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 The Routledge Handbook
of Translation, Feminism
and Gender

The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender provides a comprehensive, state-of-
the-art overview of feminism and gender awareness in translation and translation studies today.
Bringing together work from more than 20 different countries – from Russia to Chile,
Yemen, Turkey, China, India, Egypt, and the Maghreb as well as the UK, Canada, the USA,
and Europe – this handbook represents a transnational approach to this topic, which is in
development in many parts of the world. With 41 chapters, this book presents, discusses, and
critically examines many different aspects of gender in translation and its effects, both local and
transnational.
Providing overviews of key questions and case studies of work currently in progress, this
handbook is the essential reference and resource for students and researchers of translation,
feminism, and gender.

Luise von Flotow has taught translation studies at the University of Ottawa in Canada since
1996, publishing widely in the field of feminism, gender, and translation. She most recently
co-edited Translating Women. Different Voices and New Horizons with Farzaneh Farhazad
(Routledge 2016) and co-translated Tout le monde parle de la pluie et du beau temps. Pas nous, a
book about Ulrike Meinhof (2018) with Isabelle Totikaev.

Hala Kamal is Professor of English and Gender Studies in the Department of English, Faculty
of Arts, Cairo University. Her research interests and publications in both Arabic and English
are in the areas of feminist literary criticism, translation studies, and the history of the Egyptian
feminist movement. She has translated several books on feminism and gender into Arabic.
Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies

Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies provide comprehensive

overviews of the key topics in translation and interpreting studies. All entries for the handbooks
are specially commissioned and written by leading scholars in the field. Clear, accessible and
carefully edited, Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies are the ideal resource
for both advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students.

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF TRANSLATION AND PHILOSOPHY

Edited by Piers Rawling and Philip Wilson

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF TRANSLATION AND PRAGMATICS

Edited by Rebecca Tipton and Louisa Desilla

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF TRANSLATION AND TECHNOLOGY

Edited by Minako O’Hagan

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF TRANSLATION AND EDUCATION

Edited by Sara Laviosa and Maria González-Davies

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF TRANSLATION AND ACTIVISM

Edited by Rebecca Ruth Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF TRANSLATION, FEMINISM

AND GENDER
Edited by Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF TRANSLATION AND COGNITION

Edited by Fabio Alves and Arnt Lykke Jakobsen

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Hand

books-in-Translation-and-Interpreting-Studies/book-series/RHTI.
The Routledge Handbook
of Translation, Feminism
and Gender

Edited by Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal

First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal to be identified as the authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: von Flotow, Luise, 1951– editor. | Kamāl, Hālah, editor.
Title: The Routledge handbook of translation, feminism and gender / edited by Luise
von Flotow and Hala Kamal.
Description: 1. | New York : Taylor and Francis, 2020. | Series: Routledge handbooks in
translation and interpreting studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020000889 | ISBN 9781138066946 (hardback) | ISBN
9781315158938 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Translating and interpreting. | Literature—Women authors—
History and criticism. | Women and literature—History—20th century. | Women
translators—History—20th century.
Classification: LCC P306.2 .R684 2020 | DDC 809/.89287—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000889
ISBN: 978-1-138-06694-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-15893-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To our collaborators, peer reviewers, readers, students, and our children
 Contents

List of illustrations xii

List of contributors xiii
Acknowledgementsxx

Introduction 1
Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal

1 Women (re)writing authority: a roundtable discussion

on feminist translation 5
Emek Ergun, Denise Kripper, Siobhan Meï, Sandra Joy Russell,
Sara Rutkowski, Carolyn Shread, and Ida Hove Solberg

PART I
Translating and publishing women 15

2 Volga as an international agent of feminist translation 17

Rajkumar Eligedi

3 Translation of women-centred literature in Iran: macro and micro analysis 32

Sima Sharifi

4 Pathways of solidarity in transit: Iraqi women writers’ story-making

in English translation 48
Ruth Abou Rached

5 Maghrebi women’s literature in translation 64

Sanaa Benmessaoud

6 Translation and gender in South America: the representation of

South American women writers in an unequal cultural scenario 83
Rosa Basaure, Marcela Contreras, Andrea Campaña, and Mónica Ahumada

vii
Contents

7 Translating metonymies that construct gender: testimonial

narratives by 20th-century Latin American women 93
Gabriela Yañez

8 Polish women translators: a herstory 107

Ewa Rajewska

9 Women translators in early modern Europe 117

Hilary Brown

10 Women writers in translation in the UK: the “Year of Publishing

Women” (2018) as a platform for collective change? 127
Olga Castro and Helen Vassallo

11 Censorship and women writers in translation: focus on Spain

under Francoism 147
Pilar Godayol

12 Gender and interpreting: an overview and case study of a woman

interpreter’s media representation 159
Biyu ( Jade) Du

PART II
Translating feminist writers 171

13 The Wollstonecraft meme: translations, appropriations,

and receptions of Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminism 173
Elisabeth Gibbels

14 An Indian woman’s room of one’s own: a reflection on Hindi

translations of Virginia Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own184
Garima Sharma

15 A tale of two translations: (re)interpreting Beauvoir in Japan,

1953–1997196
Julia Bullock

16 Bridging the cultural gap: the translation of Simone de Beauvoir

into Arabic 205
Hala G. Sami

17 Translating French feminist philosophers into English: the case

of Simone de Beauvoir 224
Marlène Bichet

viii
 Contents

18 On Borderlands and translation: the Spanish versions of Gloria

Anzaldúa’s seminal work 239
María Laura Spoturno

PART III
Feminism, gender, and queer in translation 253

19 At the confluence of queer and translation: subversions,

fluidities, and performances 255
Pauline Henry-Tierney

20 Feminism in the post-communist world in/as translation 266

Kornelia Slavova

21 The uneasy transfer of feminist ideas and gender theory:

post-Soviet English-Russian translations 276
Tatiana Barchunova

22 Virginia Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own, Simone de Beauvoir’s

Le Deuxième Sexe, and Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble in Polish:
feminism, translation, and political history 291
Ewa Kraskowska and Weronika Szwebs

23 Translating feminism in China: a historical perspective 308

Zhongli Yu

24 Queer transfeminism and its militant translation: collective,

independent, and self-managed 319
Laura Fontanella

25 Translating queer: reading caste, decolonizing praxis 336

Nishant Upadhyay and Sandeep Bakshi

26 Sinicizing non-normative sexualities: through translation’s

looking glass 345
Wangtaolue Guo

PART IV
Gender in grammar, technologies, and audiovisual
translation361

27 Grammatical gender and translation: a cross-linguistic overview 363

Bruna Di Sabato and Antonio Perri

ix
Contents

28 Le président est une femme: the challenges of translating gender

in UN texts 374
Enora Lessinger

29 Identifying and countering sexist labels in Arabic translation:

the politics of language in cleaning products 390
Sama Dawood

30 Egypt: Arab women’s feminist activism in volunteer subtitled

social media 401
Nihad Mansour

31 The sexist translator and the feminist heroine: politically incorrect

language in films and TV 413
Irene Ranzato

32 Women in audiovisual translation: the Arabic context 429

Nada Qanbar

33 Gender in war video games: the linguacultural representation

and localization of female roles between reality and fictionality 444
Silvia Pettini

34 Gender issues in machine translation: an unsolved problem? 457

Johanna Monti

PART V
Discourses in translation 469

35 Translating the Bible into English: how translations transformed

gendered meanings and relations 471
Mathilde Michaud

36 Negotiation of meaning in translating ‘Islamic feminist’ texts

into Arabic: mapping the terrain 481
Doaa Embabi

37 Feminist strategies in women’s translations of the Qur’an 496

Rim Hassen

38 Translation and women’s health in post-reform China: a case study

of the 1998 Chinese translation of Our Bodies, Ourselves508
Boya Li

x
 Contents

39 Translating feminist texts on women’s sexual and reproductive health 518

Nesrine Bessaïh and Anna Bogic

40 Children’s literature, feminism, adaptation, and translation 528

Handegül Demirhan

Epilogue541

41 Recognition, risk, and relationships: feminism and translation

as modes of embodied engagement 543
Beverley Curran

Index555

xi
 Illustrations

Figures
5.1 Languages of translation 70
10.1 WIT books by language 133
10.3 MIT books by language 135
32.1 Ratio of women to men in AVT companies surveyed in Jordan 433
33.1 The reality-fictionality spectrum axis 447
34.1 Vauquois triangle (Vauquois 1968) 460
34.2 Example of translation of the single gender-neutral word ‘nurse’
from English into Italian 464
38.1 Original OBOS image in the US version 512
38.2 Modified OBOS image in the 1998 Chinese translation 513

Images
10.2 WIT books by country 134
10.4 MIT books by country 137
30.1 Screen capture: ‘She and the Elections’, min 0.46 (.com) 409
41.1 Two covers of Otouto no otto – My Brother’s Husband547
41.2 Bonus images provided by the Japanese publisher 548
41.3 Additional images of the English translation 549
41.4 Cover and title of Sora no ito551

Tables
2.1 Feminist texts by Volga 18
3.1 Library search results of somewhat feminist translations: 1970s 35
3.2 Library search results of mostly feminist translations: 1980s 36
3.3 Number of translations concerned with social justice (1930s–1970s) 38
3.4 Number of translations of feminist books (1980s) 39
3.5 Number of translations of feminist books (1990s and beyond) 39
10.1 Appendix I Women in Translation in our corpus (2018) 143
10.2 Appendix II Men in Translation in our corpus (2018) 145
16.1 Simone de Beauvoir’s works translated into Arabic 219
21.1 Definition of gender by Joan W. Scott in Russian translation 283

xii
 Contributors

Ruth Abou Rached is a postdoctoral researcher for the ERC research project PalREAD:
Country of Words: Reading and Reception of Palestinian Literature from 1948 to the Present, Freie
Universität Berlin. Her research interests include Arab diasporic literatures and women’s writing
and intersectional feminist translation theories. She is editor for New Voices in Translation Studies,
International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies.

Mónica Ahumada is a part-time professor in the Linguistics and Literature Department at

Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Her research focuses on the contribution of translation in
international relations.

Sandeep Bakshi is Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Queer Literatures and Literary
Translation at the University of Paris Diderot/Paris VII. He researches on transnational queer
and decolonial enunciation of knowledge and is the co-editor of Decolonizing Sexualities:
Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions (Oxford, 2016) with Suhraiya Jivraj and Silvia
Posocco.

Tatiana Barchunova has a PhD in philosophy of science. She is an associate professor at the
Institute of Philosophy and Law of Novosibirsk State University, and teaches gender studies,
political philosophy, and philosophical anthropology. She co-authored a popular book on gender
studies – Gender dlia chainikov [Gender for Beginners], (Moscow, 2006).

Rosa Basaure is an assistant professor in the Linguistics and Literature Department at

Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Her research centres on cross-cultural communication and
the contribution of translation to international relations.

Sanaa Benmessaoud is Assistant Professor in Translation and Comparative Studies at the

American University of Ras Al Khaimah. Her research interests include literary translation,
the sociology of translation, gender in translation, contemporary Arabic literature, and critical
discourse analysis. Her articles have appeared in such translation journals as The Translator and
Turjuman: Journal of Translation.

Nesrine Bessaïh, PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa, is an anthropologist and a translator
specialized in reproductive justice, an emerging field at the intersection of social justice and
sexual and reproductive health. She coordinates the collective translation and adaptation of Our
Bodies, Ourselves in French for Quebec. The first volume, Corps Accord: Guide de sexualité positive
(2019), is published in Canada, France, and Belgium.

xiii
Contributors

Marlène Bichet teaches English at the Université de Franche-Comté (France). Her

current research explores the translation of feminist philosophy, with particular focus on de
Beauvoir’s work.

Anna Bogic holds a PhD in women’s studies and a master’s degree in translation studies from
the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her research has centred on the Serbian translation of the
American feminist health classic Our Bodies, Ourselves and the first English translation of Simone
de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. She is a Research Associate with the Institute of Feminist and
Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa.

Hilary Brown is Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. She has
published widely on transnational cultural history in the early modern period, with a particular
focus on women. Her current research on women translators is funded by a fellowship from the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Julia Bullock is an associate professor of Japanese studies at Emory University. She is the author
of two books and numerous other publications on feminism and gender in modern Japan, and
is currently working on a book manuscript titled Beauvoir in Japan: Postwar Japanese Feminism
and The Second Sex.

Andrea Campaña is a full-time professor in the Linguistics and Literature Department at

Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Her research centres on the contribution of literature in the
teaching of English and the multimedia teaching of literature.

Olga Castro lectures in translation studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Her main area of
research is feminist translation studies. Her current research focuses on the operation of power
in translation across transnational borders, particularly as it manifests in relation to feminism in
minorized/stateless cultures within multilingual settings. She tweets at @olgacastro80.

Marcela Contreras is a full-time professor in the Linguistics and Literature Department at

Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Her research focuses on translator training, translation and
literature, and specialized translation.

Beverley Curran is a lecturer of linguistic, cultural, and media translation at International

Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo and Associate Director of the Center for Teaching
and Learning. Her most recent publications include the essay collection Multiple Translation
Communities in Contemporary Japan (2015), co-edited with Nana Sato-Rossberg and Akiko
Tanabe, and Sky Navigation Homeward: New and Selected Poems (2019), poems by Mikiro Sasaki,
co-translated with Mitsuko Ohno and Nobuaki Tochigi.

Sama Dawood is Associate Professor of Translation and Interpreting in the Department of

English at Misr International University (Egypt). She has publications in the fields of journalistic
translation, simultaneous interpreting, and literary translation. Dawood’s current research
interests include computer-assisted translation and interpreting, and the impact of the digital
age on translation theory and practice.

Handegül Demirhan is a lecturer in the Translation and Interpreting Studies department

and a board member of the Gender and Women’s Studies Research Center at İstanbul Gedik

xiv
 Contributors

University. Her main areas of research in translation include gender, feminism, feminist pedagogy
and translation of children’s literature, and women’s writing. She is the translator of Pollyanna
(2018).

Bruna Di Sabato is Full Professor of Language Education at the University of Naples Suor
Orsola Benincasa. She holds a PhD in English for specific purposes. Her principal research
interests include educational linguistics, pedagogic translation, and English linguistics. She is the
author of numerous articles and academic volumes pertaining to the aforementioned subjects.

Biyu (Jade) Du is a lecturer in translation and interpreting at Newcastle University, UK. She
is interested in the legal, social, and sociolinguistic approach to translation/interpreting. Her
research areas cover gender-related issues in interpreting, interpreter-mediated communication
in public service settings, migration and multilingualism, and legal translation.

Rajkumar Eligedi is an assistant professor in English at Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University,
Saudi Arabia. He has a PhD in English from EFL-University, Hyderabad. He is a recipient of
the DAAD fellowship of Technische Universität, Dresden, for his doctoral studies. His research
interests include translation, gender, literature, and language.

Doaa Embabi is a literature and translation researcher based at Ain Shams University, Egypt. She
has published on different areas of translation studies and developed an interest in translation
of Islamic feminist texts, including an article titled “Production of Knowledge by Translating
‘Islamic Feminist’ Works: The Case of Amina Wadud’s Work.”

Emek Ergun is an activist-translator and assistant professor of women’s and gender studies &
global studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her research focuses on the
geopolitical role of translation in connecting feminist activists, discourses, and movements
across borders. She recently co-edited, with Olga Castro, Feminist Translation Studies: Local and
Transnational Perspectives (Routledge, 2017).

Laura Fontanella is a postgraduate in European and extra-European languages and literature at

the State University of Milan. Her research interests include translation studies, feminist studies,
and gender studies.

Elisabeth Gibbels was born in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and was denied an
academic career due to her activity in the opposition. Her academic work focuses on gender,
translation, and power. Gibbels currently teaches at Humboldt University Berlin. Her latest
publication is a lexicon of German women translators from the beginnings to the mid-19th
century.

