Tagore and Shakespeare:

A Comparative Study of their Views of Daughters as Reflected in their Works

Abstract

In this study I want to show that the greatest Bengali writer and the greatest English writer had one concern in common as fathers—how to marry their daughters to suitable bridegrooms. This anxiety of the daughters’ fathers is counterpoised by the greed for dowry among the young men seeking a rich father-in-law. While my article will develop along this contrapuntal opposition–father’s anxiety versus dowry-hunter’s greed, I’ll also shed light on the biographical elements of both these writers as the depiction in their works of young women being married to wrong hands is so persistently identifiable with their own position as fathers in real life. I have tried to base my article first on a biographical premise, and then I have gone to focus on their treatment of the fictional daughters in their works, thus to prove a fact that writers do write about themes which keep them preoccupied in their lives.

But my paper by no means intends to present an exhaustive study on the topic, citing cases and examples from these two writers’ whole gamut of writings, rather my references will remain confined only to the pieces that I have lead of these two authors, and again only the most prominent ones will be referred to.