This book theorizes the continuous reconfigurations—‘making’ and ‘unmaking’—of female subjectivity in Tagore’s life, his times, and his works. This transhistorical approach in the book makes gender formations and discourses of the past relevant and necessary to the understanding of postmodern gender issues and ideologies.

A unique feature of this compilation is the variety of genres that it covers, ranging from Tagore’s poems, dance dramas, dance forms and their innovative uses, the gender-specific nature of several Rabindrasangeet, his travel writings and paintings, to highlighting the postmodern reworks of Tagore’s novels on celluloid. On the whole, this edited collection with its extensive focus on the issues of gender, heterosexual love, marriage and patriarchy in relation to the works of Tagore strengthens the claim that the politics of culture and the gendering of social subjectivity were intrinsic to the representative ideologies of literature of the nineteenth and twentieth century.

PART I BEYOND ESSENTIALISM
Jasodhara Bagchi Tagore and Woman: Some Thoughts Uma Das Gupta Shantiniketan: Education for Girls
PART II NATURE AND SPIRITUALITY
Mandakranta Bose Gender and the Spiritual Quest in Tagore’s Poetry Malini Bhattacharya Rabindranath’s Chandalika: Woman as Prakriti and Prakriti in Woman
PART III REALM OF DOMESTICITY
Supriya Chaudhuri Domestic Space in Tagore’s Fiction Sanjukta Dasgupta Tagore’s Docile Daughters: Ambivalence in Family Life Nandini Bhattacharya Re-reading Rabindranath Tagore’s 'Streer Patra' (The Wife’s Letter, 1914) in the Light of Epistolary Culture in Colonial India
PART IV SELFHOOD AND AGENCY
Tirthankar Bose How to Fool Women: Tagore’s Tales of Seduction Chandrava Chakravarty The Dichotomies of Body and Mind Spaces: The Widows in Chokher Bali and Chaturanga Dipannita Datta ‘Bimala Is What She Is': Re-reading Bimala and Gender (In)justice in Rabindranath’s The Home and the World
PART V WOMEN IN TRAVEL WRITING
Jayati Gupta The ‘Other’ Women in Tagore’s Travels to Europe Amrit Sen Rabindranath Tagore’s Travelogues and the Absent Female Voice
PART VI WOMEN IN OTHER ARTS
Debashish Raychaudhuri Gender in Rabindrasangeet Tapati Gupta Breaking the Mould: Paintings by Rabindranath Tagore Amita Dutt Women in Tagore’s Dance-Dramas Sneha Kar Chaudhuri Tagore’s New Woman and the Contradictions of Patriarchy: Adapting Char Adhyay as Elar Char Adhyay