Rokeya’s Dream Vision: An Indian Lady Philosophy and Conversion to Feminism

Abstract

This essay examines Begum Rokeya’s pivotal work Sultana’s Dream (1905) in the context of medieval dream vision by foregrounding its matches with the dream vision genre. With Sultana’s Dream, Rokeya takes women in the Indian community to a realm of freedom away from purdah and the zenana via mainly treating the concerns of gender and education. Rokeya endeavours to raise female consciousness in her story written in a dream format featuring Sister Sara as the guide to forging a self-sufficient female identity equal to men. I read Sister Sara as a wise woman, an exemplar of Boethius’ Lady Philosophy, appearing in medieval dream visions to bring people to the truth, the conversion to Christianity in the medieval setting as in The Dream of the Rood. The essay concludes that, apart from her community, Rokeya’s call in Sultana’s Dream stretches out from medieval to contemporary society within the milieu
of a dream vision to a feminist utopia respectively.