Book contents
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Race and Empire in the 1890s
- Chapter 2 Island Dandies, Transpacific Decadence, and the Politics of Style
- Chapter 3 The 1890s and East Asia: Toward a Critical Cosmopolitanism
- Chapter 4 Indulekha, or The Many Lives of Realism at the Fin de Siècle
- Chapter 5 Reading World Religions in the 1890s
- Chapter 6 Night Lights: The 1890s Nocturne
- Chapter 7 The Green 1890s:
- Chapter 8 “Only Nature Is a Thing Unreal”: The Anthropocene 1890s
- Chapter 9 Weird Ecologies and the Limits of Environmentalism
- Chapter 10 Queer Theories of the 1890s
- Chapter 11 Eugenics and Degeneration in Socialist-Feminist Novels of the Mid-1890s
- Chapter 12 The Conservative and Patriotic 1890s
- Chapter 13 Decadence and the Antitheatrical Prejudice
- Chapter 14 Religion and Science in the 1890s
- Chapter 15 Little Magazines and/in Media History
- Chapter 16 Fin-de-Siècle Visuality (and Textuality) and the Digital Sphere
- Index
Chapter 4 - Indulekha, or The Many Lives of Realism at the Fin de Siècle
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2023
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition
- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Race and Empire in the 1890s
- Chapter 2 Island Dandies, Transpacific Decadence, and the Politics of Style
- Chapter 3 The 1890s and East Asia: Toward a Critical Cosmopolitanism
- Chapter 4 Indulekha, or The Many Lives of Realism at the Fin de Siècle
- Chapter 5 Reading World Religions in the 1890s
- Chapter 6 Night Lights: The 1890s Nocturne
- Chapter 7 The Green 1890s:
- Chapter 8 “Only Nature Is a Thing Unreal”: The Anthropocene 1890s
- Chapter 9 Weird Ecologies and the Limits of Environmentalism
- Chapter 10 Queer Theories of the 1890s
- Chapter 11 Eugenics and Degeneration in Socialist-Feminist Novels of the Mid-1890s
- Chapter 12 The Conservative and Patriotic 1890s
- Chapter 13 Decadence and the Antitheatrical Prejudice
- Chapter 14 Religion and Science in the 1890s
- Chapter 15 Little Magazines and/in Media History
- Chapter 16 Fin-de-Siècle Visuality (and Textuality) and the Digital Sphere
- Index
Summary
Originally written in Malayalam, Indian writer O. Chandumenon’s novel, Indulekha (1889–90) was translated into English within a year of its publication and reprinted every year for almost a century. This chapter focuses on Indulekha’s engagement with a matrilineal household, typical of the Nair community in late nineteenth-century Malabar. In doing so, the chapter is attentive to the novel’s choice of genre. By taking up matriliny through the lens of realism, the novel not only departs from a fairly common nineteenth-century practice of depicting matriliny through romance but also remaps realism, extending its scope and valence amidst the social, sexual, and political shifts marking the fin de siècle, transimperially conceived.
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- Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s , pp. 78 - 96Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023