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Unit 21: Premchand: Godan: Detailed Study of the Text

(1927), Premchand often focused on their ‘plight’. That is, women were portrayed either as Notes
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paragons of virtue in the face of suffering and adversity, or as rather one-dimensional victims of
social forces and outmoded traditions deserving of pity but needing help to change their situation. 22
In Godan, however, the world of women is portrayed with all its simultaneous grit and glory. Just
as there is no trace of subaltern unity either in the village or the city, in Godan there is no trace of
feminist solidarity or domestic virtue; women are just as likely as men to exploit others for their
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own benefit or bring the lives of others—male and female—to bitter ruin. For instance one of the
most ruthless moneylenders in the village—Dulari—is a woman. When she tries to take advantage
of Hori’s desperation by agreeing to arrange a marriage for one of his daughters for the outrageous
price of two hundred rupees plus extortionate interest, she is denounced by Dhaniya as an absolute
‘witch’ (curail) (237/314–5). And while domestic violence against women is portrayed as a frequent
occurrence, there are also many instances where women in the village physically beat and humiliate
the men. When Damri, a local cane-weaver, becomes involved in a dispute with Hira’s wife Punni
and ends up giving her a shove, Punni becomes enraged—‘A mere basket-weaver pushing her?
What an insult!’—and begins to beat him mercilessly with her sandal. Premchand then adds an
interesting comment here about the overriding nexus between class and power: ‘Damri, having
pushed her, had to suffer the insult: he had no other recourse but to stand there and be beaten’
(33/44).
Meanwhile, the urban characters offer up revealing musings about the ‘proper’ role of women in
society. At the heart of these discussions is Malati, the foreign-trained medical practitioner who
represents the new modern woman who believes in, and struggles for, equal rights between the
genders. Mehta is entranced by Malati, but in spite of all his intellectual talk about various social
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issues, when it comes to women he is the epitome of patriarchy and sometimes directly, sometimes
obliquely, offers various trenchant criticisms of Malati’s liberated independence: that a woman’s
essence is always and only to be a mother; and that the spread of Western values is responsible for

21. Prem. Rac. 4. An English translation by Alok Rai is available as Premchand, Nirmala (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1999). For a full-length study of the depiction of women in Premchand’s fiction, see Gita Lal, Premcand
ka Nari Citran (Delhi: Hindi Sahitya Samsar, 1965).
22. There is an ambivalence in Premchand’s works about how women can achieve ‘empowerment’. In the
historical short story ‘Sati’ (Sati) (1927), Prem. Rac. 13: 363–71, for instance, Cinta Devi becomes a sati for her
‘dead’ husband, Ratan Singh, who is in fact still alive but has cowardly deserted a battle against Maratha
forces. A husband who has lost his ‘manliness’ is as good as dead, so Cinta Devi upholds her devotion by
throwing herself on a pyre which in fact has no body. Ratan Singh is so impressed by his wife’s ‘power’ that
he then follows her onto the pyre as a male sati. Whether power that stems from devotion to traditional
subservient roles is ‘empowerment’ is debatable. Premchand has another later story by the same title ‘Sati’
published in 1932 (Prem Rac. 15: 40–6) with a very different approach. Yet in other stories, such as ‘Nairashya’
(Despair) (1924), Prem. Rac. 13: 68–75, the injustices against women that stem from the ‘social preference’ for
male children are explored, exposed, and condemned.
23. In one of Premchand’s early stories, ‘Garib ki Hay’ (Cry Of the Poor) (1911), Prem. Rac. 11: 174–83, for
instance, a Brahmin widow named Munga holds a dharna (a traditional form of resistance involving a fast
unto death against a person who is the target of a grievance) against a local notable named Munshi
Ramsevak, whom she accuses of cheating her out of a sum of money. Munshi Ramsevak’s wife Nagin, who
is happy to benefit from Munshi Ramsevak’s acts of deceit and exploitation, shows neither sympathy nor
compassion for Munga, whose action she detests. Eventually Munga dies on Munshi Ramsevak’s doorstep;
as a result, Nagin is driven mad and subsequently dies, while Munshi Ramsevak is ostracised from the
village. Munga’s ‘power’ stems not from the fact that she is a woman, but from the fact that she is a Brahmin
and a widow.
24. As we shall see, Malati has a personal ‘ethical’ awakening. In another of Premchand’s short stories that
centres around a similarly ‘liberated’ modern woman and written around the time of Godan, ‘Miss Padma’
(Miss Padma) (1936), Prem. Rac. 15: 429–34, however, liberation, modernity, and independence bring only
misfortune and unhappiness for the central female character.

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