ROKEYA SAKHAWAT HOSSAIN’S SULTANA’S DREAM: A POST-MODERN READING

Abstract

Critics and research scholars have so far attempted to interpret and analyze Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s (1880-1932) Sultana’s Dream (1905) from various perspectives, deriving specific meanings from the novel. Most of them discussed gender discrimination, women's equality, and the importance of education for women's emancipation, overlooking the indeterminacy of the novel's meaning and its multilayered meanings, as well as the concepts of intertextuality, pastiche, satire, and irony, which are key aspects of postmodern critical theory. The present study seeks to draw upon the senses, which are not precisely fixed in extent, intending to expose different meanings and styles the novel can pose. For a better understanding of the meanings of the novel, it is necessary to closely examine some other writings of Begum Rokeya while interpreting the novel. Therefore, to attain the study's objectives, eclectic criticism, a combination of theories such as feminism, post-colonialism, and ecocriticism will be employed to uncover the exploitation and oppression of women by patriarchal capitalist society, colonial and religious agencies, celebratory manifestations of nature and environment, the interconnectedness of the novel with other works, and the combination of multiple elements of the style of the novel.