Pilar Godayol is a professor of translation at the Central University of Catalonia. Her research
interests include history and theory of translation, gender studies, and censorship. She is the
author of over 100 publications, including Tres escritoras censuradas. Simone de Beauvoir, Betty
Friedan y Mary McCarthy (2017).

Wangtaolue Guo is a first-year PhD student in transnational and comparative literatures at the
University of Alberta. His research interests include queer translation, translingualism, sexuality
studies, and Sinophone studies.

xv
Contributors

Rim Hassen holds an MA and a PhD in translation and comparative cultural studies from the
University of Warwick. She currently works as a bilingual education officer at Durham City
Council in the UK. Her main interests are women’s translations of the Quran, gender and
translation, feminist translation theory, and translations of classical Arabic poetry into English,
French, and German.

Pauline Henry-Tierney is a lecturer in French and translation studies at Newcastle University,

UK. Her current research focuses on the translation of queer and feminist theoretical texts.
Recent publications explore topics including feminist translation pedagogy, translation, and
sexual alterity in women’s autofiction, matrophobia, and women’s erotic writing in French.

Ewa Kraskowska is Professor at the Institute of Polish Philology at the Adam Mickiewicz
University in Poznań, and Chair of the Department of 20th Century Literature, Literary Theory,
and the Art of Translation. She is the author of books and articles regarding translation and
women’s literature.

Denise Kripper is Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Modern Languages Department at Lake
Forest College. She is a literary translator from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and holds a PhD in
literature and cultural studies from Georgetown University. Her research interests include Latin
American literature and translation studies.

Enora Lessinger is an alumna of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and currently a PhD student
at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, France. Her research topic, “Translating Silence in Kazuo
Ishiguro’s Novels: Testing the Explicitation Hypothesis on Unreliable Narratives,” is at the
intersection between literary studies and translation studies and involves six different languages.

Boya Li is a PhD candidate in translation studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She has
a master’s degree in women’s studies from the same university. Her research interests include
translation and gender, translation of general knowledge, amateur translator communities, and
knowledge transmission between West and East.

Nihad Mansour is a professor of translation studies and Head of the Institute of Applied
Linguistics & Translation, Alexandria University. Professor Mansour has a long experience
in teaching translation and interpreting studies and linguistics modules. She has authored
refereed publications in the fields of translation and interpreting studies, multimodality, and
political discourse analysis, and she supervised several academic dissertations in translation and
interpreting studies.

Siobhan Meï is a PhD candidate in comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts

Amherst. Her research interests include Caribbean and African diaspora literatures, translation
theory, and Caribbean philosophy. Her translations and original poetry have appeared in
carte blanche, The Adirondack Review, Transference, and Asymptote. She is co-editor of “Haiti in
Translation.”

Mathilde Michaud is a doctoral researcher in history at the University of Glasgow. Her current
research focuses on the impact of Catholic discourses in 19th-century Québec in constructing
modern gender roles and identities.

xvi
 Contributors

Johanna Monti is Professor in Translation Technology and Computational Linguistics at

the University of Naples “L’Orientale.” Her current research focuses on hybrid approaches to
machine translation, the development of linguistic resources for natural language processing
applications, and the evaluation of translation technology.

Antonio Perri is Associate Professor of General Linguistics and Sociolinguistics at the University
of Naples Suor Orsola Benincasa. His main research interests include the anthropological and
linguistic features of writing systems and notations (in particular Aztec writing), translation
theory (more specifically, intersemiotic translation), and the problem of gender in translation.

Silvia Pettini is a postdoctoral research fellow in translation studies at Roma Tre University,
Italy. Her main research interests are game localization, audiovisual translation, and bilingual
lexicography. She has published papers in Translation Spaces and The Journal of Internationalization
and Localization and book chapters in Language for Specific Purposes: Research and Translation across
Cultures and Media (2016) and Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation
(Routledge, 2018).

Nada Qanbar is an associate professor in linguistics in the College of Arts and Literature at
Taiz University, Yemen. Her current research focuses on audiovisual translation, gender, and
language in context.

Ewa Rajewska is a Polish translation scholar and a literary translator from English. Among
her books are Stanisław Barańczak – poeta i tłumacz [Stanisław Barańczak – the Poet and the
Translator] (2007), Domysł portretu. O twórczości oryginalnej i przekładowej Ludmiły Marjańskiej [A
Guess at a Portrait. On the Original and Translation Oeuvre by Ludmiła Marjańska] (2016).

Irene Ranzato has a PhD in translation studies, and teaches English language and translation at
Sapienza University of Rome. Her research focuses on the intersections between linguistic and
ideological issues in audiovisual translation. Among her most recent publications are Translating
Culture Specific References: The Case of Dubbing (Routledge, 2016) and Linguistic and Cultural
Representation in Audiovisual Translation (co-editor) (Routledge, 2018).

Sandra Joy Russell is a PhD candidate in comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst. Her research interests include Ukrainian post-Soviet and diasporic literature and film,
memory studies, and transnational development(s) of queer and feminist thought. She is also a
translator and editor for the English edition of Krytyka magazine.

Sara Rutkowski is an assistant professor of English at the City University of New York:
Kingsborough Community College. She is the author of The Literary Legacies of the Federal
Writers’ Project: Voices of the Depression in the American Postwar Era (2017), and has published other
work on Depression-era and post-war American writers and the cultural and political contexts
of 20th-century global literature.

Hala G. Sami is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at the English Department,
Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, Egypt. She has published on female cultural myths, women
and the poetics of space, the representation of women in literature and popular culture, as well
as women’s role in revolutions and resistance. Her publications include “A Strategic Use of

xvii
Contributors

Culture: Egyptian Women’s Subversion and Resignification of Gender Norms” in Maha El

Said, et al. eds. Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance: Lessons from the Arab World (2015).

Sima Sharifi holds a PhD in translation studies, 2017, and bachelor and master’s degrees in
linguistics from Canadian universities. Her interests include the comparative study of Canadian
feminist novels in Persian translations, writing fictionalized non-fiction, and Canada’s North
with the Arctic Inspiration Prize, which she co-founded in 2012.

Garima Sharma is a PhD student of German literature at Leipzig University, Germany. Her
master’s thesis analyzed the three German translations of Virginia Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own
from a feminist perspective. Her current research focuses on body poetics in selected works by
German and Indian women writers.

Carolyn Shread is Lecturer in French at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, USA, and
she also teaches translation at Smith College. She has translated ten books, including five by
French philosopher Catherine Malabou. Her research addresses two main areas: the implications
of Malabou’s concept of plasticity for translation studies and the process of translating Haitian
author Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Les Rapaces from French into English. She wrote the entry
on “Translating Feminist Philosophers” in the Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies and
Philosophy (2019).

Kornelia Slavova is a professor of American literature and culture in the Department of English
and American Studies, St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Her current research
focuses on the translation of gender and feminist theory as well as translation for the theatre.

Ida Hove Solberg holds a PhD in translation studies at the Stockholm University, Sweden. She
is particularly interested in feminist, activist, and other kinds of ideologically framed translation.
She is also co-founder and editor of the Norwegian literary magazine Mellom, Norway’s first
magazine devoted to literary translation, established in 2014.

María Laura Spoturno is Associate Professor of Literary Translation and US Literature at

Universidad Nacional de La Plata and a researcher with Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones
Científicas y Técnicas (Argentina). Her current research focuses on the study of subjectivity and
gender in minority writing and (self )-(re)translation practices.

Weronika Szwebs is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology, Adam
Mickiewicz University. She is working on a thesis that concerns the translation of theoretical
discourses in the Polish humanities at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her research
interests revolve around translation studies, 20th-century Polish literature, and literary theory.

Nishant Upadhyay is an assistant professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado

Boulder and University of Massachusetts. Their research and teaching draws upon decolonial,
intersectional, and transnational feminist, queer, and trans studies, and critical ethnic studies.

Helen Vassallo is Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Exeter, UK. She is founder of
the Translating Women project, and her primary research focus is gender parity in translated
literature, particularly within the UK publishing industry. She reviews women in translation
titles at https://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/translatingwomen, and tweets at @translatewomen.

xviii
 Contributors

Gabriela Yañez, translator and interpreter, works as a professor and researcher in the School
of Humanities and Education Sciences at the University of La Plata, Argentina. Her current
research focuses on the translation of minority writing, specifically of testimonial narratives by
Argentine women writers in the 20th century.

Zhongli Yu is an associate professor in translation studies in the School of Education and

English at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, holding a PhD in translation and
intercultural studies (Manchester). Her research interests include gender/women/feminism
in/and translation, museum narratives and translation, war interpreting/interpreter, translation
education, and intercultural communication.

xix
 Acknowledgements

The editors of The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender wish to express
their grateful thanks to our students and colleagues, who helped at different stages of our work
on the Handbook. We are grateful to the research assistants, who did invaluable work check-
ing, managing, keeping track, hunting down details, and helping finalize and collate these 41
chapters from around the world. A special thank you goes to Shaily Zolfaghari (PhD student,
University of Ottawa) who accompanied and managed the details of the entire project, and to
Nesrine Bessaïh (PhD candidate, University of Ottawa) and Alexandra Yazeva (PhD student,
University of Ottawa) who helped finish up.
We also wish to thank the peer reviewers from outside the project, whose insightful com-
ments helped in the development of the chapters of the Handbook. Thanks are due to Tahia
Abdel Nasser (American University in Cairo, Egypt), Omaima Abou-Bakr (Cairo University,
Egypt), Mirella Agorni (Ca’Foscari University, Italy), Hebatalah Aref (Cairo University, Egypt),
Amani Badawy (Cairo University, Egypt), Brian Baer (Kent State University, USA), Michaela
Baldo (University of Hull, UK), Jorge Diaz Cintas (University College, London, UK), Nadia
El-Kholy (Cairo University, Egypt), Hoda Elsadda (Cairo University, Egypt), Farzaneh Far-
ahzad (Allameh Tabataba’i University, Iran), Hiroko Furukawa (Tohoku Gakuin University,
Japan), Ferial Ghazoul (American University in Cairo, Egypt), Magda Heydel ( Jagiellonian
University, Poland), Marion Lerner (University of Iceland), Carmen Mangiron (Universidad
Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain), Susan Pickford (Université de Paris IV, France), Eran Shuali
(Université de Strasbourg, France), Sherry Simon (Concordia University, Canada), Darryl Sterk
(Lingnan University, Hong Kong), Şehnaz Tahir Gurcalar (Bosphorous University, Turkey),
Nancy Tsai (Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey, USA), Sergey Tyule-
nev (Durham University, UK).

xx
 Introduction
Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal

The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender brings together a collection of essays
representing a variety of approaches at the intersection of translation, feminism, and gender. The
conceptualization of this volume started in 2016 as a transnational feminist translation project,
initiated by two editors coming from two different parts of the world, Canada and Egypt, con-
nected by our involvement in feminist translation scholarship and practice, yet marked by our
distinct academic experiences and cultural locations. From our earliest discussions about the
Handbook, it was clear to us that we shared a similar vision: a volume that would bring together
the most prominent and relevant research in translation studies, which is grounded in feminist
theory and gender studies. Our aim was twofold:

1 To provide an overview of the history, theorizing, and current critical contributions at

the intersection of translation, feminism, and gender already established in mostly North
America and Western Europe.
2 To encourage the development of scholarly interest in other parts of the world both among
colleagues already working in the area of translation studies, urging them to adopt femi-
nist approaches and gender tools, and among feminist literary and social critics, whom we
invited to address questions of translation.

We approached known specialists in the area, sent out a Call for Papers for as wide a circula-
tion as possible through all available networks in East, West, North and South, and encouraged
promising scholars to expand their work to include translation studies and/or feminism and
gender. The response was both gratifying and challenging, as we received almost 50 interesting
and compelling abstracts, placing us, as editors, in the difficult position of selection. At this stage,
we did accept almost all the abstracts, and started the long process of seeing them develop into
chapters.
Halfway through the process we were lucky to be able to organize a meeting for the prospec-
tive authors of the Handbook in order to share the work carried out so far, discuss the challenges,
and agree on the structures of the chapters that would allow a degree of harmony with some
variety. The meeting was generously hosted by the Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology at
the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, owing to the initiative of Ewa Kraskowska,

1
Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal

professor and chair of the Institute of Polish Philology, who organised a conference on “Femi-
nism and Gender in Translation” (13–14 April 2018). The agenda included a general overview
of the Handbook, the various approaches adopted by the authors, and the challenges related to
the great diversity in areas of specialization, academic writing conventions, and the position of
the English language as the lingua franca of international academic publishing. As importantly, it
marked an opportunity for participants coming from universities in Canada, Austria, Germany,
France, Italy, Scotland, the United Kingdom, Poland, Bulgaria, Egypt, the Maghreb, and the
United Arab Emirates to communicate, while those authors who could not attend were later
informed of the discussion and decisions taken during the meeting. Apart from the different
approaches, methods, and theoretical frameworks considered during the meeting, we agreed to
structure each of the chapters to include the following sections: an introduction, historical over-
view, critical contributions, current research and/or case study, future directions, and suggested
further readings. Thus, most of the chapters included in this Handbook include these points in
their texts.
As editors, we faced two main challenges. The first was structure, which revolved around
how to structure a book that addresses such deeply seated cultural and sociopolitical questions
as gender and feminism, and adds the complexities of transnational and transcultural translation.
Overarching topics were created to organize what is extremely diverse: history, criticism, analy-
sis, and case studies. Yet, once the chapters took their final shape, it was easier to group them
into the current five parts, preceded by a prologue and followed by an epilogue. The Prologue
presents a report on a roundtable discussion of “Women (Re)Writing Authority” by a group
of feminist translators and translation scholars. It reflects on how feminist approaches to transla-
tion destabilize authorship and authority. Although originally submitted as a chapter, it is now
the entry point to the whole Handbook, with the authors’ representation of epistemological,
geohistorical, linguistic, and cultural multiplicity and diversity reflecting the Handbook project in
general, and the following chapters. Similarly, the Epilogue chapter entitled “Recognition, Risk,
and Relationships: Feminism and Translation as Modes of Embodied Engagement” presented
an apt closure of the Handbook, offering a general commentary on feminism, translation, and
engagement.
Part I “Translating and Publishing Women” includes 11 chapters which explore translations
of women writers from and into English in India, Iran, Iraq, the Maghreb, South America, Latin
America, Poland, Spain, early Modern Europe, and the UK. The chapters also discuss various
issues such as the practices of feminist translation, cultural representation, interpretation, publish-
ing, and censorship, as well as specific feminist concepts such as solidarity and herstory. In Part
II “Translating Feminist Writers,” we assembled the six chapters dealing with the translations
and receptions of foundational feminist texts (mostly from English and French) into different
languages and within various cultures. These texts include a study of the translation, adaptation,
and reception of Mary Wollstonecraft; the translation of Virginia Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own
into Hindi; and the problematics of various translations of Simone de Beauvoir into English,
Arabic, and Japanese, as well as the Spanish versions of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands. Part III
“Feminism, Gender, and Queer in Translation” is composed of eight chapters which deal in
more general terms with feminist, gender, and queer intersections with translation in different
parts of the world such as Poland, Russia, and other post-communist countries, as well as in
Italy, China, and India. These chapters, moreover, address issues related to political history, social
structures, and in relation to concepts – largely developed in the “West” – such as transfeminism,
gender, subversion, and decolonization. Another group of eight chapters is included in Part
IV “Gender in Grammar, Technologies, and Audiovisual Translation.” The chapters deal with

