How does the poem The Bangle Sellers throw
light on Sarojini Naidu's conception of Indian
women?Write summary of all the stanzas
separately with appropriate pictures and
relate to the given topic.
Answers
Answer:
Naidu’s “The Bangle Sellers” can be seen as a celebration of Indian womanhood. Naidu celebrates both the women who sell bangles—which are used here as a symbol of the successive stages of Indian womanhood—as well as the women to whom they sell their wares.
The opening stanza revolves around the bangle sellers as they make their sales pitch to passing trade. They have brought their “shining loads” to the temple fair, their
delicate, bright
Rainbow-tinted circles of light.
Not wanting to miss out on any customers, the bangle sellers claim that their products are for happy daughters and happy wives, which covers quite a large spectrum of potential customers.
Each of the remaining three stanzas is devoted to a particular stage of a woman’s life. Cumulatively, they represent the trajectory of the average Indian woman’s life.
In the second stanza, the focus is on maidens, or unmarried women. The bangle sellers have a particular product that’s just right for these women, bangles in silver and blue like the mountain mist.
In the next stanza, we reach that stage of an Indian woman’s life when she is to be married. As a bride, she will need to wear bangles that are the same color as fields of sunlit corn, a symbol of fertility. Or she can wear bright red bangles representing the flame of her marriage fire. Red bangles also stand for her heart’s desire.
Finally, we move on to middle-aged women who’ve journeyed through life. Not surprisingly, the ever-resourceful bangle-sellers have just the right product for them, too: bangles flecked with purple and gold.