Krupabai satthianadhan: A journey of first female indian author
Even though the societal mindset of that time doesn’t encourage women to be educated but train women to be much of a housewife or houseworker. But krupabai brother Bhasker had a strong influence on her and encouraged her to inculcate the habit of reading books. Bhasker diedat a young age which was one of the prominent people in krupabai's life who supported her in her studies. Death of Bhasker left krupabai deeply wounded, and two European women missionaries helped her and took responsibility of her studies. Later on when she went to Bombay Boarding School for studies, there she met an American woman doctor who got her interested in medicine. By this time she has decided to become a doctor and help other women especially those who live in Purdah (It’s a religious practice in Muslim community in which women use garment called burqa to hide their faces).
Credits: Times of India, Madras Medical College
The main reason for choosing Ootacamund for living was surely be krupabai’s health problems because Ootacamund was a hill station and popularly known for its healthy climate and that was a reason her health starts getting much better. Now because of fair health and stable job she was able to get time and energy to write and publish articles under the heading 'An Indian Lady' in leading periodicals like newspapers, journals, magazines etc. She moved Ootacamund to Rajamundry to Kumbakonam to at last settling back in Madras, her health conditions are also affected and fluctuated throughout the time because of these shifting's. Even though she was going through the hard time but still she was ready to write her novels. Her first novel was Saguna which was autobiographical novel about krupabai and second novel was kamala.
- Let’s have a look on summary of her books
1) Saguna- Saguna (krupabai) born in Ahmednagar in a family of 14 children. When Saguna was 13 years old his eldest brother died which devastated her and the same story continues as I have discussed above. Saguna is a autobiographical novel.
2) Kamala- kamala is a story about a Hindu married girl Radha(Mother of saguna) who go through lots of troubles because of her dependency on other people like her in-laws she has little or no voice to complaint about it. Radha and his husband Harichandra were Brahmin religious people. For Harichandra Christianity was a foreign culture but still after a long devotion to her community rules and regulations, he accepted Christianity but even after his acceptance Radha still stick to her religion and denied to accept Christians and Sahibs. But after sometime because of her engagement in Christian religious activities with her husband she also started to feel strong influences of Christianity and she also started to feel strong influences of Christianity and she converted to a Christian. The children of Harichandra and Radha came out as a devoted Christians and worked as missionary of Christianity.
Her books were also presented to Queen Victoria, who got impressed by the books and demanded more books from the same author. Because of this response from the queen the book got famous for a long time and after some time it went out of print. But with a sudden revolutionary change in gender roles and focus on female writers because of arrival of Feminism again bought a limelight on krupabai’s work and her books got reprinted.
As a tribute to her work and intelligence Madras Medical College also instituted a memorial medal for her as a “best female candidate in English”. In her books krupabai depicted her viewpoint on the condition of women living under rigid traditions and male dominated society through her female protagonist and story lines. She was the first female to break the patriarchal rules and regulations and showcase her talent in writing. She had been a ray of motivation for many aspiring female writers at that time and set a standard for society and hence depicted a story of success with her inspiring life.
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