2
 Introduction

a variety of issues such as grammatical gender, translating gender, sexist translation, political
incorrectness, feminist activism, as well as language issues in audiovisual translation, subtitling,
video game translation, and machine translation. The analyzed texts, from different parts of the
world, include UN documents, social media, video games, and TV programmes and films. The
last part, Part V “Discourses in Translation,” consists of six chapters that focus on the translation
of specific discourses: religion, health, and children’s education. Thus, several chapters discuss
the translation of sacred texts from a feminist perspective while others address the translation of
books on women’s sexual and reproductive lives, and a study of the adaptation and translation
of children’s literature closes this section. All in all, the Handbook, in its five parts, prologue, and
epilogue, expands the study of translation, feminism, and gender geographically, historically, and
epistemologically into the realms of transnational feminist translation praxis.
The second challenge arose from the transnational aspect of this project, in particular the
publishing language, English. Thirty-five of the 41 chapters were written by scholars whose
first language is not English. While the dominance of English academic publishing may be a
fact in many parts of the world, there are as many drawbacks as there are advantages to this fact,
especially in the humanities. The advantages include broader accessibility to academic texts
worldwide for readers who function in English, as a first, second, or additional language. This
Handbook is an example of such accessible international dissemination of academic work. For
monolingual English speakers, the dominance of English publishing also makes work available
from other parts of the world to which they might otherwise have little access: in the case of
this Handbook, this means China, India, South America, and the Middle East. This is valuable, and
we hope that the work collected here will prove useful in this regard. However, the drawback
of such publishing is that local academics and local readers, who are not readers of English, are
excluded. One of the chapters on translating feminist writing from Europe and North America
into Telugu makes this exclusion very clear: the source texts – in English, French, Italian, or
Russian – did not reach the general local public until the translator ‘Volga’ took it upon herself
to make them available, thus fomenting discussion and change. Today, the drive to publish in
English continues to exclude large populations from such development, and translation is a
costly and not always successful enterprise.
A further difficulty that publication in English raises is the issue of editing. There are many
ways of writing an academic text, and different cultures have different traditions. English is one
such culture. Yet publishing in English imposes English structures and writing conventions,
and demands mastery of the language. Further, authors writing about local topics, histories,
cultures – which is inevitable in the study of translation – end up having to explain many details
of the context of their work that would be understood by local readers. References to irony, for
example, require much more detail: irony works with complicity and requires knowledge of the
local situation which is being referenced. Over explaining irony can kill it. Similarly, translation
studies requires references to translated texts, the changes they undergo, the losses and gains and
misinterpretations that can be detailed; when a Spanish, or German, or Arabic-speaking writer
analyzes the Spanish, German, or Arabic translation of a certain text, they will cite examples.
For the purposes of English publication, these examples must then be ‘translated’ into English
for the international readers to understand the effects of translation translated and retranslated.
These are important matters; they have considerable impact on the transnational aspect of
feminist and gender-aware approaches to any academic study. The predominance of English, if
only as a gatekeeper excluding work that doesn’t meet its standard, and the power of ideas and
theories emanating from Anglo-America and Europe, expressed in English and referred to as
‘the West’ in many of the chapters, create an imbalance that affects the dynamics of transnational

3
Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal

exchange. This has already been explored in postcolonial terms by authors of the 1990s, but it
continues to be a factor undermining the collaborative and reciprocal creation and exchange of
information sought in transnational feminist and gender studies.
Still, in the face of these challenges, we are proud to have been able to collect such a diverse
array of material on translation, feminism, and gender, and we hope that our international Eng-
lish readers will learn as much from these chapters as we did assembling, editing, and finalizing
them.
Luise von Flotow (Ottawa)
Hala Kamal (Cairo)
25 November 2019

4
 1
Women (re)writing authority
A roundtable discussion
on feminist translation

Emek Ergun, Denise Kripper, Siobhan Meï,

Sandra Joy Russell, Sara Rutkowski,
Carolyn Shread, and Ida Hove Solberg

This collectively authored reflection on translation began as a roundtable discussion by a group

of feminists considering how translation can subvert, rewrite, or question hegemonic defini-
tions of authorship, as well as how it can disrupt or dismantle intersecting regimes of power.
This text is the product of our conversations since that initial meeting, including both in per-
son and online exchanges. Authorizing ourselves to explore a new form of collective writing
enabled by digital technologies, one that both recognizes individual ideas and weaves them into
the representation of a communal understanding, we explore the theoretical formulations and
practical negotiations of the textual authority of translators within the interdisciplinary con-
texts of feminist studies, literary studies, and translation studies. The dialogic convergence of
those three disciplinary territories allows for an in-depth examination of power and resistance
in relation to women’s transformative roles as authors, translators, and social justice activists
in different geohistorical contexts. Moreover, such criticism is useful in revealing the past and
present silencing of women’s contributions to social change as cultural and political agents.
The goal of this chapter is to consider how translation brings local and transnational feminisms
into dialogue across time and place, and in doing so, challenges legacies of hegemonic cultural
authority that too often reproduce heteropatriarchal, colonial formations. Some questions that
guided our discussions include: How can translation disrupt or dismantle intersecting regimes
of power? What is the role of women translators in histories of resistance (e.g. feminist move-
ments)? How does translation subvert, rewrite, or question hegemonic definitions of author-
ship? What promising areas of collaboration remain between feminist and translation theories
as they continue to evolve? The participants of this roundtable chapter, coming from different
interdisciplinary and transnational backgrounds, approach questions of feminist politics and
philosophies of authorship and translation with their uniquely positioned epistemic voices. In
doing so, they help expand critical understandings of translation in general and feminist transla-
tion in particular, and offer a multifaceted meditation that works from our various perspectives
and experiences to go beyond (mis)perceptions of authorship towards practices of solidarity
in translation.

5
Emek Ergun et al.

Critiquing the modern concept of author,

inventing multiple translatorship
The modern concept of the author as the sole and individual originator of their own work is
comparatively new in the West, as research on the literary cultures of the medieval and early
modern periods in Europe demonstrates. At the roundtable, Siobhan Meï reminded us of dif-
ferent descriptions of the medieval woman author by defining ‘authorship’ in both its modern
and medieval contexts, as well as exploring the various avenues in which cultural and spiritual
authority could be accessed by women of the time. Just as the agency and authority of the
translator is often called into question, early modern and medieval women writers occupied
an equally precarious role within the patriarchal intellectual and spiritual conventions of
their time. Due to women’s historical exclusion from intellectual circles and institutions of
learning, the way towards authorship and spiritual authority for women writers was neither
straightforward nor, in some instances, without social consequences. In a chapter from The
Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing (2003) titled “Women and Authorship,”
Jennifer Summit describes the multitude of ways in which we might consider the possibility
of the medieval woman author, a project that involves defining ‘authorship’ in both its modern
and medieval contexts, as well as exploring the various avenues in which cultural and spiritual
authority could be accessed by women of the time. Authorship, according to Summit, is a his-
torically variable term whose meaning shifts according to institutional and historical contexts.
Where the modern author is identified and culturally valued as the sole creator of their work,
medieval and early modern forms of authorship are based in the concept of auctoritas, a term
used as a “marker of doctrinal authority” whose ideological power is derived from its “link to
tradition, defined as a stream of continuous influence by its root tradere, to pass on” (Summit
2003, 92). Living medieval writers thus cultivated their cultural and intellectual authority from
within a recognizable network of sources, including the philosophies and poetics of ancient
theologians, classical writers, scripture, and, even, as visionary writing exemplifies, the direct
and divine will of God. Writing as “a suspension rather than an assertion of selfhood” (Sum-
mit 2003, 96) and as textual demonstration of total submission to God’s will serve as examples
of the ways in which women visionaries were engaged as authorial participants in medieval
literary culture.
An example of one such visionary writer is Marguerite Porete (1250–1310), a 13th-century
French-speaking mystic and author of Le miroir des âmes simples et anéanties (The Mirror of Simple
Souls) (1295). Le miroir is a complex and highly abstract prose piece written in the style of a
Boethian dialogue that evokes the courtly tradition of fine amor celebrated in works such as Guil-
laume de Lorris and Jean de Meun’s 13th-century allegorical poem Le Roman de la Rose (Ernst
Langlois 1914–1924). In Porete’s text, multiple feminine allegorical voices, including Reason,
Love, and the Soul, address one another. Porete’s work is unique in the context of Chris-
tian visionary writing in that it does not document corporeal revelation, but rather intimately
describes an ongoing spiritual and cerebral negotiation of the self in relation to God’s will. Writ-
ten in the vernacular, Le miroir was deemed heretical and Porete was burned at the stake in 1310.
Porete’s spiritual and literary legacy did not die with her however, as there is strong evidence
pointing to connections between Porete’s Miroir and the writing and translations of Marguerite
de Navarre (1492–1549), sister to King François I and a known evangelist sympathizer during
the tumultuous early years of the Protestant Reformation in France. Meï suggested that while
intellectual submission and textual self-negation would initially seem to contradict or dissolve
authorial possibility, the identification of a divine source for one’s writing, which exists not
only beyond the self, but also supersedes individual consciousness, generates a space of creative

6
 Women (re)writing authority

agency and flexibility in which transmission and reception – rather than ownership – become
the goals of cultural production and spiritual enlightenment.
Still prevalent today, the idea of the solitary author has been questioned and contested by
literary studies scholars such as Hanne Jansen and Anna Wegener (2013), who, building on Jack
Stillinger’s (1991) concept of multiple authorship, coined the term multiple translatorship. Tradition-
ally, the multiplicity of agents behind a translation has been understood in terms of collabora-
tion or cooperation, yet it may also involve discrepancies and disagreements. By disclosing the
multiplicity of agents involved, traces of negotiations challenge common conceptions of author-
ship. On these grounds, Ida Hove Solberg reminded the roundtable that opposing viewpoints
between agents are likely to surface in translations of ideological works, such as feminist texts,
due to the frequent personal ideological involvement of the agents. Keith Harvey finds “bind-
ings” (Harvey 2003) – cover texts, illustrations, promotional material, etc. – to be key sites for
negotiation between competing ideological viewpoints. One example Solberg shared is the first
Norwegian translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe in 1970 by an intellectual
first-wave feminist that was released by a small, predominantly male left-wing publishing house.
Its ‘bindings’ present it simultaneously as a work on questions of sexuality, with a faceless naked
woman on the cover, and as an existentialist discussion of women’s situation. In the translation,
the topic of sexuality is toned down or even omitted, and much of the existentialist vocabulary is
simplified. The paradoxical dissonance between what is on the cover and the book’s content is an
example of multiple translatorship, but to whom should these choices be attributed, the translator
or the editorial team? Negotiations of different conceptions of the book, evident in its bindings
and supported by correspondence between agents, illustrate the possibility for both productive
dialectical opposition as well as mutual influence and interplay between translational agents.
Similarly, re-conceiving translation as a specific form of authorship, at the roundtable Carolyn
Shread drew on her own work as a translator of several works by contemporary French philoso-
pher Catherine Malabou, beginning with Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing (2009). She recounted
how she self-reflexively began to construe Malabou’s signature concept of ‘­plasticity’ – defined
as the giving, receiving, or even explosion of form – as relevant to translation. For instance, con-
ventional conceptions of translation can be characterized as an ‘elastic’ model in that translation
is measured against a discrete and autonomous original to which the translation always refers
back and is inevitably found to be lacking and subservient. The equivalences of the exchanges
fail and the translation is never commensurate with the original. By contrast, a ‘plastic’ paradigm
views translation as a morphing process by which a text develops precisely through transla-
tions. To replace textual elasticity with plasticity is also to adopt a generative framework that
aligns with feminist conceptions of relationality as opposed to a discrete subject/object divide.
Moreover, because plasticity accounts not only for the giving and receiving of form but also its
destruction, this revised conception allows us to understand the ‘accidents’ of translation. Plastic-
ity parses the ways in which translation is involved in reworkings and in the production of the
new. In our discussion, Emek Ergun agreed that if our premise is that translations and originals
are differently assembled and marked texts, then neither is purely original or copied. They are
both creatively produced through different meaning-making mechanisms and they both con-
tinue to make and shed meanings when they encounter readers who bring their own locally
crafted interpretive schemes to the reading process.

Representing others for others

This insight allows us to ask, as Meï put it, on whose behalf are we speaking/translating? As
an activity that is built on processes of mediation and negotiation, in what ways and under

7
Emek Ergun et al.

which conditions does translation allow agents and communities to speak for themselves? When
and how does translation as a representational practice submerge or erase voices, histories, and
knowledge? This last question is particularly relevant in the construction of feminist translation
epistemologies that seek to challenge regimes of power. Genealogical excavations of liberalism
have exposed the racially exclusionary foundations of the Western legal, social, and philo-
sophical frameworks through which bodies become legible as human and the processes through
which various narratives congeal and circulate as History. As a porous and de-centred site of
critical inquiry that is interested in how community forms across borders and sociocultural
differences, feminist translation is also a space in which liberal conceptualizations of freedom,
individuality, autonomy, and agency are explored and interrogated.
Even so, in our conversation, Sandra Joy Russell raised the question: what does it mean for
women translators to be able to engage with the act of translation when the female body has
been, and continues to be, regulated by various spheres, not only sexual and reproductive, but
also within political and activist spheres of power, as in the spaces of protest and revolution? This
interrogation allows us to consider translation’s unique offering of not only the ‘possession’ of
a text but, more subversively, the repossession of a textual body through the reproductive act of
rewriting through translation, and, moreover, the extent to which this repossession is translat-
able between geographic and ideological spaces. In other words, the challenge of textual repos-
session is especially present for feminist translators, whose work requires active recognition of
how feminism(s), transnationally and transculturally, has formed and developed under different
ideological and historical conditions. For women translators who have historically confronted
expectations of invisibility and the assumed absence of authorship, the symbolic representation
or imagining of the human body as a space of ownership takes on a new significance, one that is
specifically feminist: it participates in the act of reclaiming authority over a textual body.
In Russel’s unpublished translations of women’s poetry written during Ukraine’s 2013–2014
Euromaidan Revolution from a collection entitled Materyns’ka moltyva [Maternal Prayer], the
figure of berehynia, an ancient Slavic goddess or ‘hearth mother,’ emerged as a poetic symbol
for women’s roles in the protests. Often fetishized, the image of the berehynia in contemporary
Ukraine has been tied to the maternal body and become a catch-all for describing women’s
participation in the revolution. Rendering this image in English in a Western context prompted
Russel to ask what would it mean to disrupt this figure as a way to reconstruct it as more
subversively feminist, as an opposition to, rather than protector of, patriarchy? This impulse is
problematic, however, within a Ukrainian activist context, since such rewriting re-performs the
revolution in order to meet the criteria of Western feminism. While rewriting through transla-
tion can reclaim the female body as feminist, translating from a post-imperial context (Ukraine)
to an imperial one (US), we have to ask how power and authority are wielded in translation.
More specifically, how does such power, through its representations of the symbolic and corpo-
real body, reinforce hegemonic and imperialistic formations of feminism?
Thinking about these questions as pertinent concerns across the globe, Meï made a connec-
tion to the work of feminist activist Gina Athena Ulysse, who, in Why Haiti Needs New Nar-
ratives: a Post-Quake Chronicle (2015), deploys translation as a complex and intimate process of
representation for Haiti, a nation that has been constrained by the persistence of stereotypes that
alienate and victimize its communities. In this trilingual (English, Haitian Creole, and French)
text, Ulysse deconstructs, revisits, and challenges these narratives. Ulysse, a member of the Hai-
tian diaspora, consistently returns to the issue of representation – to the question of who can
speak on behalf of whom. The auto-ethnographic reflexivity of Ulysse’s written work and her
mobilization of embodied performance challenge how certain narratives are constructed and
circulate. Ulysse’s artistic oeuvre offers key insights into what a feminist translational praxis can

8
 Women (re)writing authority

look like: one that is always attentive to the ways in which politics and poetics of representation
traverse and conjoin the public and private spheres of meaning-making.

