Ghare Baire: An Eco-Critical Perspective

Abstract

Nature serves as a recurrent metaphor in Rabindranath Tagore’s Ghare Baire. Throughout the narrative, environmental motifs are constantly evoked not only to highlight the agrarian backdrop of the society but also to explore human relationships and attitudes towards life in general. In chapter eight of the novel, when Nikhil says: ‘It is my desire to plant something greater than Swadeshi. I am not after dead logs but living trees – and these will take time to grow,’ he articulates a symbiotic voice of empathy, nurture, nourishment and preservation. However, the history student’s reply to Nikhil is a sneering one: ‘I am afraid, sir, that you will get neither log nor tree. Sandip Babu rightly teaches that in order to get, you must snatch’. It is this contrary impulse of ‘snatching’ from and exploiting nature that concurrently runs through the novel. According to Sandip, Earth with its wonderful resources needs to be tamed into submission and exploited. This essay undertakes an eco-critical reading of the novel exploring the contrary forces of preservation and abuse, thereby, also taking a closer look at issues of gender and class that recur in the novel.