Dutt, Romesh Chunder: The literature of Bengal: being an attempt to trace the progress of the national mind in its various aspects, as reflected in the nation’s literature from the earliest times to the present day ; with copious extracts from the best writers (Calcutta, 1877)

126 LITERATURE OF BENGAL.

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thktj Krxullona should be employed <;n tending ( goats.
Khullona -will not believe that her husband couldL direct
such a thing. She is no patient Griselda;—Makunda
Ram never paints characters with superhuman virtues
or vices. He conceives no extraordinary villain like an
' lago, or an all-suffering saint like a Surjamukhi; he'
delights in painting men and women of flesh, and blood
with the ordinary virtues and failings of men and wo-
men, such as we see in the world around us. Khullona,
though the heroine of the poem, is like any qrdinary wo-
man of flesh and blood; and it is no part of the poet's
scheme to represent her as possessed of extraordinary
patience or virtue. She falls out with her fellow-wife,
s.z <any other woman unfier the circumstances would, and
even returns hew taunts and blows. If there is one re-
markable and characteristic beauty that pervades the
whole work of the poet,,it is that all the characters and
scenes and sayings are wonderfully life-like and real;
men and women such as speak and act and move around
us have been painted on the canvas with the utmost
truth and photographic fidelity. The merry repartees
of a young maiden sister-in-law, the curtain lecture of a
wife, the silent grief of a neglected wife, and the hypo-
critical words of consolation uttered by, a quiet ease-lov-
ing elderly husband ; the schemes of a scheming servant
and the mutual jealousy of two fellow-wives,—all these
are described just as we see and hear them almost every
day of our life.

Khullona at last succucabs, and consents to taking
out her husband's goats every day to the fields to graze.