Expanding boundaries of authorship

The pairing of feminism and translation as discourses and practices produces a rich space for
thinking through the politics of speaking and storytelling in transnational contexts, particularly
with regard to these questions of representation. In our discussion, Sara Rutkowski shared her
interest in contemporary instances in which the translator tears down traditional models of
textual authority thereby expanding the boundaries of authorship. A striking example is Ann
Goldstein, who has become a virtual stand-in for the celebrated, though anonymous, Italian
writer Elena Ferrante, author of the widely popular four novels that comprise the Neapolitan
series: My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave and Those
Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child (2015). Indeed, it is Ferrante’s determination
to remain unknown that has allowed for a more expansive view of translation as collaboration
and co-authorship (although it should be noted that in 2016, Italian journalist Claudio Gatti
concluded that Anita Raja, herself a translator, was the actual author of the Neapolitan novels – a
claim that Ferrante vehemently denied). Goldstein, who translated all four novels into English,
has become the embodiment of the hidden writer, the sole conduit to the source, and by her
own admission, even mistaken for the source. Her public status in the author’s absence has
helped turn on its head the historical and ideological construction of translation, the very prob-
lem that initially drives feminist critique – namely, the notion that translation is subordinate to
the original and as such is parallel to women’s role as submissive, reproductive, the handmaiden
to the master. The famed translator and invisible writer upend that social order and contribute
to the rising cultural cachet of translators. In fact, Solberg confirmed that the same can be said of
Ferrante’s translators in Norway (Kristin Sørsdal), Sweden ( Johanna Hedenberg), and Denmark
(Nina Gross), all three of whom have served as authors-by-proxy, attending public events, giving
extensive interviews, and generally becoming well-known literary figures in Ferrante’s absence.
Moreover, Ferrante’s novels themselves are particularly germane to the topic of feminist
translation because they are in many respects about the power of translation and its vital role in
expanding the boundaries of women’s social and political identities. One example is the narra-
tor’s struggle to reconcile her two languages, the Neapolitan dialect, which intractably represents
the intimacy of home, the working-class, anger, and violence, and standard Italian, which signals
the aspirational world beyond the domestic, itself oppressively constructed. It is only when she
becomes a writer that the narrator is empowered, and not by the language in which she writes,
but by the act of translating. Translation is a central motif for crossing over linguistic, national,
and gendered borders. The story both around and inside Ferrante’s novels highlights translation
as an act of subversion, a claiming of territory that has been habitually denied to both women
and translators.

Fictionalizing translation and translators

Along with the growing public interest in, and awareness of, individual translators, there has
also been a global upsurge in the representation of the act of translation and the task of the
translator in literature itself. This fictional turn is fundamental because it foregrounds translation
by allocating a leading role to translators and interpreters, who have been largely erased, even
though they have always been central to the production and circulation of texts. As a literary
device, translation prompts us to reconsider the way we perceive fiction. At the roundtable,

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Emek Ergun et al.

Denise Kripper presented her research on how fictional women translators and their practices
are portrayed in contemporary literature in Spanish. In these works, they challenge the original/
copy dynamic celebrating irreverent translation as an act of subversion. They mistranslate and
they do so on purpose, with a political agenda in mind. So what happens when a ‘bad’ translation
becomes a good one? What happens when meanings are subverted deliberately? In the same
way that Chicana feminist writers have reclaimed and reappropriated the figure of La Malinche
(see for example Norma Alarcón 1989), the indigenous interpreter who aided the Spaniards
in the conquest of Mexico and has been historically rendered as a traitor, these works release
the woman translator from a servile, invisible, and inferior position. Feminist translation thus
becomes a creative and empowering approach whereby, through an exercise of mistranslation, a
productive new work is created. Their strategies vary from impeding communication by refus-
ing to translate to overshadowing the original by mistranslating it, attempting to resist regimes
of power such as the hegemony of English, patriarchy and male-dominated spaces, and even the
very reign of the original. For example, the short story “Never Marry a Mexican” by Chicana
writer Sandra Cisneros (1992) is sprinkled with Spanish terms, followed by their explanation,
translation, or (re)elaboration by its code-switching translator protagonist. Thus, a US-based
empowered English-speaking target readership is suddenly dependent on her for understanding;
readers are forced to rely on a character ambiguously depicted as treacherous, while, by contrast,
a Hispanic bilingual audience is invited into a complicit reading. Moreover, the novel Inclúyanme
afuera (2014) by Argentine writer Maria Sonia Cristoff narrates the experiment of its protago-
nist, a woman tired of her machine-like job as a simultaneous interpreter stuck in a booth, who
eventually decides to remain silent for a year. Silence becomes her counteroffensive, her tool
of resistance and the novel dwells on what happens when the world is deprived of translation.
As Kripper proposed, these and other feminist fictional translators tamper with globalization’s
running wheel, hinder its fluidity, slow down readers, forcing them to take a pause and reflect,
or even suspect, mistrust the process. They make translation visible.

Considering pedagogical questions

In our discussions since the roundtable, one of the most pressing questions we asked ourselves
was what can we do as feminist scholars, translators, and educators? Ergun pointed out that it is
not a given that feminist translation is intersectional since it may easily be disrupted or curbed
by global machineries of communication. Indeed, the existing Eurocentric feminist transla-
tion scholarship has largely adhered to a gender-only focus in its theories and practices and
only recently, both with the emergent geopolitical expansion of the field and with the deep
interrogation and transformation of Western feminist praxes by the intersectional critiques of
feminists of color, queer feminists, and third world feminists, feminist translation scholars have
explicitly begun to claim intersectionality as a crucial signpost for their translation praxes. After
all, any translation that only takes into consideration gender injustice can reproduce other forms
of oppression along the axes of race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, geopolitics, etc. Given that
translation always takes place across linguistic, cultural, national, and geopolitical borders that are
ridden with various asymmetrical power relations, intersectionality thus appears as an essential
framework for feminist translation, whose ultimate goal is to intervene into discourses of domi-
nation and help forge connectivities and solidarities across differences and hierarchies.
In a world of violent borderings that are designed to undermine, if not disallow, translations
practiced for socioeconomic justice for all, feminist translators have an ethical imperative to pur-
sue intersectionality so that their work does not end up replicating the very structures of power
that we mean to disrupt. To prevent this from happening, Solberg pointed out the importance

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 Women (re)writing authority

of translating feminist literature from minoritized languages in order to counter the dominant
translational flow, as well as including such texts in syllabi. She brought up the example of Nor-
wegian feminist and lesbian activist Gerd Brantenberg’s Egalias Døtre (1977), translated by Louis
Mackay as Egalia’s Daughters (1985), an innovative novel that swaps gender roles. On a related
note, Kripper mentioned the need to refresh the canon with new translation perspectives, such
as Emily Wilson’s recent version of The Odyssey (2017), translated into English by a woman for
the first time. These new translations have the potential to reinvigorate not only the cultural
discourse but also our critical pedagogy.
Ergun put theory to practice by considering feminist classrooms, particularly those that
interrogate the neoliberal, white-supremacist, and hetero/sexist forces of globalization, as spaces
of engagement where we can develop a vision of feminist translation as a vital part of transna-
tional feminist politics. Her undergraduate course “Transnational Feminism” became just such
an experimental space in 2017 by adopting Hilary Klein’s Compañeras: Zapatista Women’s Stories
(2015) as textbook. While translation is not at the centre of the book as a topic of discussion, it
is everywhere in this text. Zapatista women’s stories of creating common grounds of resistance
among various indigenous communities, each with its own language; producing and distrib-
uting their decolonial feminist agendas through pamphlets and women’s laws; implementing
workshops and cooperatives for local sustenance and economic independence; and sharing their
political demands and visions on larger nationwide and worldwide platforms are also stories of
feminist translation. Compañeras not only reveals the possibility of building commonality within
difference but also the strategic use of hegemonic languages, Spanish in this case, in service of
communities of resistance, particularly those marginalized at the intersections of colonial and
patriarchal power relations. Numerous stories in the book revealed to students the power of
translation to disrupt male hegemony over discourse and knowledge and helped them reframe
translation as an enabler of cross-border solidarities and polyphonic assemblages that pursue
liberation and justice.

Translating in the digital revolution

Carolyn Shread built on Emek Ergun’s interest in feminist pedagogy by recalling that practices
of solidarity are undergoing dramatic changes as a result of the digital revolution. In this context,
she discussed her recent translation of Catherine Malabou’s Morphing Intelligence: From IQ Meas-
urements to Artificial Brains (2019) in which the author explores the way that natural intelligence
and brain plasticity, upon which she had formerly based democratic claims (What Should We
Do with Our Brain? 2008), are being transformed by technological advances that move towards
the creation of a synthetic brain. In this human-machine adaptation, we observe corresponding
modes of power that we have yet to fully comprehend. Within this digital transition, translation
offers a practice that helps us grasp intersecting regimes of power that are unlike any hitherto
engaged. Thus, while feminist translation previously sought to alter the paradigms by which
translation was framed, its analysis now helps us anticipate new forms and modes of exchange
that are emerging and that feminists must learn to negotiate.
The question becomes how does artificial intelligence reframe authority in translation?
While there is a generalized belief in the superiority of human translation over machine transla-
tion, the condescending jokes about Google Translate mask both an underlying anxiety and the
fact that we are developing an increasing tolerance for, indeed a habit of, interacting with both
automated and mediated forms of intelligence. Sooner or later, depending on the languages,
machine translation will be very effective. Authority and authorship will be rewritten by agents
that do not resemble those we know now. As the instrumental relation to our tools gives way to

11
Emek Ergun et al.

the adaptation human plasticity is experiencing, we are in uncharted territory. Collective intel-
ligence, amassed and oriented via artificial intelligence, may crowdsource solutions and dissolve
the lines upon which a male heroic narrative of solo authorship established itself.
How do these technology futures affect feminist translation? While in the immediate it calls
for an intersectional critique to identify the sexist, racist, and other biased foundations of algo-
rithms, along with analysis of the effects of building translation from a corpora that draws on a
male and Western canon, reinforcing patriarchy in automated reflexes, it also allows us to imag-
ine machines outside a gendered body and to ask what happens to humans when they accom-
modate themselves to artificial intelligences. As we consider the future of feminist translation, it
is important to ask how do we position ourselves not only in relation to other feminisms, but
also in response to emerging augmented intelligences? When we arrive at artificial authorship
in translation, what is the place of feminism? Moreover, following Michael Cronin’s argument
in Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene (2017), how does feminist
translation respond to the imperative to reduce the energy consumption implicated in transla-
tion technologies when human authority is overridden by the fact of climate change?

Towards solidarity in translation

At this point Meï encouraged us to consider how modern, hegemonic framings of authorship
continue to efface, undermine, and mute the various ways in which we are entangled with
one another – humans, animals, things, and even technologies. These earthly and digital entan-
glements and the diverse relationalities and frictions they produce have been central sites of
exploration for transnational and interdisciplinary feminist work at the intersections of biology,
environmental studies, anthropology, sociology, and literature. In response, Ergun suggested that
we focus on our encounter to discuss the unique significatory potential of translation to con-
nect stories and subjectivities across borders – borders that are usually promoted to polarize and
segregate, rather than to bring closer and connect. Translation, by facilitating cross-border travels
and encounters of differently originated, assembled, and situated stories and discourses, helps
reveal our semiotic gaps, interpretive habits, epistemic illusions, and subjective imperfections.
It is precisely due to this power to defamiliarize our (half )truths by welcoming difference that
translation appears as threatening to the self, when it is imagined and performed in opposition
to the other. However, this supposed threat is the very celebratory aspect of translation. It is how
translation is created and creates: it lures the self into a vulnerable state of hosting the other and
becoming anew with them.
When we welcome translation with sincere hospitality and open our ‘home’ to that beloved
or unknown guest arriving from a long journey and bringing us stories from a distant land (or
perhaps not as distant as we think it is), we have the opportunity not only to become aware of
the partiality and limits of our reflections and imaginations but also to grow with those stories
and appreciate the incompleteness and permeability of our interconnectivity. Translation ena-
bles our subjectivities, individual and collective, to grow beyond – beyond where the language/s
we speak can take us. It is by encountering translated originals that we become original transla-
tions ourselves – unique transnational assemblages of ‘home-made’ stories partially and indefin-
ably borrowed from others, some of whom we do not share a language with. It is in this sense
that we argue that an entrenched fear/hatred of the other can come to an end with the demise
of the entrenched fear/hatred of translation. This is about reimagining relationships to worlds
and words, some we know, some we don’t, but we are of them, they are of us, and it is only
through an ethics of hospitality, vulnerability, plurality, and solidarity – a translational ethics –
that we learn to become with each other and co-exist in our differences. In this sense, we claim

12
 Women (re)writing authority

feminist translation as utopian. It is the very principle, practice, and promise of transnationality.
When reconceived as such, not in opposition to authorship, but as a transnational form of co-
authorship, translation means hope – not loss or failure – for a future in polyphony.

Further reading
Copeland, Rita. 1995. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Ver-
nacular Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This text explores the role of translation in the emergence of vernacular literature in medieval Europe.
It is an excellent resource for researchers interested in the historical intersection of translation and liter-
ary culture in the European context.
Doerr, Nicole. 2018. Political Translation: How Social Movement Democracies Survive. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Doerr presents her counterintuitive field findings that a multilingual environment – one that depends
on interpreters – is more democratic than a monolingual setting. Her research challenges long-standing
assumptions about effective modes of communication to show that translation has the potential to be
a powerful political tool.
Castro, Olga and Emek Ergun, eds. 2017. Feminist Translation Studies: Local and Transnational Perspectives.
New York: Routledge.
This recent collection is composed of 16 essays that explore translation as a form of local and trans-
national feminist activism from different interdisciplinary perspectives, while at the same time seeking
to geopolitically expand the Anglo-Eurocentric boundaries of the field. It also includes a roundtable
discussion on translation with leading scholars on feminist politics.
Herrero Lopez, Isis, Cecilia Alvstad, Johanna Akujärvi, and Synnøve Skarsbø Lindtner, eds. 2018. Gen-
der and Translation: Understanding Agents in Transnational Reception. Montréal: Vita Traductiva–Éditions
québécoises de l’œuvre.
This anthology presents new research on the roles that gender plays in the complex processes of trans-
lation, transnational transfer, and reception of translated texts. It focuses on Scandinavia in particular.
Baer, Brian James and Klaus Kaindl. 2018. Queering Translation, Translating the Queer: Theory, Practice, Activ-
ism. New York: Routledge.
This anthology engages with emerging interdisciplinary research on queer (including feminist) dimen-
sions of translation and interpretation.

References
Alarcón, Norma. 1989. Traddutora, Traditora: A Paradigmatic Figure of Chicana Feminism. Cultural Cri-
tique, 57–87.
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1970. Det annet kjønn. Translated by Rønnaug Eliassen and Atle Kittang. Oslo: Pax.
Brantenberg, Gerd. 1977. Egalias døtre: en roman. Oslo: Pax.
Brantenberg, Gerd. 1985. Egalia’s Daughters: A Satire of the Sexes. Translated by Louis Mackay in coopera-
tion with Gerd Brantenberg. Seattle: The Seal Press.
Cisneros, Sandra. 1992. Never Marry a Mexican, in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. New York:
Vintage Books, 68–83.
Cristoff, Maria Sonia. 2014. Inclúyanme afuera. Buenos Aires: Mardulce.
Cronin, Michael. 2017. Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene. New York:
Routledge.
Ferrante, Elena. 2012. My Brilliant Friend. Translated by Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa.
Ferrante, Elena. 2013. The Story of a New Name. Translated by Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa.
Ferrante, Elena. 2014. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. Translated by Ann Goldstein. New York:
Europa.
Ferrante, Elena. 2015. The Story of the Lost Child. Translated by Ann Goldstein. New York: Europa.
Harvey, Keith. 2003. “Events” and “Horizons”. Reading Ideology in the “Bindings” of Translation, in
Maria Calzada Pérez, ed., Apropos of Ideology: Translation Studies on Ideology–Ideologies in Translation Stud-
ies. Manchester: St. Jerome, 43–69.

