Progressive females by tagore: a psycho-philosophical Analysis

Abstract

A Nobel laureate, Nationalist, and Idealist, Rabindranath Tagore‘s literature portrayed female characters with spitfire personalities. Charulata, Kalyani, Binodini, Mrinal, and Giribala are a few such characters who have gained popularity in Bengali literature and media. His female characters are anything but submissive muses to the patriarchal society. Secondary literature and media projected them as independent, shrewd, intuitive thinkers, fearless, stubborn, selfish, assertive, and intelligent. The pool of characteristics veils the true interpretation of their personalities and hence the Hermeneutic method of research is adopted in this paper. A critical review of Tagore‘s Bengali literature, the primary source of information, provided a new set of information. This new information has changed the context of the female characters in terms of the personality traits of Tagore‘s female characters. The paper presents psychological hermeneutic perspectives of these characters for understanding the similarity and differences in the portrayal of females now and decades ago.