Question

What did the spread of print culture in nineteenth century India mean to Women?

Answer 1

The spread of print culture in nineteenth-century India was very important in the following ways for women:

1. Women’s lives and feelings began to be written clearly and intensely.
2. Women’s reading increased dramatically in middle-class households.
3. Liberal husbands and fathers began teaching women at home. When women’s schools were established after the mid-nineteenth century, they were sent to school for education.
4. Journal articles discussed the importance of women’s education. Sometimes, a syllabus and appropriate reading material were published that might be utilised for homeschooling. Thus, print culture contributed to the improvement of women's conditions in society. Some of them authored novels and autobiographies. Rashsundari Debi, for example, penned and published her autobiography, Amar Jiban, in 1876. Kailashbashini Debi (Bengal), Tarabai Shinde, and Pandita Ramabai (Maharashtra) were famous women writers. However, orthodox Hindus assumed that a literate girl would be widowed. Muslims thought that reading Urdu novels would corrupt educated women.
5. Women started writing about their own lives. Since the 1860s, a few Bengali women, such as Kailashbashini Debi, have written novels about the hardships of women at home doing laborious domestic labour and being treated unfairly by the very people they serve.
6. Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote passionately against the miserable living conditions of high-caste Hindu women in 1880, in what is now Maharashtra.
7. A significant portion of Hindi printing was devoted to women’s education.