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Emek Ergun et al.

Homer. 700BC [2017]. The Odyssey. Translated by Emily Wilson. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Jansen, Hanne and Anna Wegener. 2013. Multiple Translatorship, in Hanne Jansen and Anna Wegener,
eds., Authorial and Editorial Voices in Translation. Montréal: Éditions Québécoises de l’œuvre, 1–39.
Klein, Hilary. 2015. Compañeras: Zapatista Women’s Stories. New York and Oakland: Seven Stories Press.
Langlois, Ernest, ed. 1914–1924. Le Roman de la Rose par Guillaume de Lorris et Jean de Meun. 5 vols. Société
des Anciens Textes Français. Paris: Firmin Didot.
Malabou, Catherine. 2009. Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction, Deconstruction. Translated by
Carolyn Shread. New York: Columbia University Press.
Malabou, Catherine. 2008. What Should We Do with Our Brain? Translated by Sebastien Rand. New York:
Fordham University Press.
Malabou, Catherine. 2019. Morphing Intelligence: From IQ Measurements to Artificial Brains. Translated by
Carolyn Shread. New York: Columbia University Press.
Stillinger, Jack. 1991. Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius. New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Summit, Jennifer. 2003. Women and Authorship. in Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace, eds., The Cam-
bridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ulysse, Gina Athena. 2015. Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle. Translated by Nadève
Ménard and Évelyne Trouillot. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

14
 Part I
Translating and
publishing women
 2
Volga as an international agent
of feminist translation
Rajkumar Eligedi

Introduction
The ‘cultural turn’ that took place in translation studies in the 1980s liberating the discipline
from strictly linguistic approaches and moving towards descriptive approaches as discussed by
Gideon Toury (1995) brought the study of the context and the sociocultural aspects of transla-
tion as well as the place and function of the translation within the target culture to prominence.
The emergence of feminist approaches to translation studies in the 1990s, focusing on the ques-
tion of gender as an interdisciplinary area of research and translation practice (e.g. Simon 1996;
Flotow 1997), added a further sociopolitical dimension to the field. However, despite the exten-
sive translation activity that takes place in India, translation studies remain an emerging or a mar-
ginal area of research, and even more so feminist translation. In relation to the Indian context,
Spivak (1993) initiated a discussion of feminist translation in postcolonial contexts, followed by
scholars such as Niranjana Tejaswini (1998), Devika (2008), Kamala (2009), Tharakeshwar and
Usha (2010), who contributed to this discourse. This chapter builds on these scholarly efforts
by exploring the role played by Volga, an Indian feminist translator, in translating feminism into
Telugu. It discusses her work as an agent of translation, working from mainly English to Telugu,
and analyzes Volga’s role in stimulating a debate on feminism in Telugu through her translations.
This chapter also addresses the opposition Volga faced in translating feminist texts and ideas into
Telugu and how she dealt with this in her struggle to establish feminism as a serious discipline
of thought and make it possible and even acceptable to discuss feminism in the public sphere.
Volga is regarded as the first significant feminist translator in the Telugu public sphere (refer
to Table 2.1). She selected and translated texts that focus on issues of marriage, domestic abuse,
sexuality, reproductive rights, motherhood, and freedom. She played a significant role in spread-
ing knowledge on feminist politics in Telugu and emphasized how women need to question and
fight against patriarchal values through her translations. She tried to reduce misconceptions about
feminism through her translations and her writing, and systematically used translation as a tool to
bring feminist ideas into Telugu culture, and support that culture’s own efforts in feminist matters.
Volga faced strong opposition from certain ‘leftist’ male intellectuals and also certain women,
who resisted the translation of feminist work as a foreign idea that might divide the indigenous
social movements in the name of gender and encourage individualism. This was the primary

17
Rajkumar Eligedi

Table 2.1 Feminist texts by Volga

Sl. Name of the book Genre Author/ Year of Publisher

No. translator publication

Feminist translations
1 Agnes Smedley’s Portraits Memoir/biography Volga 1984 Hyderabad Book
of Chinese Women in Trust
Revolution (1976) is
translated as Samanyula
Sahasam
2 Agnes Smedley’s Daughter Semi- Volga 1985 Hyderabad Book
of Earth (1929) is autobiographical Trust
translated as Bhumi novel
Putrika
3 Alexandra Kollontai’s Volga 1988 Feminist Study
Three Generations Circle
(1929) is translated as
Mudu Taralu
4 Oriana Falacci’s Letter to a Volga 1989 Feminist Study
Child Never Born (1975) Circle
is translated as Puttani
Biddaku Talli Uttaram
5 Ariel Darfman’s Widows Volga 1994 Maanavi
(1983) is translated as Prachuranalu
Missing
6 Kamala Basin’s What Is Pamphlet Volga 1996 Vantinti Masi-
Patriarchy, Kali for Women Sthrivaadha
(1993) is translated as Prachuranalu
Pitruswamyam
7 A collection of papers Feminist theory Volga 1996 Vantinti Masi-
on black feminist Sthrivaada
theory translated as Prachuranalu
Kombahi River Collective
Prakatana
8 Naval El Sadavi’s Women Novel Volga 2000 Swechcha
at Point Zero (1983) is Prachuranalu
translated as Urikoyya
Anchuna
9 Sushma Deshpande’s Vhay, Biography Volga 2000 Asmita
Mee Savitribai (Yes, I Am
Savitribai) is translated as
Nenu Savitribaini
10 A collection of research Collection of articles Volga 2009 Asmita
papers are translated
into Telugu as Akshara
Yuddalu (War of Words)
Feminist theoretical texts
11 Tholi Velugulu – Strivaada Feminist theory Volga 2003 Swechcha
Siddhanta Vikasam (First Prachuranalu
Illumination – Feminist
Theory)

18
 Volga – agent of feminist translation

Sl. Name of the book Genre Author/ Year of Publisher

No. translator publication

12 Kutumba Vyavastha Feminist and Volga 2004 Swechcha

Marxism – Feminism Marxist theory Prachuranalu
(Family System-Marxism-
Feminism)
13 Maaku Godalu Levu (We Do Introduction to Volga 1989 Feminist Study
Not Have Walls) Feminism Circle
Anthology of feminist
poetry
14 Nelimeghalu (Blue Clouds) Anthology of Volga 1993 Asmita
feminist poetry
Feminist Novels
15 Sahaja Novel Volga 1986 Swechcha
Prachuranalu
16 Swechcha (Liberty) Novel Volga 1987 Swechcha
Prachuranalu
Anthologies of short
stories
17 Rajakeeya Kathalu (Political Feminist stories Volga 1993 Swechcha
Stories) Prachuranalu
18 Prayogam (Experiment – Feminist stories Volga 1995 Maanavi
ajakeeya Kathalu-2) Prachuranalu
Translations of Volga’s
texts into English
19 Selected short stories of Feminist stories Alladi Uma 1997 Authors and
Volga translated as The and M. Writers India
Woman Unbound Sridhar Limited
20 Volga’s Novel Swechcha Feminist novel Ari 2006 National Book
(1987) is translated as A Sitaramayya Trust (NBT)
Quest for Freedom (2006)
21 Volga’s Rajakeeya Kathalu Feminist stories Madhu H. 2007 Swechcha
(1993) is translated as Kaza, Publishers
Political Stories (2007) and Ari
Sitaramayya

reason for the strong opposition that arose against her translations in the 1980s. However, Volga
has argued and shown through her writing and her translations that feminism is not aimed at
dividing social movements but in fact, aimed at defending the rights of women who are part of
these movements and organizations.
The Telugu public sphere1 has been one of the more vibrant spaces in India in terms of
social movements. Leftist activism, the Dalit movement, and women’s movements have emerged
demanding liberation and representation as well as confronting the established hegemonic struc-
tures. Due to the multiplicity of languages used in the different political movements across the
country, various activists involved in these movements connect with and influence one another
through translation across local languages, demonstrating how translation can act as an agent of
social change through its transfer of thought across various social and political contexts. In this

19
Rajkumar Eligedi

sense, translation can be seen to contribute to social and political movements as much as these
movements impact translation. Anthony Pym (2002) notes that one of the main tasks of transla-
tion is to help solve social problems. It may also work as a catalyst for social change (Lin Kenan
2002) or operate as an agent of change (Eva Hung 2005). Within the context of the Indian
Savarna2 and Dalit feminist movements, Telugu feminists have played a significant role trying
to bring social change to the existing patriarchal society by introducing a version of feminism
which combines theory with practice, and was made accessible to the Telugu-speaking reader-
ship through translation. These pioneer feminist efforts included bringing to light the painful
narratives of women’s sufferings, voicing different forms of their suppression and telling subse-
quent stories of their journeys to liberation from dominant patriarchal institutions.
Popuri Lalitha Kumari, popularly known as Volga (pen name), was born on 27 Novem-
ber 1950 in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. Venkata Subba Rao, Volga’s father was a communist, and
well versed in Russian literature. At a very early age Volga had also read the translated versions of
Russian literature and was influenced by Marxist philosophy. She is considered a pioneer of the
Telugu feminist literary movement, immensely contributing to the field of feminism and feminist
writing by introducing feminist thought to the literary and political spheres of Telugu society.
She was an active member of the Student Federation of India (SFI) at Andhra University and
participated in the Naxalbari movement3 in the late 1960s as a member of the Communist Party
of India (Marxist–Leninist), continuing her active involvement with the Marxist Leninist (ML)
movement throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to her political activism, she worked with
Viplava Rachayitala Sangam (Revolutionary Writers’ Association) and Janasahiti (People’s Liter-
ary Organization) in the 1970s. At a later stage, Volga took the initiative of forming a feminist
study circle4 in 1988, while maintaining a cordial relationship with the members of Stree Shakti
Sangatana5 (Women Power Organization), a women’s organization established in 1977. Later, she
worked with Anveshi (established in 1985) over a period of time and subsequently joined Asmita.6
Volga and other translators who introduced a feminist perspective into Telugu have been
subjected to serious criticism from progressive writers and thinkers. Despite this strong opposi-
tion, however, feminist translators like Volga, P. Satyavathi,7 and organizations like Stree Shakti
Sanghatana (Women Power Organization), the Feminist Study Circle, Anveshi and Asmita, and
the publishing houses like Hyderabad Book Trust8 and magazines like Bhumika (Role) and
Mahila Margam (Women’s Path) continue to translate feminist ideas and make the discussion on
feminism in Telugu possible and acceptable.

Historical perspectives on feminist thought

In the globalized world, ideas travel in various settings: from one language to another, one cul-
ture to another, and from one society to an altogether different one. “Like people and Schools of
Criticism, ideas and theories travel – from person to person, from situation to situation, from one
period to another,” Edward Said argues in his path-breaking essay “Travelling Theory” (1983,
226). In her study “Travelling Concepts in Translation” (2018), Hala Kamal discusses ‘feminism’
and ‘gender’ as travelling concepts that move across histories, geographies, cultures, disciplines,
languages, and politics. Feminist ideas, too, have travelled across the world via translations and
in defiance of opposition and criticism from the local cultures and societies that may resist the
challenges to patriarchal orders that such ideas represent. The ‘travel’ from the international
context into the Telugu society was made necessary by the needs of women and the demands
of the women’s movement.
The evolution of the history of feminism in India can be classified into three periods: the
social reform era of the 19th century, the nationalist era of the 20th century, and the new

20
 Volga – agent of feminist translation

feminist era that began in the 1970s. During the 1960s and 70s, the women’s movement in
Telugu society was influenced by Marxist and Leftist thought. With the entry of feminism after
the 1970s, there was a great change in the women’s movements across India and in the Telugu
region as feminist activists and translators influenced by international feminist thought trans-
lated feminist ideas into Telugu to mobilize women against patriarchal norms. When the UN
declared 1975 the International Women’s Year and then extended this into an international
women’s decade (1975–1985), this gave further impetus to feminist activism in the Telugu pub-
lic sphere as many autonomous women’s organizations emerged out of these contexts. These
organizations led the movements against social practices such as male domination and the dowry
system, as well as crimes against women that manifested in sexual harassment, rape, domestic
violence, and gender violence. This activism was inspired and supported by various national and
international women’s movements as well as the translation of women’s literature and feminist
writing. The worldwide feminist movement and its experiences provided a theoretical base for
feminist organizations to engage with the women’s question in the Telugu society.

The first feminist socialist organization

The POW (Progressive Organization for Women) was established in Hyderabad in 1974 by a
group of women students who were influenced by Marxist-Leninist thought and socialist femi-
nism. It was considered the first feminist socialist organization in Hyderabad. In the Telugu con-
text, ‘feminism’ originated in the Srikakulam Naxalbari movement and the Telangana Armed
Struggle stimulated by questions raised by women about ‘male domination’ and the ‘patriarchal
nature’ of the revolutionary groups. The POW was dissolved in 1975 due to state repression
and ideological differences between the women leaders and the Marxist-Leninist Party (M-LP)
with regard to women’s issues. Most of the leaders from the organization left the M-LP and
established such organizations as the Stree Shakti Sanghatana (SSS), which was formed in 1977.
Members of the group were influenced by Western feminism and their own political experi-
ence. K. Lalitha, Geeta Ramaswamy, Rukmini Menon (of POW), and members of SSS (Stree
Shakti Sanghatana) studied classic feminist texts like Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1963),
German Greer’s Female Eunuch (1970), Shulamith Firestone’s Dialectics of Sex (1970), Simone de
Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949), and Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics (1970). They were also influ-
enced by readings of Marx, Lenin, Che Guevara, and Mao. One of the early discussions in the
SSS was on the women in China, with a focus on the Chinese revolution, women’s roles in that
revolution, and the conditions of women in China after the revolution. Thus, various versions of
feminism emerged in the Telugu context through translation, and it was through SSS publica-
tions that the idea of the ‘personal is political’ was propagated from a feminist perspective in the
Telugu public sphere. Eventually, the SSS stopped functioning (1984), but it gave birth to two
new feminist organizations: Anveshi in 1985 and Asmita in 1991, which built their activism on
their predecessors, POW and SSS, and pursued ideas that have some transnational impact. These
are the beginnings of feminism in the Telugu context. There were international influences on
this feminism, with the most important coming from China, the Soviet Union, and the mostly
Anglo-American feminism of the West.

Critical issues: problems encountered in translating

feminist texts or ideas into Telugu
Volga faced considerable resistance to her questions and feminist thoughts while she was work-
ing in the Marxist-Leninist groups. She left the revolutionary organizations9 as a protest against

21
Rajkumar Eligedi

the male domination she experienced there and began translating feminist texts to educate and
enlighten the progressive groups and others about the basic concepts of feminism such as patri-
archy, oppression, sexuality, motherhood, reproductive rights, and sexual freedom. She faced stiff
opposition to her feminist writing from civil society after she left the revolutionary organiza-
tions, especially with regard to her novels and translations. Her novel Swechcha (Liberty) (1987)
is considered the first feminist novel in Telugu, and was criticized precisely for its feminist
content. Political parties, literary persons, organizations, and common people alike in Telugu
public sphere expressed their opinions, objections, and criticisms of this novel (Volga 1987, v–
xiv). Similarly, many of her translations such as Mudu Taralu (Three Generations), Puttani Biddaku
Talli Uttaram (Letter to a Child Never Born) were subjected to similar criticism for introducing
new feminist ideas into the Telugu context. Jwalamukhi, a well-known leftist writer, argued
that feminism is an international imperialist conspiracy, implemented through non-government
organizations (NGOs). He asserts that as part of the conspiracy feminism has spread widely only
after the UN declaring 1975–1985 as international women’s decade. He expresses his fear that
feminism might stop the (communist/leftist) revolution in India, and says that the description
of sexual intercourse, or the pain women experience after intercourse constitutes “porn poetry”
(Satyanarayana and Suryaprakash 1997, 38). His critique is that women writers are “doing business
with their body” (Satyanarayana and Suryaprakash 1997, 9–13, 38–40). In another vein, Raavi
Sastri, a Telugu revolutionary writer argues that feminism is an issue of middle-class women, that
feminists are those who don’t have any work and are ‘gayyalulu’ (quarrelsome) (Satyanarayana
and Suryaprakash 1997, 40–41). Raavi Sastri’s argument is upheld by S.V. Satyanarayana, a leftist
writer, who says the so-called women’s poetry does not represent the woman. It just represents
the desires of elite urban women (Satyanarayana and Suryaprakash 1997, 42).
In this context, Volga and other feminist writers engaged in writing, translating feminist
literature, and countering the arguments of leftist writers. They are criticized for translating
feminist texts into Telugu as these bring Western ideas that have created radical change in the
source culture. While it was not an easy task for Volga to translate feminist texts in the face of
these regular criticisms, she took it as a challenge and continued her work to bring feminist ideas
into the Telugu context.

