Cornelia Sorabji (1866-1952) pioneers the tradition of Indian-Parsee women’s literature in English. She is also one of the earliest women in India to fictionalize the Indian woman in the English language. Sorabji was a prolific writer, and along with her memoirs, India Calling, her biographies of her parents and of her sister, she published fiction and prose. Love and Life Behind the Purdah, her first published book contains some of her most moving and skillfully crafted short fiction. The stories range from the Hindu purdahnashin and the women of the Zoroastrian priesthood to the ordinary men, women and children of India. They encapsulate themes of child-marriage and barrenness, sati, purdah, and various other highly controversial women’s issues of early nineteenth-century India. Interwoven is Sorabji’s concern for her beautiful and lonely women protagonists, and her frustrated ambitions to liberate them from their enforced and often self-willed surrender to role identities and an inflexible patriarchy. Love and Life is a significant contribution to women’s studies, and will be of interest to scholars of Indian literature, as well as the general reader.
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