Sonatchi as a Proto-Feminist Heroine

Melkey Chisim

Within feminist literary criticism, some early traditions have emphasized that only texts authored by women — or those that explicitly advocate for women’s rights — can be called authentic feminist literature. While this position emerged from efforts to reclaim women’s voices in male-dominated canons, it has also led many readers to assume that authorial gender alone defines a text’s feminist value—an assumption worth re-examining. Literature often contains unspoken truths, emotional resistance, and silent acts of defiance that reveal feminist values, even if unintentionally. Redin M. Momin’s Khalsin aro Sonatchi (1972), composed decades before pro-feminist narratives gained mainstream attention in Indian literature, offers one such case. Set in the Garo society of Northeast India, the novel chronicles the journey of a young woman subjected to cultural expectation, social trauma, and forced silence. Yet, it is precisely this silence — this refusal to collapse morally — that renders Sonatchi a figure of quiet revolution.

The feminist reading, therefore, is not imposed on the text — it arises organically from the story itself. The novel may not explicitly “argue” for women’s rights, but it documents—honestly and sensitively—the reality of a young woman negotiating love, social duty, trauma, and self-reinvention. In that sense, Sonatchi is a proto-feminist figure — not because she stands outside her world, but because she negotiates from within it. She challenges structures not by breaking them, but by bending them toward her own freedom.

As Toril Moi reminds us, feminism is “a political position, a critical strategy, a reading practice” (Moi xiv). It is this practice of reading that allows us to discover in Sonatchi’s journey the contours of a feminist arc—rendered not in rebellion, but in restraint; not in slogans, but in silence.

Embodied Resistance and Becoming

At every pivotal moment in her life, Sonatchi chooses moral clarity over cultural submission. She does not resist her circumstances with grand declarations, but through quiet acts of courage that disrupt the expectations placed upon her. Her resistance is written into her choices, her body, and her silence.

She is baptized against her father’s wishes — not to reject him, but because her conscience compels her. This marks the beginning of her self-definition, a step away from the roles assigned to her by tradition. When she is forced into marriage with Chandra, Sonatchi’s resistance reaches a physical threshold. She faints while being dragged to the do·sia ceremony, and in the days that follow, speaks in delirium:

“Leave me, I’m not willing at all. O Khalsin, where are you now?”

These are not simply cries of heartbreak. They are utterances of protest in a world that refuses to hear her voice. She does not speak in court or in public, but her body breaks down under the weight of coercion. Her collapse becomes the language of refusal.

This embodied resistance echoes Simone de Beauvoir’s landmark claim that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” —a powerful critique of how womanhood is socially constructed through obedience, conformity, and silence (The Second Sex, 1949). Sonatchi resists this conditioning not through confrontation, but by refusing to participate in the roles forced upon her. Her transformation is not revolutionary in speech, but in structure. She rewrites her destiny from within the same cultural frameworks that attempt to control her.

She continues to resist through silence, not out of weakness, but strength. When village gossip falsely links her to Dinesh, she remains quiet—not because she is complicit, but because she refuses to justify herself in a system that does not grant her fairness. Her silence is her armor.

As bell hooks argues, love and resistance are not mutually exclusive. In fact, she defines love as “the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth” (All About Love 4). Sonatchi’s choices—particularly her act of pushing Khalsin away to protect him—mirror this ethic of love as care, sacrifice, and self-withholding. Her silence is not weakness; it is a deeply feminist form of moral responsibility.

Finally, when she moves to Dacca and accepts a new name — Soibali— she does not erase her past. Instead, she strategically reconstructs herself. She chooses education over submission, dignity over despair. The new name does not signify abandonment but survival. She becomes a woman of her own making.

She is not a rebel against tradition but a reinterpreter of it—a feminist heroine shaped not in protest, but in persistence.

The Subaltern and the Power to Speak

In Can the Subaltern Speak?, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak argues that marginalized women, especially in colonized societies, are doubly silenced by imperial discourse and native patriarchy. The subaltern, she writes, is rendered voiceless because no platform exists that permits her experience to be recognized as meaningful (Spivak 287).

Sonatchi lives at the edges of such voicelessness. She is spoken about by others—by her uncle, her father, her society—but not listened to. Her letters are intercepted. Her choices are overwritten. Yet, she speaks—not in rhetoric, but in the grammar of survival. She speaks through fainting, through the pain of separation, through education and return.