Current research: Volga

Until the 1980s, there was little writing in Telugu from a feminist perspective, while women
continued to face various issues like dowry, eve teasing,10 and sexual harassment, and started
protesting against these and other forms of oppression. However, they lacked an ideological
framework to articulate a political stance since the concept of ‘feminism’ was deemed unac-
ceptable and the term itself was used as an offensive expression throughout the 1970s and 80s in
the Telugu public sphere. Terms such as ‘feminism’ and ‘male domination’ troubled the revolu-
tionary groups in the Telugu society in this period, as even the progressive thinkers saw it as a
dangerous Western encroachment on the revolutionary movements. It was also viewed as a part
of a conspiracy to divide the people on the basis of gender. Feminists were seen as overfed, self-
indulgent urban upper-class women who smoked cigarettes, cut their hair short, wore sleeveless
blouses, and demanded unmitigated freedom. Hence, there was a strong opposition to the trans-
lation of feminist texts into Telugu in the 1980s. Yet, gradually, a curiosity developed around
this term in the literary and revolutionary circles. In this context, a number of other feminist
writers began to bring feminist theory into Telugu, taking the risk of being attacked, even by
the politically progressive circles, for translating such materials into Telugu.

22
 Volga – agent of feminist translation

Volga is among the most prominent of these feminist translators. Her translation philosophy
was based on a strategy of close translation, as she believed that the TL text should be faithful
to both the intentions of the original author and the contextual meaning of the SL text. In a
conversation with this researcher, she said, “I translated the original text without sacrificing
the flavour of the original. I have been faithful to the original in all my translations. I feel that
translated text should reach the readers without any injustice to the original text” (Eligedi,
20/11/2013). She is aware of the problematics of ‘faithful’ and literal translation in relation to
feminist translation, where it could fail to make a text accessible to the TL readers. She says:

If we translate a feminist text as it is into Telugu, it won’t reach Telugu readers. The
main reason for this problem is that English feminist writers write theory from their own
experiences, which does not reach the Telugu readers. Therefore, I have taken the theory
developed by feminist writers. I used to write essays and books with feminist theory from
my experiences and the experiences in Telugu Public Sphere.
(Eligedi, 20/11/2013)

Her translation is informed by feminist theory, which she combines with her own political
experience as well as the experiences of people in the Telugu public sphere, thus constructing a
text accessible to her Telugu readers. Volga also compares the importance of writers in relation
to translators, commenting on the role of translators and writers in the following words:

The writer is very important. There is no translator without a writer but the ideas, ideolo-
gies of the writer are translated into another language by the translator. The translator also
brings new readers to the writer in another language. The important task of the translator
is to take the ideas and ideologies of the writer to the new readers in a different language.
(Eligedi, 20/11/2013)

As a writer and translator, Volga considers the role of the writer more significant than that of
translator, as the translator ‘exists’ because of the writer. However, the translator is also important
as he/she is acting as an intermediary between readers and writer. Therefore, both are important
in the process of translating or transferring ideas into a new language.
Despite fierce opposition and criticism from leftist groups, Volga continued her translation
work. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she translated collections of essays and wrote some
significant feminist essays to reduce the negative approach towards feminist thinking in the
Telugu public sphere. Initially, these were published in various Telugu magazines like Edureetha
(Swim Against Tide), Udayam (Morning), and Nalupu (Black). In 2003, these essays were published
as a collection entitled Tholi Velugulu–Sthrivadha Siddhantha Vikasam (First Illumination–Evolution
of Feminist Theory (2003)). The book includes 19 essays on feminist theory, translated mostly
from English, and published by Swechcha Prachuranalu (Liberty Publications)11 in Hyderabad.
Many of these essays can be considered summary translations, as they are translated, rewritten,
and adapted from multiple sources in English. However, it is important to note that this form
of translation was used by Volga, and many other feminists, to bring international feminist
knowledge into Telugu, and offer a historical account of feminist thought across the world. The
volume begins with groundbreaking feminist texts, written by pioneers of the feminist move-
ment and offers a comprehensive discussion of feminist ideas.
One of Volga’s essays, titled “Feminism Ante” (Feminism Means) was published on 26 May
1988 in the Udayam (Morning) magazine. In this essay, Volga discusses the misconceptions around

23
Rajkumar Eligedi

feminism, trying the redress its negative implications in the Telugu culture. She explains the
connotations of ‘feminism,’ saying: “Many people do not like the two words feminism and
women’s liberation. Traditionalists think that feminism and women’s lib are related to the mod-
ern women who cut their hair, wear sleeveless blouse and smoke cigarettes” (Volga 2003, 96). In
this instance, Volga not only confronts the traditionalists but also addresses the male social scien-
tists who assumed that feminism was imported from the West. In this essay, she argues that femi-
nism and the women’s liberation movement have been present in society from the time women
first started resisting oppression in its various forms (2003, 96). In other words, she contends that
feminism is not a Western import but has emerged from the lived experiences of the people and
the political movements. She published another essay in 1988, in the July 21–28 issue of Udayam
(Morning) magazine, entitled “Socialist feminisamlo dorakochchu samaadaanaalu” (Answers May
Be Found in Socialist Feminism) as a response to some of the questions raised in regard to her
essay “What Is Feminism?” These questions were about the difference between Marxist theory
and feminist theory as many people in the Telugu public sphere assumed feminism was com-
munist theory. Volga discussed the differences between Marxist and socialist feminists to address
this issue.
Volga published many essays on oppression, liberation, love, friendship, sexuality, domestic
work, and pregnancy. From 1988 to 1995 she translated and introduced into Telugu the lives
and groundbreaking texts of Alexandra Kollontai, Clara Zetkin, John Stuart Mill, Mary Wol-
lstonecraft, Francis Wright, Judith Sargent Murray, Emma Goldman, Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Suzanne Clara La Follette, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
She translated most of these texts from English into Telugu as they were originally written
in English. She also translated Kollontai’s works into Telugu from English translations of the
original Russian. She introduced the ideas in On the Equality of Sexes (1779), A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman (1792), The Subjugation of Women (1869), Women and Economics (1898) and
Concerning Women (1926) in the translations. All these translations and essays focused on a wide
range of feminist issues like male domination, women’s oppression, and reproductive rights, and
thus triggered a debate on feminism in Telugu. These essays triggered heated discussions among
leftist organizations in regard to women’s issues, as the women engaged in these organizations
had started questioning the male domination in the organizations and in society in general.
These essays also enabled Telugu readers to understand the development of feminist theory
in various parts of the world. Volga’s translations and explanations thus played a crucial role in
enhancing the Telugu readers’ understanding of feminism in the face of criticism from Marxist/
revolutionary groups.

Translated texts
Volga also faced opposition for her translation of feminist writings from Chinese, Russian and
Italian works. Coming from a Marxist background, she was interested in looking at the condi-
tions of women in leftwing movements across the world. Her choice of theoretical texts was
based on their relevance to the Telugu sociocultural context, in terms of their themes and the
issues discussed in them. For example, Oriana Fallaci’s A Letter to a Child Never Born (1976) raised
many questions about reproductive rights and single mothers. Referring to the text, Volga said
the following in a conversation:

These questions are very significant. If it is translated into Telugu, there will be discussion
about it. I thought this book would be useful in our context. So, I have translated it into
Telugu as Puttani Biddaku Talli Uttaram (Letter to a Child Never Born). I read feminist texts in

24
 Volga – agent of feminist translation

English. Some of them raise very pertinent questions. When I think it is relevant and these
questions raise discussion in our society, I translate them into Telugu.
(Eligedi, 20/11/2013)

Volga played an important role in not only translating but in selecting the feminist texts
that might raise questions about such topics as reproductive rights and encourage progressive
discussion in the society. In the 1980s, she started translating the works of Agnes Smedley, who
documented the lives of the Chinese women she knew personally, and the events she herself
witnessed in the revolutionary movements. Volga started with Portraits of Chinese Women in Rev-
olution (Samanyula Sahasam 1984), which is useful in understanding the lives of Chinese women
activists in the 1920s and 1930s. Volga also translated Agnes Smedley’s autobiographical novel,
Daughter of Earth12 as Bhumi Putrika (1985), which is a semi-autobiographical novel, describing
Smedley’s role in the Chinese revolution and her struggle for the liberation of women. This
book also gives a detailed account of Smedley’s involvement with social and revolutionary
movements across the world, and her involvement in both revolutionary and feminist activism.
Volga seems to have identified with Agnes Smedley and chosen this text for its relevance to both
the leftist and the women’s movements, emphasizing the interconnectedness between feminist
and revolutionary politics.
Volga also translated Oriana Fallaci’s novel Letter to a Child Never Born (1976) as Puttani
Biddaku Talli Uttaram in 1989. It was first published in Italian in 1975 and was soon translated
into English in 1976. Volga translated the English version into Telugu, and it was published
by the Feminist Study Circle13 in 1989. Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) was an Italian author and
journalist who wrote this novel in the form of a letter from a young woman to the fetus she
carries. It portrays a woman’s struggle as she is caught in a situation that forces her to choose
between continuing in a career she loves and motherhood, due to an unexpected pregnancy –
a struggle that ends with a miscarriage, and opens a discussion about reproductive rights and
politics. By translating the book, Volga introduced and propagated the controversial notion of
“vyakthigatham kuda rajakeeyame” (the personal is political) into the Telugu public sphere. The
translated book triggered a debate on reproductive rights as the translation raised the following
questions, among others: Why is motherhood glorified in literature? Why is there no focus on
the complications of pregnancy and the problems women face after pregnancy? How does the
state control women’s reproductive rights through society itself but also the institutions of sci-
ence, technology, medicine, and law? How are family relations, pregnancy, children, and gender
relations not merely personal but also sociopolitical issues?
Volga translated Alexandra Kollontai’s The Loves of Three Generations (1929) as Mudu Taralu
in 1988, working from the English translation. The Telugu version was published by the Femi-
nist Study Circle. Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) was a Russian revolutionary, feminist, and
the first female Soviet diplomat. She advocated for and wrote extensively about radical sexual
politics and free love as she looked at family and marriage as oppressive institutions: “She was
instrumental in the legalization of abortion and homosexuality, the creation of a system of quick
and easy divorce, and the introduction of a crèche system” (Kirstyiane, 27/05/2008). The book
is about an inter-generational conflict between three women: Maria, the grandmother; Olga,
the mother; and Genia, the daughter. It describes the experiences and thoughts of these three
women about love and the sexual relations of the daughter Genia, revealing the contradictory
opinions of the older and younger communist women in the family about life, love, marriage,
sexual pleasure, feelings, desires, and relationships. The main message conveyed through this text
is that women should not be judged based on their relationships, as it is a common practice to
stigmatize women as ‘loose women’ (women of easy virtue) if they have had a relationship with

25
Rajkumar Eligedi

more than one man. The translation of this text into Telugu aimed to introduce yet another
feminist perspective and thus shake up traditional notions of womanhood, even though the act
of translation and publication could stigmatize both translator and publisher.
Volga’s Mudu Taralu became one of the most debated translations in Telugu. It was reviewed
by many Telugu writers in popular Telugu magazines in the 1980s, creating a heated debate and
raising questions about gender relations in general and within revolutionary movements in par-
ticular. A Telugu Marxist woman writer, Muppala Ranganayakamma (1989, 48–49), criticized
the translation for encouraging women and men to have multiple sexual relationships. She also
argued that the three generations of women are portrayed in a negative light: the behaviour of
Maria, of the first generation, was shameless and self-disrespectful, while Olga and Genia (of the
second and third generations) have lost their minds in the name of ‘love’ and ‘liberty.’ Ranganay-
akamma adds that, “this story also showed that as soon as the political activities are developed,
sexual relations also get developed. While showing that Olga, the mother participated in the
political activities more than her grandmother, Maria and her daughter, Genia participate in
political activities even more than her; it demonstrated that their sexual relations also developed
in a similar way” (50). In this comment, Ranganayakamma discusses the connection between
these women’s sexual relations and their political activities over three generations. She was
critical of this translation as she considered that it might encourage sexual promiscuity. On the
other hand, many Telugu feminist activists saw Mudu Taralu as a historical necessity, as it was
translated in a context of public discussions about feminism, relationships, and sexuality in the
Telugu public sphere.
In the introduction to this translation, Volga and the Feminist Study Circle note that a
wide range of discussions about gender relations and sexuality has been addressed and clarified
in Mudu Taralu. They also point out that the idea of translating and publishing the book was
considered very seriously because of the possible stigma that could be attached to them as ‘loose
women.’ They also revealed their awareness of the society’s views on women’s sexuality, and
particularly women’s ‘virginity,’ arguing that this is little more than a myth and a cultural con-
struct that needs dismantling. Finally, they assert their vision of the three women as worthy of
the respect they received from their own society, for their services to the country, as communists,
regardless of their views on love and sex (Volga 1988, iii–v).
Volga used translation as a tool to bring feminist ideas into Telugu in direct opposition to
leftist politics of the time. These translated texts show Volga’s interest in various languages and
cultures but she always translated from English. It was the ideology of feminism in its different
international versions that motivated her to translate and bring international feminist ideas and
thoughts into Telugu for the benefit of the Telugu reading public. Her choice of translations
demonstrates her intention to change the thinking of male-dominated society. All her transla-
tions (summary translations, essays, books) introduced new ideas into Telugu and contributed
to the growth of feminist literature in the Telugu context.

