Print Culture and the Modern World

(i) Women education : Writers started writing about the lives and feelings of women, and this increased the number of women readers. Women got interested in education, and many women schools and colleges were set up. Many journals started emphasising the importance of women education.
(ii) Women writers : In East Bengal, in the early nineteenth century, Rashsundari Debi, a young married girl wrote her autobiography, Amar Jiban (means ‘my life') which was published in 1876.
From the 1860s, many Bengali women writers like Kailashbashini Debi wrote books highlighting the experiences of women, about how women were imprisoned at home, kept in ignorance, forced to do hard domestic labour, and treated unjustly by the menfolk, they served. In the 1880s, in the present-day Maharashtra, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote with passionate anger about the miserable lives of the upper-caste Hindu women, especially the widows. The poor status of women was also expressed by the Tamil writers.
(iii) Hindu writing and women : While Urdu, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi print culture had developed earlier, Hindu printing began seriously only from the 1870s. Soon, a large section of it was devoted to the education of women.
(iv) New journals : In the early 20th century, the journals written by women, became very popular in which women's education, widowhood, widow remarriage, etc., were discussed. Some of them offered fashion lessons for women.
(v) Teachings for women : Ram Chaddha published Istri Dharam Vi char to teach women how to be obedient wives. The Khalsa Tract Society published cheap booklets with a similar message. Many of these were in the form of dialogues about the qualities of a good woman.