Reading Tagore

I read this Tagore short "Shasti" recently and recalled hearing my mother reading it out loud to me in Bengali when I was a kid. On the surface, it is a simple narrative even a child can follow. At my age, the experience of reading the story is very different. The character of Chandara comes across way more complex. She is hobbled by her circumstances but not defined by it. She reminds me of Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina. All these women choose to die in the end. In this commentary on how Tolstoy ends Anna Karenina, the author writes

On the basis of this novel, it could be argued that Tolstoy rejects female experience as domestic, limited, even lacking in spiritual insight, because the one woman who attempts to transgress these boundaries ends up committing suicide.

Tagore seems to give Chandara the center stage in his story. She drives the narrative and controls her destiny. In a sense, she epitomizes the inner strength of the Indian woman who historically did not have the same freedom or resources as the Flaubert or Tolstoy characters did. Yet there is a certain fire and energy about Chandara that even death cannot diminish.