Volga’s response to contemporary Dalit-Bahujan

feminist translations
Eventually, Volga also faced criticism from Dalit woman writers for not seriously engaging with
Dalit women’s writing. The Dalit14 movement15 gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s
in Andhra Pradesh, under the influence of Dalit intellectuals such as Kancha Ilaiah and Katti
Padma Rao, who raised the caste question with regard to Dalit women and other lower caste
women. In the post-Ambedkar period,16 Dalit women used literature as a weapon to counter

26
 Volga – agent of feminist translation

mainstream feminist writing. When asked about Anveshi’s perspective in dealing with Dalit and
Muslim questions in Andhra Pradesh, Susie Tharu, a well-known Indian writer and intellectual
responded saying:

Anveshi has been much more open and concerned about issues of difference. [. . .] Consist-
ently, for almost twenty years, we have been invested in it and taken it forward. We have
been very interested in seeing the connection between feminist thinking and other kinds
of thinking and why it is that the old form of feminism is not hospitable and does not easily
invite Dalit women or Muslim women. They do not feel that this is their place. That criti-
cism and that thinking are very central to Anveshi.
(Eligedi, 25/7/2013)

This was a time when feminist organizations and savarna feminists began to think about
Dalit and Muslim women’s issues, as Dalit women writers like Gogu Shyamala, Joopaka Subadra,
Challapalli Swarupa Rani, and M.M. Vinodhini started questioning the positions of dominant
caste feminist writers for ignoring Dalit women’s problems. Volga welcomes the questions
and criticisms brought forth by Dalit feminist writers and in an interview with The Hindu, she
responds,“That is a good thing. Let their anger flow. . . . We have to wash ourselves in their anger
and grow more sensitive to their questions.” However, she does warn that it is “important for
them to question patriarchy within the Dalit world and with the same sharpness” (Bageshree,
20/01/2013). The Indian feminist movement was initiated by upper caste/class women, but the
questions that they asked are relevant to women from all Indian communities. In India, feminism
continues to be a largely urban middle-class movement. Many of the dominant caste feminists
realized that there is caste violence and different identity politics facing women from Dalit com-
munities. In a conversation with Volga about caste/class and gender, she says:

I think there is nothing wrong in upper caste/class women raising feminist questions or
raising the problems of their own. However, Dalit women have been thinking whether
these questions are relevant to them or if not, how to make them relevant to their back-
grounds. Since feminist ideology is accepted, people also felt that feminist questions have
some sense of justice, these questions; struggles bring some change in the society. This dis-
cussion created a space where Dalit women are asserting as Dalit feminists, BC (Backward
Caste) women as BC feminists and Muslim women as Muslim feminists.
(Eligedi, 20/11/2013)

Subsequently, with the criticism from the Dalit movement and Dalit feminist thinkers, Volga
and other feminist writers also turned to Dalit women’s issues. Volga, Vasantha Kannabiran, and
Vindya translated The Combahee River Collective, the Combahee River Collective Statement: Black
Feminist Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties, published as Kombahi River Collective Prakatana–
Nallajathi Strivaadhula Swaram in 1996. Introduced by the African American feminist, Barbara
Smith, one of the pioneers of ‘black feminism,’ the book includes a collection of essays on black
feminist theory, black feminist politics, identity politics, the challenges facing black feminist
organizing. Obviously, the purpose of this translation was to make black feminist theory available
in Telugu so that it contributes to the development of Dalit feminism. In a conversation about
this book, Volga said, “I have translated it with the intention that this Black Feminist theory
would be useful for the growth of the Dalit Feminist theory in Telugu” (Eligedi, 20/11/2013).

27
Rajkumar Eligedi

Volga also translated Sushma Deshpande’s play Nenu Savitribaini or “Yes, I Am Savitribai” in
2000 from Marathi into Telugu. It was titled Vhay, Mee Savitri Bai or “Yes, I Am Savitribai” in
Marathi, and first published in Telugu by Asmita in 2000, then reprinted in 2005. The Dalit
feminist leader, Savitribai Phule, was a woman teacher and a crusader for women’s education in
India, and together with Jyotirao Phule fought the exploitation of Dalits at the hands of Brah-
mins and other upper caste people. Jyotirao encouraged Savitri to teach in a school, and as soon
as she started teaching, voices were heard critical of a lower caste woman becoming a teacher,
considering it shameful to the country. Later on, both Jyotirao Phule and Savitribai Phule
established schools for the lower caste girls in the state of Maharashtra. In her interviews, Volga
pointed out that she was inspired by Savitribai Phule:

I thought that the ideologies of Ambedkar and Phule needed to be discussed. I was inspired
by Savitribai Phule when I read the original text. I did not know much about her before
reading this text. As I was inspired, I also thought that many people would be inspired if
they read this text. This will bring a change also. I also felt that many people would come
to know about Phule, Savitribai and their thoughts. I am the first one to translate Savitribai
Phule into Telugu.
(Eligedi, 20/11/2013)

Volga’s translation of Savitribai Phule resulted in many other translations of her work into
Telugu, drawing Telugu scholars’ and activists’ attention to the writings of Jyotirao Phule and
Savitribai Phule on post-Dalit and Bahujan movements. Today, several Indian social, political,
and caste movements are inspired by the work of Savitri and Jyotirao Phule, and many feminists
as well as Dalit and Bahujan activists were inspired by their visions, owing to the translation of
Nenu Savitri Baini (Yes, I Am Savitribai).

Conclusion
Volga acted throughout as an intermediary and an agent of change, having dedicated her life to
feminist ideology. She has played a very significant role in translating and introducing ‘feminism’
to Telugu, using her translated feminist texts as tools to aid in the empowerment of women
through feminism. Without her translations, feminist thought was accessible only to English-
educated women capable of identifying and reading these texts. It was only in the 1980s that
Volga began translating them into Telugu, thus immensely contributing to the development
of feminist writing and activism in Telugu. Owing to her, Telugu women have been empow-
ered by the feminist notion of “the personal is also political,” and her translations remain a
source of inspiration to generations of women and relevant to the present social context. Her
work has introduced feminism, raising awareness about gender discrimination, and generating
political and intellectual debates within leftist, progressive circles and beyond. Today, feminism is
accepted as a serious ideology in the Telugu leftist, progressive, and literary circles, as a result of
the relentless efforts of Volga through her translations, her original writings, and her activism. In
this sense, Volga’s work is a model of feminist activism through translation.

Future directions
This study has mainly looked at the ‘travel’ of feminist knowledge from English into Telugu.
There is, however, scope for further studies looking at Volga’s translations from Telugu into
English. As there are many translations from Telugu into English, it would be interesting to

28
 Volga – agent of feminist translation

study how feminist knowledge from Telugu has travelled into English and what impact it has
had on International feminism. The following research questions may be worth considering:
How does the translation of feminist texts shape sociopolitical/identity movements? What is the
role of sociopolitical/identity movements in pushing or promoting the translations of feminist
texts in Telugu? How do translation and political movements shape each other?

Further reading
Tharu, Susie and K. Lalita, eds. 1991. Women’s Writing in India: Volume 1, 600 B.C. to the Early Twentieth
Century. New York: The Feminist Press.
Tharu, Susie and K. Lalita, eds. 1993. Women’s Writing in India: Volume II, the Twentieth Century. New York:
The Feminist Press.
Tharu, Susie and K. Lalitha, eds. Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present in two volumes.
Women’s Writing in India has been used as an authentic text on Indian women’s writing across the
world. These two volumes offer around 140 texts (poetry, fiction, drama, biographical notes) written by
women in 13 Indian languages in India. These volumes include the translations of the work of many
Telugu women writers into English.
Niranjana, Tejaswini. 1998. Feminism and Translation in India: Contexts, Politics, Futures. Cultural Dynam-
ics, SAGE Publications, 10(2), 133–146.
This is one of the significant texts in the field of feminism and translation in the Indian context. It
offers an analysis of feminism in India through postcolonial inquiry into translation. It shows that the
discourse of feminism and feminist politics might open up new conceptual–political formulations/
strategies through translation.
Spivak, Gayatri C. 2000. The Politics of Translation, in Lawrence Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader.
London and New York: Routledge, 397–416.
This is one of the seminal essays in the field of feminist translation in postcolonial contexts. It argues
that the translator must surrender to the text as translation is the most intimate act of reading. It offers
insights into feminist and postcolonial approaches to translation.
Devika, J. 2008. Being “In-translation” in a Post-colony. Translation Studies, 1(2), 182–196.
In her study of the context of Kerala the author reflects on the translation of feminism into Malayalam.
She looks at the efforts of translating feminism into Malayalam within two distinct modes of translation:
the ‘faithful’ mode and the ‘grounded’ mode. This study looks at the work of many feminists in Kerala
who have been translating feminist concepts produced in first-world contexts into the local language.
Kamala, N., ed. 2009. Translating Women: Indian Interventions. New Delhi: Zubaan.
This is a collection of essays on translation and women in the Indian context. These essays explore
various questions on women’s writing, women’s language, politics of language, women translators, and
the agency of translators.
Sravanthi, Kollu. 2009. Mapping the Feminist Subject: A Reading of the Women’s Movement(s) in Andhra Pradesh
(M. Phil dissertation). Available at: http://www.efluniversity.ac.in/these_cultural_studies.php
In this study on women’s movement(s) in Andhra Pradesh, the author attempts to map the debates that
emerged around feminism in the last few decades through a focus on the feminist subject. This study is
based on interviews with eight feminist scholars from various women’s organizations.
Tharakeshwar, V.B. and M. Usha. 2010. Survey and Analysis of Social Science Higher Education Material Pro-
duction Initiative in Kannada; Translation Strategies, Stories of Success/Failures. Mumbai: Ratan Tata Trust.
This project looks at earlier initiatives to produce higher education material in Indian languages. It
examines the reasons for their success or failure in the context of Kannada. It has a chapter on gender
studies/women’s studies material in Kannada. It offers a brief history of the discussion on women in
Kannada, the emergence of feminism in Kannada, the department/centres of women’s studies in Kar-
nataka. It also includes a report on the workshop on the translation of gender studies into Kannada.

29
Other documents randomly have
different content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Circle: A
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 The Circle
Persons of the Play

The First Act

The Second Act

The Third Act

Transcriber’s Note
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

THE CIRCLE
BY W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Plays:
THE EXPLORER
MRS. DOT
A MAN OF HONOUR
PENELOPE
JACK STRAW
LADY FREDERICK
THE TENTH MAN
LANDED GENTRY
THE UNKNOWN
SMITH

Novels:
OF HUMAN BONDAGE
THE MOON AND SIXPENCE
THE TREMBLING OF A LEAF
LIZA OF LAMBETH
MRS. CADDOCK
THE EXPLORER
THE MAGICIAN
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND

THE LAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN

(Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia)
 THE CIRCLE
A COMEDY IN THREE ACTS

BY

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
All applications regarding the Performance Rights of this
play should be addressed to The American Play Company,
33 West 42nd Street, New York.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 PERSONS OF THE PLAY
Clive Champion-Cheney

Arnold Champion-Cheney, M.P.

Lord Porteous

Edward Luton

Lady Catherine Champion-Cheney

Elizabeth
Mrs. Shenstone.

The action takes place at Aston-Adey, Arnold Champion-Cheney’s

house in Dorset.
 THE CIRCLE
THE FIRST ACT

The Scene is a stately drawing-room at Aston-Adey, with fine

pictures on the walls and Georgian furniture. Aston-Adey has
been described, with many illustrations, in Country Life. It is not
a house, but a place. Its owner takes a great pride in it, and
there is nothing in the room which is not of the period. Through
the French windows at the back can be seen the beautiful
gardens which are one of the features.
It is a fine summer morning.
Arnold comes in. He is a man of about thirty-five, tall and good-
looking, fair, with a clean-cut, sensitive face. He has a look that
is intellectual, but somewhat bloodless. He is very well dressed.
Arnold. [Calling.] Elizabeth! [He goes to the window and calls
again.] Elizabeth! [He rings the bell. While he is waiting he gives a
look round the room. He slightly alters the position of one of the
chairs. He takes an ornament from the chimney-piece and blows the
dust from it.]
[A Footman comes in.

Oh, George! see if you can find Mrs. Cheney, and ask her if she’d be
good enough to come here.

Footman. Very good, sir.

 [The Footman turns to go.
Arnold. Who is supposed to look after this room?

Footman. I don’t know, sir.

Arnold. I wish when they dust they’d take care to replace the
things exactly as they were before.

Footman. Yes, sir.

Arnold. [Dismissing him.] All right.

[The Footman goes out. He goes again to the window and
calls.
Arnold. Elizabeth! [He sees Mrs. Shenstone.] Oh, Anna, do you
know where Elizabeth is?

[Mrs. Shenstone comes in from the garden. She is a

woman of forty, pleasant and of elegant appearance.
Anna. Isn’t she playing tennis?

Arnold. No, I’ve been down to the tennis court. Something very
tiresome has happened.

Anna. Oh?
Arnold. I wonder where the deuce she is.

Anna. When do you expect Lord Porteous and Lady Kitty?

Arnold. They’re motoring down in time for luncheon.

Anna. Are you sure you want me to be here? It’s not too late yet,
you know. I can have my things packed and catch a train for
somewhere or other.
 Arnold. No, of course we want you. It’ll make it so much easier if
there are people here. It was exceedingly kind of you to come.
Anna. Oh, nonsense!

Arnold. And I think it was a good thing to have Teddie Luton

down.
Anna. He is so breezy, isn’t he?

Arnold. Yes, that’s his great asset. I don’t know that he’s very
intelligent, but, you know, there are occasions when you want a bull
in a china shop. I sent one of the servants to find Elizabeth.

Anna. I daresay she’s putting on her shoes. She and Teddie were
going to have a single.

Arnold. It can’t take all this time to change one’s shoes.

Anna. [With a smile.] One can’t change one’s shoes without
powdering one’s nose, you know.

[Elizabeth comes in. She is a very pretty creature in the

early twenties. She wears a light summer frock.
Arnold. My dear, I’ve been hunting for you everywhere. What
have you been doing?
Elizabeth. Nothing! I’ve been standing on my head.

Arnold. My father’s here.

Elizabeth. [Startled.] Where?

Arnold. At the cottage. He arrived last night.

Elizabeth. Damn!
Arnold. [Good-humouredly.] I wish you wouldn’t say that,
Elizabeth.
 Elizabeth. If you’re not going to say “Damn” when a thing’s
damnable, when are you going to say “Damn”?

Arnold. I should have thought you could say, “Oh, bother!” or

something like that.

Elizabeth. But that wouldn’t express my sentiments. Besides, at

that speech day when you were giving away the prizes you said
there were no synonyms in the English language.

Anna. [Smiling.] Oh, Elizabeth! it’s very unfair to expect a

politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

Arnold. I’m always willing to stand by anything I’ve said. There

are no synonyms in the English language.
Elizabeth. In that case I shall be regretfully forced to continue to
say “Damn” whenever I feel like it.

[Edward Luton shows himself at the window. He is an

attractive youth in flannels.
Teddie. I say, what about this tennis?

Elizabeth. Come in. We’re having a scene.

Teddie. [Entering.] How splendid! What about?

Elizabeth. The English language.

Teddie. Don’t tell me you’ve been splitting your infinitives.
Arnold. [With the shadow of a frown.] I wish you’d be serious,
Elizabeth. The situation is none too pleasant.
Anna. I think Teddie and I had better make ourselves scarce.
Elizabeth. Nonsense! You’re both in it. If there’s going to be any
unpleasantness we want your moral support. That’s why we asked
you to come.
 Teddie. And I thought I’d been asked for my blue eyes.
Elizabeth. Vain beast! And they happen to be brown.
Teddie. Is anything up?

Elizabeth. Arnold’s father arrived last night.

Teddie. Did he, by Jove! I thought he was in Paris.
Arnold. So did we all. He told me he’d be there for the next
month.
Anna. Have you seen him?
Arnold. No! he rang me up. It’s a mercy he had a telephone put
in the cottage. It would have been a pretty kettle of fish if he’d just
walked in.
Elizabeth. Did you tell him Lady Catherine was coming?

Arnold. Of course not. I was flabbergasted to know he was here.

And then I thought we’d better talk it over first.
Elizabeth. Is he coming along here?
Arnold. Yes. He suggested it, and I couldn’t think of any excuse
to prevent him.
Teddie. Couldn’t you put the other people off?
Arnold. They’re coming by car. They may be here any minute. It’s
too late to do that.
Elizabeth. Besides, it would be beastly.
Arnold. I knew it was silly to have them here. Elizabeth insisted.

Elizabeth. After all, she is your mother, Arnold.

 Arnold. That meant precious little to her when she—went away.
You can’t imagine it means very much to me now.

Elizabeth. It’s thirty years ago. It seems so absurd to bear malice

after all that time.
Arnold. I don’t bear malice, but the fact remains that she did me
the most irreparable harm. I can find no excuse for her.

Elizabeth. Have you ever tried to?

Arnold. My dear Elizabeth, it’s no good going over all that again.
The facts are lamentably simple. She had a husband who adored
her, a wonderful position, all the money she could want, and a child
of five. And she ran away with a married man.
Elizabeth. Lady Porteous is not a very attractive woman, Arnold.
[To Anna.] Do you know her?

