Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Rajmoan’s Wife was the first novella written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee that was published in 1864. It was the first Indian English novella that was edited by Ishwar Chandra Gupta and published in a periodical named Indian Field. Bankim Chandra was born on 27 June 1838 and he died on 8th April 1894. He got his postgraduate degree in Law from the University of Calcutta in the year in 1869. He joined British Indian Government as a Deputy Magistrate in 1858 and retired as a Deputy Collector in 1891. Despite his job, he was a staunch Hindu nationalist who through his literary works, continued to strengthen the Indian struggle for independence against the foreign rule. Rajmohan’s Wife was a romantic, suspenseful thriller that was followed by Durgeshnandini, his first Bengali novel published in 1865. Rajsimha was his first historical fiction novel that was published in 1881 and was later translated into Hindi by Bhartendu Harishchandra. In 1882, Chaterjee’s Anandmath was published which was a fictional novel loosely based on the historical Sanyasi Revolt of India against the British East India Company in which he depicted untrained Sanyasi soldiers fighting and defeating the East India Company. Anandmath became hugely popular and the poetic song ‘Vandemataram’ written in highly Sanskritised Bengali touched the nerves of the Indian masses. Later on, this song was adopted as the National Song in 1937.
Characters of Rajmohan’s Wife :
Matangini is the protagonist of the story. She is the eponymous wife of Rajmohan. She belonged to a poor family and her father married her to Rajmohan in haste. She is 18 years old young woman with a strong will and a confident attitude. Rajmohan is the abusive husband of Matangini. He is involved in some nefarious activities as he wants to make some fast money. He is an unscrupulous, cruel, and corrupt man filled with false pride. Matangini asks for a job for her husband but when Rajmohan is offered the job, he gets furious and rejects it. Though he accepts the job later with a nefarious plan. Hemangini is the younger sister of Matangini. She is married to Madhav. Madhav’s father Ramkanhai wished him to marry the poor girl Hemangini who is a good-natured submissive girl who dares not talk to her own sister in front of her husband. Madhav is an educated wise man full of patience. He is a just man. When he visits to see and marry Hemangini as his father wishes, Matangini sees him and finds herself in love with him. However, he is going to be her brother-in-law. Ramkanhai’s father had distributed his estate equally to his three sons. The eldest son was Ramakanta whose son is Mathur. Ramakanta manages his part of the estate well and taught Mathur how to manage land and servants. However, Mathur is not well-educated. Ramkanhai failed to manage his part of the estate and wasted most of his money on gambling and alcohol. However, he made sure that his son Madhav attains the best education and he arranged the marriage of Madhav to Hemangini, believing that the couple will remain happy throughout their life. Ramakanta and Ramkanhai’s third brother Ramgopal remained childless. Before he died, he transferred his share of the estate to Madhav as he considered him just and goodhearted on the condition that Madhav will take proper care of his wife after his death. Tara is the second protagonist, the first wife of Mathur who is a childhood friend of Madhav. She has a soft corner for Madhav as she knows he is the better and a principled man. Mathur remarries Champak and takes her as his second wife. Mathur is jealous of Madhav and wishes to grab the estate he got through the will of their uncle Ramgopal. Sardar is the leader of a dacoit gang who is trying to steal the will of Ramgopal from Madhav so that Mathur may claim his right to that part of the estate. Bhiku is an allias of Sardar. Kanakmayee is a 30-year-old unmarried woman who befriends Matangini. Karuna is a servant of Mathur’s house who helps Tara.
Summary of Rajmohan’s Wife:
It is a women-centric story that revolves around a property dispute. The first woman to be discussed is Ramgopal’s old widow. She is a gullible, submissive woman whose husband recently died. Before dying, he gave rights to all his property to his nephew Madhav, an educated man who graduated from the University of Kolkatta. One may infer that Bankim Chandra depicted the character of Madhav in his own image. A young good looking man, well-educated, reading English literature while sitting on his armchair. Madhav has to take proper care of his aunt as this is the condition of the will of his uncle Ramgopal. However, Mathur, the cousin of Madhav is jealous of him. Madhav’s father had wasted all the share of his estate on gambling and alcohol while Mathur’s father was a cautious person who taught Mathur how to manage the estate and servants. Mathur is an antithesis of what Madhav is. He is impatient, jealous, greedy, rude, and inhuman to servants and others. To grab the rights on his dead uncle Ramgopal’s estate, he plans to instigate his widow's aunt to file a case in court that the will was forged. Another part of his plan is to steal the original will from Madhav so that his aunt may win the case in court. He manages to instigate his aunt against Madhav and to succeed in the second part, he appoints a notorious dacoit Sardar who, along with his right hand Bhiku, tries to rob Madhav’s house. Their accomplice is Rajmohan, a greedy, rude, and corrupt man.
