the first to bring girls to the forefront in Bengali adventure narratives. The article will thus attempt to demonstrate that the novel ‘Kankabati’ stands as a pathfinder for girls’ adventures in Bengali literature.