Contents: Preface. Introduction. I. Context: lineages and history: 1. Gender construction in Rajputana states/Pratibha Jain and Sangeeta Sharma. 2. Haveli: a living tradition/Ranbir Sinh. 3. Aesthetics of architecture and tradition/Divya Joshi. 4. The Rajput ethic and value transmission in the family: Amar Singh's Diary/Raj Prabha. II. Text: Multiple frames: 5. An ode to a vanishing age/Sarojini. 6. A community narrative/Supriya Agarwal. 7. Purdah culture on the portals of change/Nirja Misra. 8. Being and becoming: a process of frame displacement/Pooja Joshi. 9. A discourse on gender and class/Malashri Lal. 10. The tradition of women's writing/Shobha Shinde. 11. Patriarchy, gender and power/Sudha Rai. 12. The girl child on the threshold of the Haveli/Mini Nanda. 13. The rationalization of Purdah/Vrinda Nabar. 14. Negotiating gendered spaces/Bandana Chakrabarty. 15. Perspectives on self and space/Nidhi Singh. 16. Spatio-temporal dimensions/P.R. Bhabad. 17. Fiction, ethnography or a mixed genre?/Jasbir Jain. 18. Paradox and irony in the Haveli/Venkatramani. III. Context: neighbouring discourses: 19. Purdah in Salman Rushdie, Attia Hosain and Rama Mehta/Uma Parameswaran. 20. The divided self: A Princess Remembers and Inside the Haveli/Madhuri Chatterjee. 21. Between tradition and modernity: women in three Indian English Novels/Preeti Bhatt. 22. Veiled worlds and unveiled realities: Inside the Haveli and Unveiling India/Jessy Mani.
"Gender, History and Culture: Inside the Haveli contains 22 essays that cover various aspects of Rama Mehta's novel Inside the Haveli. Each one of these explores a new dimension - linguistic structures, historical background, Rajasthani traditions, feudalism, ethnography, lifestyles, purdah, categories of power, family and gender relations. Placed within multiple frames, sociology, history and aesthetics find their own balance.
Inside the Haveli, the only novel of a renowned sociologist Rama Mehta, is in itself a blend of sociological constructs and individual aspirations and is viewed as an interface between tradition and modernity.
The contributors to this volume include distinguished scholars like Uma Parameswaran, Ranbir Sinh, Jasbir Jain, Malashri Lal, Vrinda Nabar, Pratibha Jain, Sudha Rai and several others. They have opened out hitherto invisible aspects of the novel subjecting it to critical scrutiny and, in the process, have also questioned traditional interpretations.
The book will interest both lay readers and scholars of history, sociology and literature." (jacket)