Role of a Nineteenth Century Woman's Divinity in Self-Formation
Advances in media, entertainment and the arts (AMEA) book series June 24, 2022 Anutosh Sinha
Rashsundari Devi's autobiography, Amar Jiban, the first by a Bengali woman, recounts her 19th-century struggles and yearning for literacy and equal spiritual status. She frames her life story as aligned with God's will, attributing all events to divine agency. The chapter analyzes how her self-representation follows religious codes unconventionally, using personalized experiences like precognitive dreams to shape her conception of God. The author examines her work through guru-shishya dynamics and Hindu texts, particularly the Bhagavad Gita, to argue that Rashsundari encodes her discontent within a framework of devotion rather than outright transgression.