This paper attempts a comparative study of gender issues figuring prominently in three films of the Gothic genre set in the backdrop of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial Bengal, where gold and women intertwine in tales of darkness and desire. The films selected for analysis are Satyajit Ray’s Monihara (1961), a classic in Bengali Gothic cinema, Goynar Baksho (2013) by Aparna Sen, and Bulbbul (2020), directed by Anvita Dutt, in an attempt to shed light on the symbolic and narrative significance of gold in the Bengali female gothic genre. The selected films utilise the Gothic’s trademark elements—the uncanny, the macabre, and supernatural—to navigate women’s roles in a society transformed by colonialism, economic change, and shifting gender dynamics.

To analyse the relationship between gold and women in the backdrop of 19th Century Bengal, Fentje Henrike Donner draws attention to “the common usage of the Bengali idiom of “women and gold” (kaminikanchan), whereby women are symbolically equated with gold, and both signify the mundane world which is opposed to spiritual progress” (Donner 1999: 377-378). The words “kamini” and “kanchan” are Sanskrit terms used in almost all Indian languages— “kamini” means “woman” and “kanchan” means “gold.” Gold, in this cinematic context, serves as more than a material asset; it becomes a conduit for exploring ideological constructs around gender, wealth, and desire.

The three films, while portraying women in complex roles as Gothic heroines, foreground the societal conditions that both elevate and stigmatise women’s connections with gold. In Monihara, the female protagonist’s obsession with her jewellery intertwines with themes of loss and spectral vengeance, while Goynar Baksho and Bulbbul explore power dynamics through characters who navigate colonial and patriarchal constraints, asserting autonomy through their association with gold. This paper contends that gold in Bengali Gothic cinema is emblematic of a broader critique, serving as a gendered trope that exposes underlying social anxieties and reshapes traditional representations of femininity, power, and materiality in colonial Bengal. Through such Gothic representations of the “golden” brides of Bengal, gold transcends mere ornamentation, becoming central to a discourse on power and identity in a rapidly transforming cultural landscape.

Discourses around Bengali cinema, both critical and popular, have historically dealt with the question of crisis. This paper will look at the crisis narrative represented in early Bengali film criticisms of the 1930s and 1940s. This period is important in the history of Bengali cinema as well as in the cultural history of Bengal. Print cultures have been central to the articulation of modernity and political identities in nineteenth and early twentieth-century India. Writings and criticisms about popular entertainment forms largely contributed to these discourses. With the rise of cinema as a mass entertainment form in India, journals and magazines dedicated to cinema, including many in vernaculars, emerged in the 1920s and gained momentum in the 1930s. Colonial Bengal, being one of the most important sites of film production in India, and due to the presence of an English-educated middle class, saw the emergence of numerous film periodicals during this time. The articles published in film magazines like Nachghar, Filmland, Bioscope, Deepali, Batayan, and Kheyali dealt with diverse topics around the popular medium, which included questions on the social and moral function of cinema and its aesthetic standards. This paper will look at select writings published in the early Bengali film magazines and will try to trace whether the crisis is concerned only with the medium of cinema or corresponds to the greater crisis of the Bengali middle class. The paper will also examine the questions of moral and cultural choices, modernising practices, and the formation of national aspirations.

Le Mont Athos a été lʼobjet dʼinnombrables récits de pèlerins ou visiteurs. En Occident en1422, le Florentin Buondelmonte ouvre la marche avec un ouvrage en latin. Plus tard, en France, “dès 1547, Pierre Belon, médecin et botaniste, grâce à lʼappui éclairé de la cour de François 1er et du cardinal de Tournon”, pourra “visiter la Sainte Montagne et en laisser une fidèle description”. Mais parmi ces récits qui décrivent les couvents et la vie quotidienne des moines athonites, il existe des écrits de la fin des années 20 et du début des années 30, qui mettent en lumière les visions des moines athonites.

