Rashsundari Debi and Tarabai Shinde both wrote about women's lives in nineteenth-century India. Compare their…

Question

Rashsundari Debi and Tarabai Shinde both wrote about women's lives in nineteenth-century India. Compare their contexts and motivations, and explain what their ability to write and publish reveals about the relationship between print culture and women's social position during this period.

Accepted Answer

## Model Answer Rashsundari Debi lived in an orthodox Hindu household in East Bengal and learned to read secretly in her kitchen, driven by a personal desire for literacy against family restriction. She later wrote *Amar Jiban* (1876), the first full-length Bengali autobiography. Tarabai Shinde, writing in Maharashtra in the 1880s, was motivated by passionate anger at the unjust treatment of upper-caste Hindu women, especially widows. Their ability to write and publish shows that print culture created new spaces for women's voices, even as social restrictions persisted. The growth of journals, schools, and liberal reformers enabled some women to access literacy and publication, revealing that print both reflected and gradually widened women's social position. *Source: Women and Print, Chapter 5* --- ## Explanation - The examiner wants a **comparison** (different contexts/motivations) **and** a **link to print culture's role** — two distinct parts within 3 marks. - Name both women with…

Social Science (087) — AI-generated practice question