Trans-imperial Feminism in England and India

Trans-imperial Feminism in England and India: Catherine Dickens, Marie Corelli, and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain demonstrates the trans-imperial dimensions of gender-based oppression and traces the emergence of trans-imperial feminist consciousness between England and India. The book identifies a "e;new constellation"e; for literary studies that links the demise of Charles and Catherine Dickens's marriage in the midst of an imperial crisis, the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion; Marie Corelli's use of elements of the Dickens Scandal in her 1896 novel The Murder of Delicia; and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's 1922 translation and critical adaptation of Corelli's novel, Delicia Hatya. Further, the book also offers a richly contextualized reading of Hossain's 1924 New Woman novel Padmarag to demonstrate the culmination of trans-imperial feminist consciousness. Kellie Holzer coins the term "e;trans-imperial feminism"e; to denote a dispersed feminist formation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries characterized by ambivalent agency, asymmetry, "e;feminist snaps"e; that resound across empire, and partisanship forged through storytelling. Combining the methods of area studies and critical comparativism, Holzer's analysis demonstrates how the trans-imperial circulation and citation of women's stories, both lived and fictional, rescripts women's lives and imagines new feminist constituencies. Ultimately, Holzer suggests that such trans-imperial aesthetic pairings have the potential to revivify Victorian Studies.