Sultana's Dream

January 4, 1993
Hossain, born in north India (now Bangladesh) in 1880, was raised under the constraints of purdah, the Indian tradition that physically and spiritually isolates women, and devoted her life to writing about female oppression under purdah and to attempting to break through the stifling seclusion. The ironic ``Sultana's Dream,'' first published in 1905, is a short story that reverses purdah: the narrator dreams she travels to the utopian Ladyland, a peaceful and technologically advanced state ruled by women, where men are docile, quarantined servants trained to cook and clean. ``The Secluded Ones,'' published in 1928, is a collection of nonfiction reports on the incredible behavior that purdah demands from both women and men. Hossain tells, for example, of the matron who fell onto railway tracks but could not be rescued because of taboos against contact between the sexes. This short book is a window openedtoo brieflyonto a world whose exoticism is overshadowed only by its oppressiveness. Particularly chilling is Hossain's work's relevance to our timesas pointed out in the afterwordwhen purdah and its variants are being revived in different social and religious movements.

September 15, 1988
Ten years before Charlotte P. Gilman published her feminist utopia, Herland (1915), "Sultana's Dream" appeared in an India-based English periodical. It is a clever and appealing story of reversed purdah (seclusion of women) in Ladyland, where women overpower men through brains rather than brawn. Accompanying this story are selections from The Secluded Ones (1928), a factual account of extreme cases of purdah. Commentaries by scholars put the works of the little-known Hossain in a global and historical context. An interesting and informative work for Asian studies and women's studies collections. Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.

Copyright 1988 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.