She speaks when she chooses to build a life through education, autonomy, and moral dignity. Her love for Khalsin is not undone by silence — it is preserved in it.

Her transformation from Sonatchi to Soibali becomes a strategic re-inscription, to use Spivak’s terms. She does not speak within the dominant discourse but constructs her own terms of survival. Her silence is not absence — it is protest shaped into purpose.

In Spivak’s terms, Sonatchi does not recover her voice within the hegemonic discourse that once silenced her. Instead, she constructs a new space to speak— from the margins, through healing, through change. She is silenced, yes, but not voiceless.

Authorship and Feminist Interpretation

Traditional feminist criticism often viewed male-authored works with suspicion, fearing that women were being spoken for, objectified, or misrepresented. Yet, as Toril Moi clarifies in Sexual/Textual Politics, feminism is not about who writes, but how and what is written. Feminism, she writes, is “a political position, a critical strategy, a reading practice” (Moi xiv). By this logic, the feminist value of a text lies not in the author’s identity but in the possibilities the text opens up for resistance, agency, and critique of patriarchy.

Khalsin aro Sonatchi does not claim to be a feminist manifesto. In fact, Redin M. Momin, its author, does not attempt to speak over or for women. Instead, he does something subtler and more radical—he portrays a young woman’s life as it is: shaped by constraint, tragedy, self-discipline, and eventual rebirth. He gives her not just suffering, but transformation. He allows her to disappear and return, not as a broken figure, but as an evolved one. But it’s this commitment to showing real life— “showing life as it is” —that opens the door for feminist perspectives

Seen this way, Sonatchi’s character is not imposed with feminist ideals, but rather invites them. She does not argue for equality in words, but she lives its possibilities. Her choices—however constrained—are morally coherent, emotionally resonant, and quietly radical.

Sonatchi does not represent feminism in theory — she embodies it in action.

This embodiment of feminist values—through education, emotional endurance, and social redefinition—is what gives the novel its interpretive strength. In a literary landscape where female characters are often silenced or sentimentalized, Sonatchi stands apart. She survives not by defying culture outright, but by redefining herself within it.

Toward a Feminist Reading of Freedom

Sonatchi’s journey is not defined by protest, but by persistence. It is a journey from silence to agency, from erasure to self-invention. What makes her a proto-feminist heroine is not her ability to dismantle the world around her, but her refusal to let it define the limits of her being.

She is not a rebel against tradition but a reinterpreter of it—a feminist heroine shaped not in protest, but in persistence.

Her fainting at the threshold of the do·sia ceremony is a body’s refusal. Her quiet endurance of gossip, her ability to rebuild her identity under the name Soibali, and her return to Khalsin not as a bride but as a teacher, a moral equal, are moments of radical agency. Sonatchi does not claim her freedom; she cultivates it over time, with discipline, sorrow, and strength.

As we reflect on her journey, one thing becomes clear: she does not speak loudly—but she speaks. And in doing so, she answers the question at the heart of both postcolonial and feminist inquiry. Sonatchi, as the subaltern can speak — through her silence, survival, and reinvention.

Author’s Note

Just as the author of Khalsin aro Sonatchi, does not overtly position himself within a feminist discourse, the author of this essay similarly makes no claims to being a feminist theorist. This study is not intended as a declaration of ideology, but rather as a literary reflection rooted in close reading. The interpretations offered here arise not from a desire to argue, but from a commitment to understanding the text in its emotional, cultural, and historical contexts.

The feminist insights explored in this work are not projected onto the text, but emerge from the narrative itself. They arise from what is visible before the eye—what the story reveals through its silences, tensions, and transformations. This essay is, above all, an exercise in literary analysis and writing practice. Its goal is not to instruct but to observe, not to persuade but to interpret with care.

 

Works Cited

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by H. M. Parshley, Vintage Books, 1989.

hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. William Morrow, 2001.

Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. Routledge, 1985.

Momin, Redin M. Khalsin aro Sonatchi. Tura Book Room, 1976.

Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton UP, 1977.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, U of Illinois P, 1988, pp. 271–313.

 

Glossary of Critical Vocabulary

For students reading Khalsin aro Sonatchi through feminist and postcolonial lenses

1. Arc

Definition: A character’s arc is the journey they take in a story—from who they are at the beginning to who they become at the end.
Example: Sonatchi’s arc shows her growing from a village girl facing pressure to marry into a strong, educated woman living on her own terms.

