Short stories
Sultana's Dream
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain · 1905
Synopsis
One autumn night, Sultana dreams in her armchair about the condition of women in India, then finds herself in an unknown city, Ladyland. Women govern there, and the men, most of whom were killed by a war thirty years earlier, live shut away in the secluded quarters. The women of science harness the energy of the sun, command the clouds, farm without effort and travel in flying cars; the queen explains to the visitor how the women won peace without waging war.
Context
The author wrote this narrative, she says, to pass the time during a tour by her husband, who encouraged her to write in English; he urged her to send it to The Indian Ladies' Magazine, a Madras journal made by and for women, which published it in 1905. The text appeared in book form in 1908, the year of its Bengali version too. It predates by ten years the utopia of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, which is usually cited among the first of the genre.
Who it is for
A brief tale, written directly in English; it helps to know what purdah was, the seclusion of women in India in 1900.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the very first feminist utopian narratives, it is now studied even in ecofeminist criticism.