The second woman is Matangini, an 18-year-old, beautiful married woman who is principled and honest. She belongs to a poor family. Her younger sister is Hemangini. Ramkanhai once saw Hemangini and wished her to become his daughter-in-law. He had devoted himself to the better education of his child Madhav and he wished to get him a good, beautiful submissive wife. Madhav agreed to his father’s wish. However, Matangini was the elder sister. So Hemangini’s father decided to marry Matangini first. Matangini had seen Madhav and he was the person she dreamt to spend her life with. But Madhav’s marriage was arranged with her younger sister Hemangini and she could do nothing about it. She was happy for her sister. In haste, Matangini’s father gives her hand to Rajmohan, without enquiring much about him. He is a lazy, greedy person with no money and no proper education. He is a frustrated man who is always rude to his wife Matangini. Matangini asks Hemangini to talk to Madhav and get a job for Rajmohan so that their financial condition may improve. While Hemangini fails to talk about this to her husband, Madhav himself offers a job to Rajmohan and asks him to shift to his estate in Radhaganj and work as the supervisor. Rajmohan feels insulted by this offer and rejects it furiously. However, he has nothing else to do. Thus, he accepts it and shifts to Radhaganj. Now the two sisters are living in the neighborhood. One other neighbor of Matangini is Kanakmayee who becomes a close friend of Matangini. Whenever Rajmohan mistreats her, Matangini shares her pain with Kanakmayee. Kanak knows that Matangini is trapped in wedlock with the wrong person. She is the only one who knows that at heart, Matangini loved Madhav, her younger sister’s husband.
One day, Matagini goes to fetch water from the well with Kanak. She covers her face in her saree but when she returns, a gush of air removes the veil from her head. Two men, Madhav and Mathur see her from Mathur’s window. Madhav recognizes her as his sister-in-law. Mathur takes a deep breath as he is impressed and sexually aroused by this beautiful woman. Madhav admonishes him for his reaction. Back at home, Rajmohan gets angry at her for leaving home without his permission and shouts at her. Matangini silently faces the abuse hurled at her by Rajmohan. As he calms down a little bit, she goes to her chamber and locks herself up. In the evening, when Rajmohan’s aunt asks her to have some food, she declines and pretends as if she is sleeping. She thinks of her childhood days when she was always happy with her sister. To get some air, she opens up the window of her chamber and sees two silhouettes talking to each other. As she listens to them, she comes to know that one of them is Rajmohan, her husband, and the other one is the notorious dacoit Sardar. They are planning to attack Madhav’s house to rob him. Rajmohan confirms that the will that Sardar wants to rob is at Madhav’s house and gets a promise for obtaining a good share of the loot.
Madhav is her sister’s husband, Matangini couldn’t let any harm reach his house. Thus, she decides to go against her husband and warn Madhav about the imminent attack. She visits Madhav’s home and informs him that she has heard the Dacoit Sardar is going to attack his house. She doesn’t mention her husband’s involvement though. Madhav alerts his guards and servants and when Sardar attacks his house, he is forced to run back away.
When Rajmohan finds that Matangini isn’t at home, he realizes that she got some inkling of his plan. He scolds her and tries to kill her. However, Sardar reaches his home at the right moment. Sardar believes that Rajmohan double-crossed him and informed Madhav himself. As he attacks Rajmohan, he painstakingly tries to calm him down and explain that it was his wife who informed Madhav. Meanwhile, Matangini runs away from there to save her life and reaches Kanak’s house for help. Kanak takes her to another girl Suki’s home. Suki’s mother promises to help her and takes her to Mathur’s house. At Mathur’s house, Matangini meets Tara, another woman of substance who remains ready to stand for just and right. She promises to help Matangini. When Mathur returns home, Tara informs her about Matangini. Mathur listens to what happened and decides to let Matangini stay at his home. However, his second wife Champak isn’t happy about it. She is younger than Tara. Mathur married her for her sexual charm. But Matangini is obviously more beautiful than her and she is jealous of her. She worries that Matangini may attract all attention of Mathur. She argues that Mathur shouldn’t allow her to stay at home. At the same time, Rajmohan arrives at Mathur’s house and asks to let him take his wife back as he has forgiven her. Matangini is sent back to her home despite her reluctance. Rajmohan requests Suki’s mother and his sister Kishori to escort Matangini back to his home as he has some rather important work to do. When Rajmohan returns home, he finds that Matangini is missing, she never reached home.
