Jyotirmoyee Devi

Jyotirmoyee Devi (Sen) (1894-1988) was a pioneering Bengali woman writer of the early twentieth century. She wrote predominantly about women in the Rajasthan of her childhood and in what is now Bangladesh at the time of Partition. She is best known for her short stories, which have a wonderfully understated dry wit and sharp sociological observations.

Biography

Jyotirmoyee Devi was born in the Princely State of Jaipur in 1894, where her family had lived since 1857. Her father, Abinash Chandra Sen, was the eldest son of Sansar Chandra Sen who had come to Jaipur as a schoolmaster but quickly rose to the post of Dewan to the Maharaja of Jaipur. Jyotirmoyee grew up in Jaipur, receiving little formal education but observing keenly all that she saw around her. She was much impressed by the mixture of decadence and splendour that characterised the society of the "zenana" (women’s quarters) in a Princely State of the time. Jyotirmoyee was allowed to read whatever she liked in her grandfather’s well-stocked library and thus acquired a rather eclectic exposure to the world. At the age of 10 she was married to a lawyer, Kiran Chandra Sen, and went to live with him in Patna. He encouraged her to read English, and helped her get hold of books; her husband came from a literary family who were well known to many of the leading figures of Bengali literature.

Jyotirmoyee might never have written had she not tragically lost her husband at the end of World War I. Barely 25 years old, with six small children, she returned to her parent’s house, leaving one child with her husband’s family. There she lived under the rigid rules of orthodox Hindu widowhood, rules which she continued to observe punctiliously even though she began to question their basis. In her abandonment, Jyotirmoyee turned to literature for solace. She read John Stuart Mill’s "On the Subjection of Women", and this led her to think deeply on the question of women’s rights. Conservative in her own behaviour, she nevertheless made it a rule always to treat her sons and daughters equally. She now began to write the trenchant, luminous Bengali short stories for which she is remembered. Set in Rajasthan, Delhi and Bengal, they are unsentimental yet deeply sympathetic, richly detailed yet intellectually limpid. She also has non-fiction to her credit, writing especially about the rights of women and Dalits. Her collection of short stories, "Sona Rupa Noy" (Not Gold and Silver) won the Rabindra Puraskar in 1973.

Bibliography

Jyotirmoyee Devi, "The Impermanence of Lies" (Calcutta: Stree, 1999) Introduction by Mahasweta Devi.