Introduction to Rajmohan’s Wife
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife, published in 1864, is widely regarded as the first Indian novel written in English. Its importance lies not just in the reputation of its author as one of the most celebrated Bengali novelists of the nineteenth century, but also in its role in shaping a new literary genre during the colonial era. Unlike earlier English-language short fiction such as Kylas Chunder Dutt’s A Journal of 48 Hours of the Year 1945 (1835) and Shoshee Chunder Dutt’s The Republic of Orissa: A Page from the Annals of the Twentieth Century (1845), Rajmohan’s Wife is more in tune with the domestic and social novels of the vernacular tradition, like Peary Chand Mitra’s Alaler Gharer Dulal (The Spoilt Son of a Rich Family [1855–57, Bengali]), and it foreshadows key developments in the Indian novel.
As a novel, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife stands at a crossroads between original writing and translation, realism and romance, and the pull of both the modern and the traditional. Though it may not seem especially influential today, it captures a pivotal moment in the evolution of the Indian novel in English. It also served as a reference point for later writers, including Bankim himself. Still, the novel has been largely overlooked by critics and biographers, likely because it sits uneasily within the canon, being an English-language work by a major Indian writer better known for his contributions in Bengali, like Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and Rabindranath Tagore.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and His Cultural Background
The shift in writing in modern Indian languages under Western influence in the nineteenth century brought both cultural anxieties and new ways of literary self-expression. Emerging vernacular literatures tried to blend Enlightenment ideals with local literary forms, while Western genres had to adapt to the experiences and ambitions of the growing native middle class.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s works, deeply shaped by thinkers like Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Auguste Comte, reflect the tensions that surfaced after the Revolt of 1857; between liberal Western philosophy, authoritarian colonial governance, religious and social reform, and traditionalist introspection. His novels draw on Shakespeare, Walter Scott, and the Romantic poets, as well as the classical Sanskrit kavya tradition. While he critiqued the hypocrisy of the colonial middle class, he also felt, in his own words, “the peculiar melancholy of living in an alien and intractable history,” where choosing modernity often meant submitting to it. His most distinctive literary mode became irony especially visible in his essays for Bangadarshan, the Bengali journal he founded in 1872.
Born into the colonial bourgeoisie and trained through British education, Bankim was among the first two graduates of the University of Calcutta in 1858 and went on to serve in the civil service. Yet long before that, he was immersed in his grandfather’s Sanskrit library and was already writing poetry and essays in Bengali. He began Rajmohan’s Wife in 1863, near the end of his posting as deputy magistrate in Khulna, East Bengal. The novel was serialized in 1864 in The Indian Field, an English-language weekly edited by Kishori Chand Mitra, who had been dismissed from the colonial service for supporting reforms in Sir Barnes Peacock’s Bill of 1857, especially the clause granting native magistrates jurisdiction over Europeans.
By 1856, Bankim had already gained recognition for his Bengali poetry and prose in Ishvarchandra Gupta’s journals Sambad Prabhakar and Sambad Sadhuranjan. During 1863–64, he was also working on what would become his first Bengali novel, Durgeshnandini (The Chieftain’s Daughter, 1865). Early issues of The Indian Field have not survived, but as late as March 1872, Bankim wrote to Dr. Sambhu Chandra Mookerjee, editor of Mookerjee’s Magazine:
For the English Magazine, I can undertake to supply you with novels, tales, sketches and squibs. I can also take up political questions, as you wish. Malicious fortune has made me a sort of jack of all trades and I can turn up any kind of work, from transcendental metaphysics to verse-making. The Novel is to me the most difficult work of all, as it requires a good deal of time and undivided attention to elaborate the conception and to subordinate the incidents and characters to the central idea.
Despite this enthusiasm, Bankim contributed only a few essays, and no novels to Mookerjee’s Magazine. By then, Durgeshnandini, Kapalkundala (1866), and Mrinalini (1869) had already earned him wide acclaim in Bengali. Even though he continued writing in English, he wrote to Sambhu Chandra, “we ought to disanglicise ourselves, so to speak, to a certain extent, and to speak to the masses in their own language. I therefore project a Bengali Magazine.” That magazine was Bangadarshan, which Rabindranath Tagore later said came to “ravish the heart of Bengal,” as he recalled in Jivansmrti. In its foreword (“Bangadarshaner Patra-Suchana”), Bankim argued:
Until well-educated, enlightened Bengalis start expressing their own opinions in the Bengali language, there is no hope of progress for the Bengali race.
In colonial India, English was the dominant language of public life, and for the English-educated elite, it shaped their very social identity:
No work of any kind is done in the medium of Bengali amongst the modern set. Scholarly discussion is carried on in English. Public affairs, meetings, lectures, addresses, proceedings, are all in English… If you do not speak in English, the English do not understand you; if the English do not understand you, they grant you no self-respect or dignity; if you have no self-respect or dignity with the English, you have none anywhere.” (“Bangadarshaner Patra-Suchana”)
Bankim called for writers to navigate and bridge the linguistic divide between English and Bengali, reaching both the colonial rulers and the native public. He never formally renounced English, but he encouraged others to embrace Bengali for literary work. He even cited Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s example when advising Romesh Chunder Dutt to write creatively in Bengali rather than English. Over time, Bankim made Bengali his primary literary language and used it as a powerful tool for social commentary.
