The Complete Short Stories

they had no agency and lived their lives according to the whims and fancies of the men on whom they were dependent—husbands, fathers, brothers or even close or distant male relatives. Women were expected to be docile, submissive and self-effacing, sacrificing their lives for the well-being of the family. Girls were treated as a curse on the family and the parents of girls were subjected to all kinds of humiliation and indignities while their marriages were arranged. Parents were sometimes compelled to marry off their nubile and very young daughters to old men just to unburden themselves of the responsibility and shame of being saddled with an unmarried daughter. The practices of kanya vikray (sale of a daughter in marriage), even kanya vadh (killing of a girl child), were prevalent. In his essays and editorials, Premchand made a strong plea for the abolition of the evil practices that made the life of women unbearable. He advocated divorce in extreme circumstances, and supported the wife’s claim to own half the husband’s property in case of divorce and inherit the property in case of the husband’s death.⁸ He also wrote in favour of the Sarda Bill which aimed at raising the minimum marriage age for girls. In a large number of stories, such as ‘Tuliya’ (‘Devi’), ‘Sati’, ‘The Goddess from Heaven’ (‘Swarg ki Devi’), ‘Return’ (‘Shanti’), ‘Godavari’s Suicide’ (‘Saut’), ‘The Thread of Love’ (‘Prem Sutra’), ‘Two Friends’ (‘Do Sakhiyaan’), ‘The Lunatic Lover’ (‘Unmaad’), and so on, he sheds light on the plight of women in an oppressive, patriarchal system. Through the immortal characters of old women like Chachi in ‘Holy Judges’, the old aunt in the eponymous story, and Bhungi in ‘A Positive Change’ (‘Vidhwans’), he shows how difficult life was for old women in a society that was known to respect its elderly members. The fate of widows, who were considered inauspicious and were expected to renounce all joys of life, was even worse, as shown in ‘Compulsion’ (‘Nairashya Leela’), ‘The Condemned’ (‘Dhikkar’) and ‘A Widow with Sons’ (‘Betonwali Vidhva’).

However, there is a certain ambivalence in his depiction of women and their status as equal partners in marriage.⁹ Some of the stories were radical for his time, yet he was unable to imagine a fully independent and empowered woman with her own agency and subjectivity, as Tagore did, for example, in ‘Wife’s Letter’ or ‘Chitra’.¹⁰ In the entire Premchand oeuvre of short stories there are only three single women—Miss Padma of the eponymous story, Miss Khurshed of ‘Disgrace’ (‘Laanchan’) and Miss Joshi of ‘Faith’ (‘Vishwas’). While Miss Padma, despite her education and economic independence, seems inadequate as a woman, deprived of a family life and bereft and regretful after a failed live-in relationship, Miss Khurshed is depicted as enjoying to the hilt her single status as a woman, and even sharing a deeply emotional relationship with another woman, Dr Leela. Miss Joshi starts off as a social butterfly, with the high and mighty kowtowing to her, but after several years of a live-in relationship with Mr Johri, pines for the bliss of domestic life with Mr Apte. However, there are so many female characters in Premchand’s stories, portrayed from different points of view, that any kind of generalization will be undesirable. The labels ‘pro-feminist’ and ‘anti-feminist’ are not very helpful in understanding Premchand’s stories either, as these labels inevitably carry the elements of reductionism inherent in them. To some, the very fact that Premchand could imagine women outside the marriage bond and as capable of finding fulfilment in a career was radical enough, if not too radical, for his time. Similarly, despite his sympathy with widows and his support for widow remarriage, there is a certain uneasiness in depicting a widow who has an equal claim to bodily pleasures and comforts. Widows in Premchand’s stories seem to find fulfilment only in the ideals of service, devotion and self-effacement. Indeed, in the entire corpus of his short fiction there are no more than two widow marriages¹¹ and both of them end disastrously.

As stated earlier, Premchand began his career as a short story writer by writing stories of patriotism in a somewhat revivalist mode. Later in life when he came under Gandhi’s influence and showed deep involvement in India’s struggle for independence, to the extent of giving up his government job, he wrote a string of nationalist stories dealing with the adoption of indigenous or swadeshi products, the boycott or even burning of foreign goods, picketing outside alcohol shops, giving up government jobs and embracing a life of social service, among other things. Some of them, like ‘A Strange Holi’ (‘Ajeeb Holi’) and ‘Resignation’ (‘Isteefa’), show the discomfiture of British colonial officials at the hands of Indians and the sudden conversion of Indian loyalists or servants of the British Raj into patriotic Indians who jealously protect their honour and are devoted to the cause of Independence. Some of these stories, as also some others, have been criticized for a kind of contrived and easy plot resolution through the ‘change of heart’ device. Apart from the above two, there are stories like ‘The Wine Shop’ (‘Sharab ki Dukaan’), ‘Maiku and the Congress Volunteer’ (‘Maiku’), ‘An Audacious Act’ (‘Dussahas’), ‘Role Reversal’ (‘Patni se Pati’), ‘The Night of the New Moon’ (‘Amavas¹² He also uses suicide as a device for plot resolution for women faced with social opprobrium, something which might seem melodramatic and an easy way to arrive at a denouement but on closer analysis seems to be historically accurate. In Indian society, this kind of honour suicide is quite rampant even now, as newspapers and television channels will testify.

Premchand’s love for the countryside is evident in his fictional and non-fictional writings. He has written several extremely evocative stories such as ‘Holy Judges’, ‘The Story of Two Bullocks’ (‘Do Bailon ki Katha’), ‘Idgah’ and ‘Atmaram’, which depict the pristine village life of simplicity, honesty and quiet contentment. In fact, his fictional corpus, if read uncritically, would lend itself to an easy binary between country life