2. Agency

Definition: The ability of a character (especially a woman, in feminist theory) to make their own choices and act independently.
Example: Sonatchi shows agency when she decides to get baptized, and later, when she rebuilds her life in Dacca as Soibali.

3. Negotiate

Definition: In literature, to “negotiate” means to find a way to survive or manage difficult situations, especially within social or cultural limits.
Example: Sonatchi doesn’t fight openly against her culture, but she negotiates with it—finding her freedom quietly through education.

4. Resistance

Definition: Refusing to follow unfair rules or expectations. In stories, resistance can be loud or silent.
Example: Sonatchi resists the forced marriage by fainting and later by choosing a new life away from her village.

5. Embodiment

Definition: When someone’s body expresses their emotions or truth—often without using words.
Example: Sonatchi’s fainting is an embodiment of her refusal to marry Chandra.

6. Subaltern

Definition: A person or group of people who are socially, politically, or culturally pushed to the margins (ignored or silenced).
Example: Sonatchi is a subaltern figure because her choices are often made by others, and her voice is not heard.

7. Silence

Definition: In critical theory, silence doesn’t always mean weakness. It can be a kind of protest or strength when words are not possible.
Example: Sonatchi’s silence during her forced wedding is a form of emotional resistance.

8. Space (Social/Cultural Space)

Definition: Not a physical space, but a place in society where someone is allowed to exist, speak, or act.
Example: Sonatchi creates a new space for herself in Dacca—outside the restrictions of her traditional role.

9. Reinscription

Definition: To rewrite or reshape something old into something new, often with new meaning.
Example: When Sonatchi becomes Soibali, she reinscribes her identity to escape gossip and start over with dignity.

10. Proto-feminist

Definition: A character or idea that shows feminist qualities before the term “feminism” existed or without using feminist theory.
Example: Sonatchi is a proto-feminist because she stands for freedom and education in a time and place where women had little choice.

11. Transformation

Definition: A big change in a character’s life, beliefs, or identity.
Example: Sonatchi transforms into Soibali—a confident, educated woman—after escaping forced marriage.

12. Moral Integrity

Definition: Staying true to your values, even when it’s hard.
Example: Sonatchi refuses to lie about her feelings just to please her family. She chooses honesty and dignity.

13. Cultural Codes

Definition: The unwritten rules a society expects people to follow, like traditions and roles for men and women.
Example: In her village, Sonatchi is expected to marry the man chosen for her. But she quietly resists these cultural codes.

14. Repression

Definition: In psychoanalytic theory, this means pushing down or hiding your feelings or desires, often because society doesn’t accept them.
Example: Sonatchi hides her love for Khalsin and lies to him to protect him, even though it breaks her heart.

15. Narrative

Definition: A story, especially one with characters and events that reveal deeper meanings.
Example: Sonatchi’s narrative shows how women survive and grow even when society tries to silence them.

16. Patriarchy

Definition: A system where men hold most power and women have less say in decisions.
Example: Sonatchi’s uncle and father try to force her into marriage without her consent—this shows patriarchy in action.

17. Identity

Definition: Who someone is, including their name, values, culture, and sense of self.
Example: When Sonatchi becomes Soibali, she doesn’t lose herself—she finds a new identity that gives her freedom.

18. Silence as Resistance

Definition: Using quietness or withdrawal as a way to protest or reject something unjust.
Example: Sonatchi does not yell or fight—but her fainting, tears, and disappearance say what words cannot.

19. Intersectionality

Definition: A way of thinking about how different forms of oppression (like gender, class, and culture) overlap in one person’s life.
Example: Sonatchi is not only a woman, but also a tribal girl in a patriarchal and postcolonial society—this makes her experience complex.

20. Liminality

Definition: A state of being “in-between”—not belonging fully to one side or another.
Example: As Soibali, Sonatchi lives between village and city, Garo and Bengali, tradition and modernity.

21. Naming and Renaming

Definition: In postcolonial studies, names can show power. Changing a name can mean freedom—or control.
Example: When Sonatchi becomes Soibali, it’s not just a new name—it’s a new life she chooses for herself.

22. Bildungsroman

Definition: A fancy word for a “coming-of-age” story—how a character grows up and finds their place in the world.
Example: Khalsin aro Sonatchi can be read as a double bildungsroman—of both Khalsin and Sonatchi growing through hardship and education.

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Note: This glossary was added following requests from students and younger readers who, after reading this essay, expressed interest in understanding the critical vocabulary used throughout. It is intended as a learning aid to support continued reading and engagement with the text.