In light of measures like Lord Lytton’s Vernacular Press Act of 1878, which sought to silence native voices in the press, Bankim’s linguistic choice took on broader political meaning. That Rajmohan’s Wife remains his only English novel reflects a complex linguistic journey, not a mere literary misstep.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife and the Social Backdrop
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife is set in rural East Bengal, in a village called Radhaganj on the banks of the Madhumati, a major river in the Khulna division. Most characters come from the upper bourgeoisie, specifically a single Hindu Kayastha extended family “of menial origin,” now wealthy thanks to the shrewd and morally dubious dealings of its founder, Bangshibadan Ghose, who defrauded his former master’s widow. His sons, Ramkanta, Ramkanai, and Ramgopal have “purchased zemindaris, built fine houses, and assumed the state and style that belonged to their wealth.”
Bankim’s ironic portrayal of this family’s rise from humble beginnings hints at a broader social critique. The next generation reflects the tensions of a society caught between tradition and modernity, rural values and urban influence, and Eastern and Western worlds. The eldest son, Ramkanta, is a staunch traditionalist who “had viewed with eyes of jealousy the encroachments that were being made in the ancient manners and usages by the influence of Western civilization and had steadily forborne to send his son to an English school, which he condemned as a thing not only useless but positively mischievous.” His son, Mathur Ghose, the novel’s villain, has instead mastered “the science of chicane, fraud and torture.”
In contrast, modernity in its more decadent form appears in Ramkanai, the second son, who enjoys a lavish lifestyle in Calcutta, surrounded by opportunists who lure him into reckless business ventures and eventually drive “his mismanaged and neglected estates to the hammer.” His son, Madhav, receives “as good an education as he could receive in Calcutta” and marries the beautiful, city-raised Hemangini, the younger sister of Matangini, the novel’s courageous heroine.
Madhav works as a lawyer’s clerk and is described as someone who “read a good deal, and was extremely shrewd, intelligent and clever.” Bankim uses Madhav and Ramkanai to satirize the urban elite, the lawyers, quacks, false friends, and immoral women that populated colonial Calcutta.
Yet the heart of Rajmohan’s Wife lies in the story of Matangini, a rural Hindu housewife who defends her integrity against the relentless advances of a predatory man. Despite grave danger, she refuses to compromise her honor but ultimately finds herself exiled and alone. Ironically, it is her own husband, Rajmohan, who plays the most direct role in her downfall.
Matangini
In his later work, Bankim reimagined the Hindu housewife as an epic heroine, drawing on figures from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Over time, Bankim Chandra’s portrayal of women shifted, from the gentle Kapalkundala, inspired by the mythic Shakuntala, to the fearless Sita of Anandamath and the defiant Prafulla of Debi Chaudhurani. This evolution reflected his growing ideological investment in defining the ideal bhadramahila (Gentlewoman) of Bengali society. Starting with the first Bengali woman in Durgeshnandini, Bankim mapped out a spectrum of female characters who embodied his changing vision of heroic femininity, closely tied to the emerging cult of motherhood in 19th-century India. But in Rajmohan’s Wife, his first novel, that vision was still taking shape.
Matangini stands out as a bold, modern woman. Her love for Madhav is spontaneous, and she’s unafraid to admit it to her sister and to herself. Her decision to run into the night to protect Madhav’s property, breaking strict gender norms of modesty and seclusion was radical at a time when most Hindu wives remained veiled and confined to the home.
Yet Bankim gives her the agency of an epic heroine. Her final act of leaving her husband and the safety of a male-dominated society carries tragic weight. It is a high price for her forbidden love for Madhav. Matangini defies the traditional model of the pious, self-sacrificing woman. But because she didn’t fit the mold of idealized femininity of the time, Bankim seems unable to fully develop her story. She remains an unfinished version of the more complete heroine he later crafted in Devi Chaudhurani.
The other women in the novel are far less compelling. Hemangini is a quiet, dutiful wife, loyal to Madhav, who in turn treats her more like a dull servant than a partner. Rajmohan’s sister, Kanak, is spirited but plays only a small role. Despite its dramatic plot and moments of suspense, the novel never quite becomes a gripping adventure. Instead, it reads more like an early sketch of the epic romances Bankim would later perfect in Bengali.
Style and Narrative
Though relatively short, Rajmohan’s Wife holds a key place in the history of Indian fiction in English. It sets the groundwork for the colonial novel and foreshadows many themes and stylistic elements that would define Bankim’s later work. Written in a hybrid prose style blending English with colloquial Bengali, the novel was intended for an educated, English-speaking audience, yet its core concern is the moral decline of rural Hindu society under colonial rule. It weaves together the suspense and violence of Gothic romance with the emotional depth and domestic focus of the family novel.
Bankim’s signature irony, central to his later writing, is already present here. He uses it to highlight the contradictions of colonial modernity and to critique the native bourgeoisie, who outwardly embrace Western values while clinging to conservative and often hypocritical ideals. Even the novel’s title is ironic: Matangini is far from a submissive wife. Her decision to leave her husband is a bold rejection of traditional gender roles. Still, Bankim complicates her rebellion by rendering it ultimately futile as she ends up alone and in exile, leaving the story tinged with tragic ambiguity.
The narrative of, Rajmohan’s Wife has a loose, episodic structure, with shifting points of view and abrupt scene changes. This uneven form likely reflects its origins as a serialized story in a weekly magazine, where each part needed its own dramatic punch. Despite this, Bankim maintains a steady tone of moral seriousness and social critique, even as the plot occasionally veers into melodrama.
Conclusion
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife is significant not just as the first Indian novel in English, but also for the glimpse it offers into the early literary vision of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and the cultural tensions of colonial India. The treatment of gender, class, and morality in the novel, along with its inventive language and narrative style, foreshadows the more sophisticated Bengali novels Bankim would later create. While it has its limitations, Rajmohan’s Wife stands as a pioneering work that laid the groundwork for Indian fiction in both English and Bengali.