Anna. [Smiling.] “Forbidding” is the word, I think.

Arnold. If you’re going to make little jokes about it, I have
nothing more to say.

Anna. I’m sorry, Arnold.

Elizabeth. Perhaps your mother couldn’t help herself—if she was
in love?
Arnold. And had no sense of honour, duty, or decency? Oh, yes,
under those circumstances you can explain a great deal.
Elizabeth. That’s not a very pretty way to speak of your mother.
Arnold. I can’t look on her as my mother.

Elizabeth. What you can’t get over is that she didn’t think of you.
Some of us are more mother and some of us more woman. It gives
me a little thrill when I think that she loved that man so much. She
sacrificed her name, her position, and her child to him.

Arnold. You really can’t expect the said child to have any great
affection for the mother who treated him like that.
Elizabeth. No, I don’t think I do. But I think it’s a pity after all
these years that you shouldn’t be friends.
Arnold. I wonder if you realise what it was to grow up under the
shadow of that horrible scandal. Everywhere, at school, and at
Oxford, and afterwards in London, I was always the son of Lady
Kitty Cheney. Oh, it was cruel, cruel!
Elizabeth. Yes, I know, Arnold. It was beastly for you.
Arnold. It would have been bad enough if it had been an ordinary
case, but the position of the people made it ten times worse. My
father was in the House then, and Porteous—he hadn’t succeeded to
the title—was in the House too; he was Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, and he was very much in the public eye.

Anna. My father always used to say he was the ablest man in the
party. Every one was expecting him to be Prime Minister.
Arnold. You can imagine what a boon it was to the British public.
They hadn’t had such a treat for a generation. The most popular
song of the day was about my mother. Did you ever hear it?
“Naughty Lady Kitty. Thought it such a pity . . .”
Elizabeth. [Interrupting.] Oh, Arnold, don’t!
Arnold. And then they never let people forget them. If they’d
lived quietly in Florence and not made a fuss the scandal would have
died down. But those constant actions between Lord and Lady
Porteous kept on reminding everyone.

Teddie. What were they having actions about?

 Arnold. Of course my father divorced his wife, but Lady Porteous
refused to divorce Porteous. He tried to force her by refusing to
support her and turning her out of her house, and heaven knows
what. They were constantly wrangling in the law courts.
Anna. I think it was monstrous of Lady Porteous.

Arnold. She knew he wanted to marry my mother, and she hated

my mother. You can’t blame her.
Anna. It must have been very difficult for them.

Arnold. That’s why they’ve lived in Florence. Porteous has money.

They found people there who were willing to accept the situation.
Elizabeth. This is the first time they’ve ever come to England.

Arnold. My father will have to be told, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth. Yes.
Anna. [To Elizabeth.] Has he ever spoken to you about Lady Kitty?

Elizabeth. Never.
Arnold. I don’t think her name has passed his lips since she ran
away from this house thirty years ago.

Teddie. Oh, they lived here?

Arnold. Naturally. There was a house-party, and one evening
neither Porteous nor my mother came down to dinner. The rest of
them waited. They couldn’t make it out. My father sent up to my
mother’s room, and a note was found on the pincushion.
Elizabeth. [With a faint smile.] That’s what they did in the Dark
Ages.

Arnold. I think he took a dislike to this house from that horrible

night. He never lived here again, and when I married he handed the
place over to me. He just has a cottage now on the estate that he
comes to when he feels inclined.
Elizabeth. It’s been very nice for us.

Arnold. I owe everything to my father. I don’t think he’ll ever

forgive me for asking these people to come here.
Elizabeth. I’m going to take all the blame on myself, Arnold.

Arnold. [Irritably.] The situation was embarrassing enough

anyhow. I don’t know how I ought to treat them.
Elizabeth. Don’t you think that’ll settle itself when you see them?

Arnold. After all, they’re my guests. I shall try and behave like a
gentleman.
Elizabeth. I wouldn’t. We haven’t got central heating.
Arnold. [Taking no notice.] Will she expect me to kiss her?

Elizabeth. [With a smile.] Surely.

Arnold. It always makes me uncomfortable when people are
effusive.

Anna. But I can’t understand why you never saw her before.
Arnold. I believe she tried to see me when I was little, but my
father thought it better she shouldn’t.

Anna. Yes, but when you were grown up?

Arnold. She was always in Italy. I never went to Italy.
Elizabeth. It seems to me so pathetic that if you saw one another
in the street you wouldn’t recognise each other.
Arnold. Is it my fault?
 Elizabeth. You’ve promised to be very gentle with her and very
kind.

Arnold. The mistake was asking Porteous to come too. It looks as

though we condoned the whole thing. And how am I to treat him?
Am I to shake him by the hand and slap him on the back? He
absolutely ruined my father’s life.

Elizabeth. [Smiling.] How much would you give for a nice motor
accident that prevented them from coming?
Arnold. I let you persuade me against my better judgment, and
I’ve regretted it ever since.

Elizabeth. [Good-humouredly.] I think it’s very lucky that Anna

and Teddie are here. I don’t foresee a very successful party.
Arnold. I’m going to do my best. I gave you my promise and I
shall keep it. But I can’t answer for my father.
Anna. Here is your father.
[Mr. Champion-Cheney shows himself at one of the French
windows.
C.-C. May I come in through the window, or shall I have myself
announced by a supercilious flunkey?
Elizabeth. Come in. We’ve been expecting you.

C.-C. Impatiently, I hope, my dear child.

[Mr. Champion-Cheney is a tall man in the early sixties,
spare, with a fine head of gray hair and an intelligent,
somewhat ascetic face. He is very carefully dressed.
He is a man who makes the most of himself. He bears
his years jauntily. He kisses Elizabeth and then holds
out his hand to Arnold.
 Elizabeth. We thought you’d be in Paris for another month.

C.-C. How are you, Arnold? I always reserve to myself the

privilege of changing my mind. It’s the only one elderly gentlemen
share with pretty women.
Elizabeth. You know Anna.

C.-C. [Shaking hands with her.] Of course I do. How very nice to
see you here! Are you staying long?
Anna. As long as I’m welcome.

Elizabeth. And this is Mr. Luton.

C.-C. How do you do? Do you play bridge?
Luton. I do.

C.-C. Capital. Do you declare without top honours?

Luton. Never.
C.-C. Of such is the kingdom of heaven. I see that you are a
good young man.
Luton. But, like the good in general, I am poor.
C.-C. Never mind; if your principles are right, you can play ten
shillings a hundred without danger. I never play less, and I never
play more.
Arnold. And you—are you going to stay long, father?

C.-C. To luncheon, if you’ll have me.

[Arnold gives Elizabeth a harassed look.
Elizabeth. That’ll be jolly.
 Arnold. I didn’t mean that. Of course you’re going to stay for
luncheon. I meant, how long are you going to stay down here?
C.-C. A week.
[There is a moment’s pause. Everyone but Champion-
Cheney is slightly embarrassed.
Teddie. I think we’d better chuck our tennis.
Elizabeth. Yes. I want my father-in-law to tell me what they’re
wearing in Paris this week.
Teddie. I’ll go and put the rackets away.
[Teddie goes out.

Arnold. It’s nearly one o’clock, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth. I didn’t know it was so late.
Anna. [To Arnold.] I wonder if I can persuade you to take a turn
in the garden before luncheon.
Arnold. [Jumping at the idea.] I’d love it.
[Anna goes out of the window, and as he follows her he
stops irresolutely.
I want you to look at this chair I’ve just got. I think it’s rather good.
C.-C. Charming.

Arnold. About 1750, I should say. Good design, isn’t it? It hasn’t
been restored or anything.
C.-C. Very pretty.

Arnold. I think it was a good buy, don’t you?

 C.-C. Oh, my dear boy! you know I’m entirely ignorant about
these things.
Arnold. It’s exactly my period . . . I shall see you at luncheon,
then.
[He follows Anna through the window.
C.-C. Who is that young man?

Elizabeth. Mr. Luton. He’s only just been demobilised. He’s the
manager of a rubber estate in the F.M.S.
C.-C. And what are the F.M.S. when they’re at home?

Elizabeth. The Federated Malay States. He joined up at the

beginning of the war. He’s just going back there.
C.-C. And why have we been left alone in this very marked
manner?

Elizabeth. Have we? I didn’t notice it.

C.-C. I suppose it’s difficult for the young to realise that one may
be old without being a fool.

Elizabeth. I never thought you that. Everyone knows you’re very

intelligent.
C.-C. They certainly ought to by now. I’ve told them often
enough. Are you a little nervous?

Elizabeth. Let me feel my pulse. [She puts her finger on her

wrist.] It’s perfectly regular.
C.-C. When I suggested staying to luncheon Arnold looked
exactly like a dose of castor oil.
Elizabeth. I wish you’d sit down.
 C.-C. Will it make it easier for you? [He takes a chair.] You have
evidently something very disagreeable to say to me.

Elizabeth. You won’t be cross with me?

C.-C. How old are you?
Elizabeth. Twenty-five.

C.-C. I’m never cross with a woman under thirty.

Elizabeth. Oh, then I’ve got ten years.
C.-C. Mathematics?

Elizabeth. No. Paint.

C.-C. Well?
Elizabeth. [Reflectively.] I think it would be easier if I sat on your
knees.
C.-C. That is a pleasing taste of yours, but you must take care
not to put on weight.

[She sits down on his knees.

Elizabeth. Am I boney?
C.-C. On the contrary. . . . I’m listening.

Elizabeth. Lady Catherine’s coming here.

C.-C. Who’s Lady Catherine?
Elizabeth. Your—Arnold’s mother.

C.-C. Is she?
[He withdraws himself a little and Elizabeth gets up.
 Elizabeth. You mustn’t blame Arnold. It’s my fault. I insisted. He
was against it. I nagged him till he gave way. And then I wrote and
asked her to come.
C.-C. I didn’t know you knew her.
Elizabeth. I don’t. But I heard she was in London. She’s staying at
Claridge’s. It seemed so heartless not to take the smallest notice of
her.
C.-C. When is she coming?

Elizabeth. We’re expecting her in time for luncheon.

C.-C. As soon as that? I understand the embarrassment.
Elizabeth. You see, we never expected you to be here. You said
you’d be in Paris for another month.
C.-C. My dear child, this is your house. There’s no reason why
you shouldn’t ask whom you please to stay with you.

Elizabeth. After all, whatever her faults, she’s Arnold’s mother. It

seemed so unnatural that they should never see one another. My
heart ached for that poor lonely woman.
C.-C. I never heard that she was lonely, and she certainly isn’t
poor.
Elizabeth. And there’s something else. I couldn’t ask her by
herself. It would have been so—so insulting. I asked Lord Porteous,
too.

C.-C. I see.
Elizabeth. I daresay you’d rather not meet them.
C.-C. I daresay they’d rather not meet me. I shall get a capital
luncheon at the cottage. I’ve noticed you always get the best food if
you come in unexpectedly and have the same as they’re having in
the servants’ hall.
Elizabeth. No one’s ever talked to me about Lady Kitty. It’s always
been a subject that everyone has avoided. I’ve never even seen a
photograph of her.
C.-C. The house was full of them when she left. I think I told the
butler to throw them in the dust-bin. She was very much
photographed.

Elizabeth. Won’t you tell me what she was like?

C.-C. She was very like you, Elizabeth, only she had dark hair
instead of red.

Elizabeth. Poor dear! it must be quite white now.

C.-C. I daresay. She was a pretty little thing.
Elizabeth. But she was one of the great beauties of her day. They
say she was lovely.
C.-C. She had the most adorable little nose, like yours. . . .
Elizabeth. D’you like my nose?

C.-C. And she was very dainty, with a beautiful little figure; very
light on her feet. She was like a marquise in an old French comedy.
Yes, she was lovely.

Elizabeth. And I’m sure she’s lovely still.

C.-C. She’s no chicken, you know.
Elizabeth. You can’t expect me to look at it as you and Arnold do.
When you’ve loved as she’s loved you may grow old, but you grow
old beautifully.
C.-C. You’re very romantic.
 Elizabeth. If everyone hadn’t made such a mystery of it I daresay
I shouldn’t feel as I do. I know she did a great wrong to you and a
great wrong to Arnold. I’m willing to acknowledge that.

C.-C. I’m sure it’s very kind of you.

Elizabeth. But she loved and she dared. Romance is such an
illusive thing. You read of it in books, but it’s seldom you see it face
to face. I can’t help it if it thrills me.

C.-C. I am painfully aware that the husband in these cases is not

a romantic object.
Elizabeth. She had the world at her feet. You were rich. She was a
figure in society. And she gave up everything for love.
C.-C. [Dryly.] I’m beginning to suspect it wasn’t only for her sake
and for Arnold’s that you asked her to come here.
Elizabeth. I seem to know her already. I think her face is a little
sad, for a love like that doesn’t leave you gay, it leaves you grave,
but I think her pale face is unlined. It’s like a child’s.
C.-C. My dear, how you let your imagination run away with you!
Elizabeth. I imagine her slight and frail.

C.-C. Frail, certainly.

Elizabeth. With beautiful thin hands and white hair. I’ve pictured
her so often in that Renaissance Palace that they live in, with old
Masters on the walls and lovely carved things all round, sitting in a
black silk dress with old lace round her neck and old-fashioned
diamonds. You see, I never knew my mother; she died when I was a
baby. You can’t confide in aunts with huge families of their own. I
want Arnold’s mother to be a mother to me. I’ve got so much to say
to her.
 C.-C. Are you happy with Arnold?
Elizabeth. Why shouldn’t I be?
C.-C. Why haven’t you got any babies?
Elizabeth. Give us a little time. We’ve only been married three
years.
C.-C. I wonder what Hughie is like now!

Elizabeth. Lord Porteous?

C.-C. He wore his clothes better than any man in London. You
know he’d have been Prime Minister if he’d remained in politics.
Elizabeth. What was he like then?
C.-C. He was a nice-looking fellow. Fine horseman. I suppose
there was something very fascinating about him. Yellow hair and
blue eyes, you know. He had a very good figure. I liked him. I was
his parliamentary secretary. He was Arnold’s godfather.
Elizabeth. I know.
C.-C. I wonder if he ever regrets!
Elizabeth. I wouldn’t.
C.-C. Well, I must be strolling back to my cottage.
Elizabeth. You’re not angry with me?

C.-C. Not a bit.

[She puts up her face for him to kiss. He kisses her on
both cheeks and then goes out. In a moment Teddie is
seen at the window.
Teddie. I saw the old blighter go.
 Elizabeth. Come in.
Teddie. Everything all right?

Elizabeth. Oh, quite, as far as he’s concerned. He’s going to keep

out of the way.
Teddie. Was it beastly?
Elizabeth. No, he made it very easy for me. He’s a nice old thing.
Teddie. You were rather scared.
Elizabeth. A little. I am still. I don’t know why.

Teddie. I guessed you were. I thought I’d come and give you a
little moral support. It’s ripping here, isn’t it?
Elizabeth. It is rather nice.
Teddie. It’ll be jolly to think of it when I’m back in the F.M.S.
Elizabeth. Aren’t you homesick sometimes?
Teddie. Oh, everyone is now and then, you know.

Elizabeth. You could have got a job in England if you’d wanted to,
couldn’t you?
Teddie. Oh, but I love it out there. England’s ripping to come back
to, but I couldn’t live here now. It’s like a woman you’re desperately
in love with as long as you don’t see her, but when you’re with her
she maddens you so that you can’t bear her.
Elizabeth. [Smiling.] What’s wrong with England?

Teddie. I don’t think anything’s wrong with England. I expect

something’s wrong with me. I’ve been away too long. England
seems to me full of people doing things they don’t want to because
other people expect it of them.
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