It is a charming yet sharp-tongued utopia about Indian women, and was written in 1905. It creates a turning point for Indian women as been oppressed by patriarchal society in India.
The short story about the experience of the narrator, Sultana where she had met with Sister Sara in the Ladyland. She lived in a world that was completely different from the narrator’s world. The purdah still exists, the everyday lives are still the same, but the point of marginalization between Sultana and Sister Sara is about men. The men are locked up and deprived of their rights. In fact, the women co-exist in peace and total happiness which they have created together all sorts of technology from solar system to the condensation process.
Furthermore, in the Ladyland, there is nothing like a reversal-role issue. The so called traditional role between men and women are retained, yet, the roles are viewed by their intelligence which Rokeya has presented, in the Ladyland, the women are strong, intelligent, and rational compared to the men which she portrays as weak, dumb and irrational.
After that, Sultana visits the queen and returns in an air-car, designed by the women in the Ladyland and wakes up from her dream.
Sultana’s Dream is a powerful memento for a society that a revolution is starting to evolve. The fight for women’s empowerment has begun before the western feminist revolution in the 1960s and Rokeya has already criticizes on the patriarchal society which always condemning women especially Indians. She has fought for these women because she wants to change all old traditions especially, prohibits women from educations. In fact, she has been in that situation where his father, Jahiruddin Muhammad Abu Ali Haidar Saber prohibits her to go to school and learns any languages especially Bengali and English. Despite that, her husband, Sakhawat Hussein, motivates Rokeya to learn and write and eventually on an afternoon when her husband, who works as a magistrate, was out for inspections of his territory, she had spent her time working on this epic, Sultana’s Dream.
In addition, this story portrays the elements of feminism, but in the right orderly way, because she conjures Islamic teachings in her mission to upgrade women from being oppressed by the society. in fact, she does not put full blame on men, rather she cares for both gender and exercises ‘gender-neutral approach’ (Md. MAhmudul Hasan, 2013). She addresses both roles in the society as:
In conclusion, I want to say that we are half of the society. If we lag behind, how shall our society advance? If one leg of a person is fastened, how long will s/he go limping on the other? Our interest and men’s interest are one and the same… For a child, both mother and father are equally needed. We [women] should possess comparable qualities so that we can go with them [men] abreast in both spiritual and material spheres… In this world, a nation whose men and women worked together reached the zenith of development. It is an imperative that we [women] should be complementary partners of men, instead of being a burden for them {Rokeya, Motichur, Vol. 121 as cited Md. Mahmudul Hasan, 2013)
Hence, Rokeya has presented the ideal set of feminism trilogy, which she sees both genders, female and male as complementary set and it needs to be put together to achieve the ideal set of society.
Reference
Md. Mahmudul Hasan. (2013). Commemorating Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and
Contextualising her Work in South Asian Muslim Feminism. Asiatic. 7
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