What were the impact of print revolution on women children and workers
Answers
i) Women education : Writers started writing about the lives and feelings of women, and this increased the number of women readers. Women got interested in education, and many women schools and colleges were set up. Many journals started emphasising the importance of women education.
(ii) Women writers : In East Bengal, in the early nineteenth century, Rashsundari Debi, a young married girl wrote her autobiography, Amar Jiban (means ‘my life’) which was published in 1876.
From the 1860s, many Bengali women writers like Kailashbashini Debi wrote books highlighting the experiences of women, about how women were imprisoned at home, kept in ignorance, forced to do hard domestic labour, and treated unjustly by the menfolk, they served. In the 1880s, in the present-day Maharashtra, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote with passionate anger about the miserable lives of the upper-caste Hindu women, especially the widows. The poor status of women was also expressed by the Tamil writers.
(iii) Hindu writing and women : While Urdu, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi print culture had developed earlier, Hindu printing began seriously only from the 1870s. Soon, a large section of it was devoted to the education of women.
(iv) New journals : In the early 20th century, the journals written by women, became very popular in which women’s education, widowhood, widow remarriage, etc., were discussed. Some of them offered fashion lessons for women.
(v) Teachings for women : Ram Chaddha published Istri Dharam Vi char to teach women how to be obedient wives. The Khalsa Tract Society published cheap booklets with a similar message. Many of these were in the form of dialogues about the qualities of a good woman.
The transformation from the printing by hand to the printing by machine is known as the print revolution. Following are the impacts of the print revolution on women and children:
1. Women took interest in reading novels and magazines. Writers began writing on the issues of the need of education for women, which increased the number of female readers.
2. Women were influenced by the new technology to an extent that many of them began writing on their own. The main themes they included were the widow remarriage, women’s education, the nationalist movement and widowhood etc.
3. The writings of many female writers even inspired the people of India to participate in the national struggle for the Independence of India.
The impact of print on Children:
1. Children became an important category of readers, as the primary education was announced compulsory in the 19th century.
2. This fact that children became important readers can be seen in the establishment of a children’s press, in France in 1857.
The impact of print technology on Workers:
1. Lending libraries in the 19th century became an apparatus for educating the white-collar workers, artisans and lower-middle-class people.
2. Very often self- educated working class began writing for themselves. As the shortened time reduced the working hours of the workers they began taking interests in the novel concerned with the working class, for instance, the effect of industrialization on the lives of the working class.