Sultana's Dream and Selections from The Secluded Ones (A Feminist Press Sourcebook) [Paperback]

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (Author), Roushan Jahan (Editor), Roshan Jahan (Translator), Hanna Papanek (Afterword)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1988

Sultana’s Dream, first published in 1905 in a Madras English newspaper, is a witty feminist utopia—a tale of reverse purdah that posits a world in which men are confined indoors and women have taken over the public sphere, ending a war nonviolently and restoring health and beauty to the world.

"The Secluded Ones" is a selection of short sketches, first published in Bengali newspapers, illuminating the cruel and comic realities of life in purdah.

Suggested for course use in:
History
Indian Literature
South Asian Studies
Utopian Fiction
Women’s Studies

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880 - 1932) was a Bengali Muslim writer and feminist activist who founded the first Muslim girls’ school in Calcutta in 1911.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hossain, born in north India (now Bangladesh) in 1880, was raised under the constraints of purdah, the Indian tradition that physically and spiritually isolates women, and devoted her life to writing about female oppression under purdah and to attempting to break through the stifling seclusion. The ironic "Sultana's Dream," first published in 1905, is a short story that reverses purdah: the narrator dreams she travels to the utopian Ladyland, a peaceful and technologically advanced state ruled by women, where men are docile, quarantined servants trained to cook and clean. "The Secluded Ones," published in 1928, is a collection of nonfiction reports on the incredible behavior that purdah demands from both women and men. Hossain tells, for example, of the matron who fell onto railway tracks but could not be rescued because of taboos against contact between the sexes. This short book is a window openedtoo brieflyonto a world whose exoticism is overshadowed only by its oppressiveness. Particularly chilling is Hossain's work's relevance to our timesas pointed out in the afterwordwhen purdah and its variants are being revived in different social and religious movements.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Ten years before Charlotte P. Gilman published her feminist utopia, Herland (1915), "Sultana's Dream" appeared in an India-based English periodical. It is a clever and appealing story of reversed purdah (seclusion of women) in Ladyland, where women overpower men through brains rather than brawn. Accompanying this story are selections from The Secluded Ones (1928), a factual account of extreme cases of purdah. Commentaries by scholars put the works of the little-known Hossain in a global and historical context. An interesting and informative work for Asian studies and women's studies collections. Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 90 pages
• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY (August 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0935312838
• ISBN-13: 978-0935312836
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,267 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Purdah.... a complex issue, March 11, 2001

By 

R. Peterson "International citizen" (Leverett, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sultana's Dream and Selections from The Secluded Ones (A Feminist Press Sourcebook) (Paperback)

This little book was more than just an extraordinary short story written by a woman in 1905 who examined and questioned purdah by turning the issue into a humorous "dream" sequence (in a place where the men are in purdah!) - it is also a compilation of other materials in the examination of what purdah is and means. Relatively unknown and not understood in the West, "purdah" ("parda" in Hindi, meaning 'curtain') is the seclusion and segregation of women (even from other women, not of the family) and is a tradition that is thrust upon women of many Middle Eastern and Asian societies. In the West we confusedly belief it is only Muslim when in fact other religions undertake it as well.

Rokeya Hossain wrote Sultana's Dream at the urging of her husband who was quite forward-thinking (for an Asian male in the early part of the last century!) and who believed that by writing, she would be able to perfect her English skills. The Dream is brilliantly simple and clearly written. The idea that a woman in purdah should suddenly find herself in a place where it is the men in the society who are hidden away and where life is peaceful and intellectual thought and political balance are the norm (as a result of not having the men out messing things up), is a delight even to a contemporary Western reader.

The second section of this book is a section complied by Roushan Jahan in which Hossain's writing about purdah (from a book called "The Secluded Ones") is reproduced in the form of various 'reports' all of which demonstrate something fundamentally absurb or violent about being in purdah. The third section is a piece by a Western woman named Hanna Papanek who examines how much more complicated purdah is than just a means by which men in a given society control and suppress women. That definition is certainly valid, but Papanek also examines a case where a woman raised in purdah finds "exposure" (after a life of purdah) to be fraught with fear and discomfort.

In all, a fascinating and in a strange sense appalling cultural phenomena that is basically unknown to the West, purdah is handed here to the reader in a way that makes it possible to examine it without generating the viseral anger that the idea raises in most educated women. I am strongly inclined to study the issue further and to find "The Secluded Ones" - once I feel strong enough not to let it infuriate me!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Still Relevant, September 19, 2008

By 

Versades (Alaska) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sultana's Dream and Selections from The Secluded Ones (A Feminist Press Sourcebook) (Paperback)

A delightful tale that reverses the role of men and women. For me the most significant part of this fantasy centers around women's behavior in this utopian society. Far from running amok, the absence of men merely means more time for the pursuit of arts, science and gardening. A far different picture than is painted by patriarchal religious leaders around the world.

This book is a must read because far from being in decline, purdah and variants of purdah (the segregation of men and women, spiritually, socially and eventually legally) is on the rise. It's noxious seeds can be found wherever and when ever men talk about "woman's place". Just one of the debilitating effects of purdah in a democratic society is the belief of the woman that she is not accountable for the character of her community. An issue this book addresses clearly.

Buy it!~ In fact, buy several and pass them around. Share it with everyone, friends, sisters, daughters, ministers, teachers, legislators.

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful Stuff, August 15, 2007

By 

J. L. Wright "digitalzen" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sultana's Dream and Selections from The Secluded Ones (A Feminist Press Sourcebook) (Paperback)

If you are at all interested in Feminism then you must read this book. Discusses Purdah and the utopia dream of Hossain.