The paper is part of the project on which I am working as an ICAS fellow. The project is
about Indian first-wave feminism, a tag designating the organised women’s movement
which developed in the first decades of the 1900s. In particular, the project looks at the
gendered norms and emotions governing the two main associations that constituted firstwave
feminism in India—the Women’s Indian Association (1917) and the All-India
Women’s Conference (1927).
The paper focuses on the experience of the Women’s Indian Association (WIA), the first pan-Indian women’s organisation and one of the main actors composing first-wave feminism in early-twentieth century India. The WIA was crucial in the propagation of anti-imperialist, nationalist stances, and often constructed such stances as the main goals behind women’s proactive participation in the world outside their homes. The WIA’s message depicted women’s subjugation as a metaphor of India’s political subjugation, and the improvement of women’s condition as a prerequisite for and a necessary step towards the country’s emancipation from colonial domination. It was mainly within this broader framework, therefore, that the WIA promoted women’s education and independent initiative. While historiography has tackled these aspects, other, more subtle contributions of firstwave feminism have been overlooked. The following pages point in that direction. They contain some preliminary considerations on the role of the WIA and the main driving force behind it, Margaret Cousins, in the construction of an alternative system of feeling and emotional climate, which the women participating in the movement were encouraged to espouse. The first section of the paper introduces Margaret Cousins. It sheds light on her thinking and life trajectory, on which she arguably grounded the understanding of gender roles and women’s position that informed the message of the WIA. The second section looks at the WIA as an organ trying to shape a community governed by a peculiar emotionology; and the last section sheds some light on the reception of the emotional norms spread by the WIA through the experiences of some of the women who engaged with the association in the very first phase of its existence.
The paper focuses on the experience of the Women’s Indian Association (WIA), the first pan-Indian women’s organisation and one of the main actors composing first-wave feminism in early-twentieth century India. The WIA was crucial in the propagation of anti-imperialist, nationalist stances, and often constructed such stances as the main goals behind women’s proactive participation in the world outside their homes. The WIA’s message depicted women’s subjugation as a metaphor of India’s political subjugation, and the improvement of women’s condition as a prerequisite for and a necessary step towards the country’s emancipation from colonial domination. It was mainly within this broader framework, therefore, that the WIA promoted women’s education and independent initiative. While historiography has tackled these aspects, other, more subtle contributions of firstwave feminism have been overlooked. The following pages point in that direction. They contain some preliminary considerations on the role of the WIA and the main driving force behind it, Margaret Cousins, in the construction of an alternative system of feeling and emotional climate, which the women participating in the movement were encouraged to espouse. The first section of the paper introduces Margaret Cousins. It sheds light on her thinking and life trajectory, on which she arguably grounded the understanding of gender roles and women’s position that informed the message of the WIA. The second section looks at the WIA as an organ trying to shape a community governed by a peculiar emotionology; and the last section sheds some light on the reception of the emotional norms spread by the WIA through the experiences of some of the women who engaged with the association in the very first phase of its existence.
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