Ratnabai: A Sketch Of A Hindu Young Wife By Toru Dutt

Toru Dutt is the first woman novelist in Indian English literature. The first publication of A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876) is the work of translation of seventy French poets made her noteworthy poet. Her fame today rests largely upon a handful of lyrical poems that appeared in the posthumously published Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan in 1882. She has depicted the condition of women in her novels Binaca or The Young Spanish Maiden, posthumously published serially in the Bengal Magazine (1878) by her father. Le Journal de Modemoiselle D’ Arvens (1879), written in French edited with the help of her friend Clarissa Bader, appeared in 1879. The agony and catharsis arising out of the sisterly love and bereavement were the core elements of the novel. Toru Dutt was young and sensible; her works reflect the Indian sensibility besides the foreign settings. Her work is a marvelous blend of French, English and Sanskrit language. Her

The novel also focuses on the issues of child marriage and the struggle of women in getting education. How the women suffer in the patriarchal society depicted through the female character Ratnabai who was married at nine. Ratnabai’s husband stays far away in England, her father promotes her for education and when her husband returns both spends very happy married life with mutual understanding, which got due to the equal education. Thus the novel reflects the need for education of women, whether they are married, unmarried or widow to become independent in the society. B. K. Das observes in his work Postmodern Indian English Literature, “Apart from love, sex and contemporary reality, Indian English novelists have written feminist novels. Women novelists assert the rights of women to live their life in their own way” (Das