Ce sont des approches singulières qui touchent à un certain tabou, dans la mesure où deux dʼentre-elles sont des descriptions faites par des femmes, qui étaient interdites de séjour à la Sainte Montagne, et qui montrent un certain contraste avec celle données par des hommes. Cʼest ainsi que nous nous proposons de les approcher dans leurs dimensions stylistiques et littéraires, au travers de trois auteurs que quelques années séparent: Marthe Oulié et Hermine de Saussure avec leur "Croisière de 'Perlette', 1700 milles dans la mer Egée (1926), Maryse Choisy, journaliste, prétendant avoir passé un mois parmi les moines de la péninsule interdite aux femmes depuis 1046, dans son reportage intitulé “Un Mois chez les hommes”, paru en 1929 aux Editions de France et Eugène Mercier qui en 1933 publia "La Spiritualité Byzantine, L'Orient grec et chrétien, Attique, Thessalie, Macédoine, Salonique, le mont Athos" aux Editions du Cygne .

Cette étude comparative de ces trois récits de voyage au pays des Hagiorites mettra en lumière ce qui a, de tout temps fasciné le pèlerin-voyageur, le quotidien de ces moines vivant comme dans un Moyen-Age byzantin figé mais non moins étonnamment réel constituant lʼessence même de cette admiration pour les uns, ce non-sens pour les autres, surtout quand il est question de femmes, qui se sentent exclues de ce “Jardin de la vierge”, qui en reste la maîtresse exclusive.

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BOUSQUET, P. A. Abbé, Les Actes des Apôtres Modernes, Relations épistolaires et authentiques des Voyages entrepris par les missionnaires catholiques pour porter le flambeau de lʼEvangile chez tous les peuples et civiliser le monde, Tome Deuxième, Paris, Au Bureau, 1852, pp 105-119.

CHOISY, Maryse, Un Mois chez les Hommes, Paris, Les Editions de France, 1929, 230 p.

DE MEESTER, Placide, D., O. S. B., Voyage de deux Bénédictins au Mont-Athos, Paris, Rome, Bruges, Bruxelles, Desclée de Brouwer, 1908, 321 p.

DE NOLHAC, Stanislas, Athènes et le Mont Athos, Paris, E. Plon et Cie Editeurs, 1882, 314 p.

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GEORGIRENES, Joseph, Archbishop, A Description of the Present state of Samos, Patmos, and Mount Athos, Licenfed, London, 1678, reprinted in ΒΙΒΛΙΟΘΙΚΗ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΚΟΝ ΜΕΛΕΤΜΩΝ 23, Athènes, BΙΒΛΙΟΠΩΛΕΟΝ ΝΟΤΗ ΚΑΡΑΒΙΑ, 1967, 112 p.

GOTHONI, René, Paradise Within Reach: Monasticism and Pilgrimage, Helsinki: Helsinki University, 1993. 183 p.

MERCIER, Eugène, La Spiritualité Byzantine, LʼOrient grec et chrétien, Attique, Thessalie, Macédoine, Salonique, Le Mont Athos, Paris, Editions du Cygne, 1933, Chap. VII-XXIV, 187-520.

NEYRAT, Alexandre-Stanislas, Abbé, LʼAthos, notes dʼune excursion à la presquʼîle de la montagne des moines, Paris, PLon; Sourrit et Cie Editeurs, Lyon, Librairie Briday, 1884, 247 p.

OULIE, Marthe, de SAUSSURE, Hermine, Croisière de 'Perlette’, 1700 milles dans la mer Egée, Paris, Hachette, 1926, 253 p.

PERILLA, F. Le Mont Athos, Son Histoire - Ses Monastères - Ses Œuvres dʼart- Ses Bibliothèques, Paris, J. Danguin Editeur, Salonique, édition de lʼauteur, 1927, 188 p

This paper examines the life and diary of the ‘American Goddess of Mercy’—Minnie Vautrin, who managed an all-women refugee camp during the notorious Nanjing Massacre in China. Starting with a concise biography of Vautrin, this paper probes her embodiment of cross-cultural identities and pioneering role in Chinese women’s educational reform. In particular, I highlight the dual function of her wartime diary and how her descriptions of sexual violations unveiled the convoluted gender and racial power politics in the refugee camp. For the past few decades Vautrin’s diary has inspired a myriad of literary and cinematic works featuring the Nanjing Massacre transnationally. I examine the afterlife of Vautrin’s diary by mainly focusing on the characterisations of Vautrin and Chinese heroines in a constellation of novels and films which manage to reimagine stories out of the silence, gaps, and aporia in her diary. I contend that such a way of writing out of silence and fissures in Vautrin’s life writings revisits the American Goddess of Mercy myth and gives voice to the violated Chinese women who are usually marginalised in official historical discourse.