Later on, Sardar and his henchmen attack Madhav’s house once again, and instead of robbing him, they abduct him and take him to a dark lonely basement of a godown. At Mathur’s house, Tara notices that her husband is disturbed and worried. She asks him but Mathur says that he cannot reveal anything yet. Tara and Mathur listen to a loud shriek coming from the back of the garden and Mathur rushes toward it. Tara sees him going away and realizes that something is wrong.
In the godown, Madhav’s eyes are blindfolded and as the other men torture him, he realizes that there are three other men along with him. He asks them what they want but he gets no answer. As the three men discuss him, he hears a familiar voice, the voice of Mathur. He addresses Mathur and asks what does he want? Mathur says that he wants the will of Ramgopal. After contemplating for a while, Madhav agrees to offer the will to him and asks for a page and pen to write a letter to his family members. All this while, a strange, frightening shriek keeps coming from the back of the godown. As the darkness of night engrosses the atmosphere, the shriek starts threatening Sardar and his henchmen and they decide to run away. Mathur is also forced to go back. Madhav has already written a letter and asked for the delivery of the will so that he may return. Now when Madhav is alone, he tries to free himself and run away. But as he does so, he stumbles and meets Tara. Tara is his childhood friend. They used to go to school together and became best friends. Like Matangini, Tara always felt that Madhav is a perfect man and always respected him. She knew something is wrong and thus, she followed Mathur and reached the godown. She helps Madhav get rid of the remaining restraints. Suddenly, they hear the same shriek again. Tara notices that it appears a loud cry of some woman. Madhav and Tara investigate the shriek and find Matangini bound in a dark room with cloth stuffed in her mouth. They free Matangini up. She informs that Suki’s mother is working for Mathur and she brought her to this godown where Mathur threatened her to submit to him. Matangini defied him and challenged him and said, “Look; I am a full-grown woman, and at least your equal in brute force. Will you call in allies?” Then Sardar and Bhiku came and bound her in restraints and mouth gag. Thus she came to know that Mathur, Sardar, and her husband Rajmohan are planning together to rob Madhav.
Madhav takes Matangini to safety in his house with the help of Tara and Karuna, his home servant. As she meets Hemangini, Matangini expresses her wish to return to her father’s house. Madhav complains to the police. The next day, Sardar meets Mathur and informs him that the police are searching for him. He informs that Bhiku has been arrested and he has confessed his involvement while revealing the names of Sardar, Rajmohan, and Mathur in the robbery and abduction of Madhav in front of the newly posted Magistrate. Mathur realizes that he has lost all reputation and he cannot save himself now. Later, in the morning, he commits suicide. Sardar runs away to oblivion while Rajmohan is arrested. Tara mourns the death of her husband and decides to manage the estate in a better manner. Matangini returns to her father’s home and Madhav continues to lead a happy life with Hemangini.
Bankim Chandra Chaterjee was known for his Hindu nationalist views. He was a modern educated person who wished to work for the making of a better, stronger, and free Indian society. Rajmohan’s Wife is often considered an allegory in which Bankim Chandra represented Matangini as the personification of modern India. She is confident, strong, and ready to stand against the wrong, yet vulnerable. Matangini represents an emergent, strong-willed, attractive, yet cautious young India. Mathur represents a corrupt, rude, immoral, yet socially privileged class that is trying to recapture India to exploit. In the novel, Mathur is described as “an exceedingly apt scholar in the science of chicane, fraud, and torture”. He is crude, vulgar, and corpulent with a tall build bald head, and dark complexion. He wears a gold amulet, a gold chain, gold studs on his shirt, and wears rings on all the fingers of his hands. He abducts Matangini and imprisons her in the cellar of his godown “determined to gratify at once both revenge and lust”.
Madhav is totally opposite to Mathur. He is “a remarkably handsome young man of about twenty-two”. He is well-educated and though he belongs to the same socially privileged class of Zamindars as Mathur, he is principled. Yet, he lacks the energy and vitality that Matangini and Tara exudes. The other man is Rajmohan who represented the younger class of Bankim Chandra’s time that got lampooned and affected by colonialism. Rajmohan represents a person who couldn’t value his people, his society, his country, and his civilization. In the novel, Rajmohan is offered a job by Madhav. Had he been principled and honest, he might have worked wonders. Yet, he chose to be disloyal to him and looked for easy money by getting involved in the plan of Mathur and Sardar to rob Madhav.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of Indian Literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards.
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