‘Rajmohan’s Wife is about transgression’. Would you agree? Discuss this statement in the light of Bankim’s understanding of transgression?

There is something in Bankim that suggests the universality of suffering. Sometimes he uses a fatalist discourse which suggests the inexorable nature of tragedy- as in Bishabriksha – where we are shown the way that suffering lies and then we see the heroine systematically follow the course that she knows is doomed. Bankim also writes about tragedy as inescapable because it is an outcome of desire and desire itself is inevitable because it lies outside what is socially sanctioned.

When Govindlal sees Rohini’s unconscious body lying still undecided between life and death, he has no option but to save her life. He breathes into her lips and falls prey to desire. We are told that he was still a young man and therefore he had a natural need for beauty and his wife Bhrarnar could not satisfy this ‘natural’ need. There are a lot of such instances in Bankim’s novels (the attraction between Madhav and Matanghi is again written about as of a fatal nature) which seem to point to the inevitability of suffering and tragedy.