Analyse the role and involvement of women in the readership and authorship of novels in India.

(i) In the early decades of the 20th century, women in South India began writing novels and short stories.

(ii) A reason for the popularity of novels among women was that it allowed for a new conception of womanhood.

(iii) Some women authors also wrote about women who changed the world of both men and women.

(iv) Rokeya Hossein wrote a satiric fantasy in English called 'Sultana's Dream' (1905) which shows a topsy-tuny world in which women take the place of men.

(v) Hunnah Mullens, a Christian missionary and the author of 'Karuna O Phulmonir Bibaran' (1852), wrote the first novel in Bengali, which tells her readers that she wrote in secret.