Subject(s): Women in India in Social conditions. -- Indic literature (English) in History and criticism. -- Politics of the possible- or perils of reclassification, of ladies, gentlemen and short cut- or choosing unfreedom, modernist resolution, pressures on description -- Relating histories : Dialectic of reform and preservation- Sanskrit and Hindu women, literature, female literacy, colonial English, gender of ignorance and altruism- English women and empire -- Women against women : Mirroring trajectories- fortunes of English- logics of class, diverse faiths, shared customs, composite beliefs- prism of caste- Chhabili bhatiyari -- Amenities of domestic life : On our work there is no blessing, servitude of love and science of denial, promise and retreat of conjugality- widows and prostitutes -- Consent, agency and rhetoric's of incitement : Boons, entitlements, obligations- Kaikeyi and Manthara, Under institutional sanction -- women & politics