PRODUCING AND RE-PRODUCING THE NEW WOMEN 21 anxiety. To assuage that anxiety, to prevent 'speech* from seeping into and invading the domains of 'silence', certain safety-measures had to be devised, discursive safety-measures whose objective correlative was to be the chastity belt. There was an utmost urgency to frame the 'woman question' within the ambit of a single conceptual category; and to name that category one has no other option but to introduce yet another word prefixed by 're': reproduction. Now, the question is, how was the 're' of 'reproduction' tackled by the 'renaissance' culture, heavily weighted as it was in favour of that prefix? Is it possible to abstract a theory of reproduction, no matter how sketchy or inconclusive, from the writings of the ideologues of the 'renaissance'? Will it be right to claim that their utterances, though scattered over a vast field and internally fractured, were nevertheless governed by certain organising principles? Let us see. •NATURE' AND 'NURTURE1 In 1842, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, then only seventeen years old, was awarded a gold medal by the authorities of Hindu college, for an essay that he had written lauding the merits of 'female education*. With his customary forcefulness Michael had written: Many people have been unable to given up their belief in the existence of ghosts, notwithstanding the strong remonstrances of Reason, and the evidences of Science, because the impressions left on the mind by the idle tales heard or recited in the nursery could not be effaced! It is needless to dwell upon the numerous benefits a child may derive from an educated nurse. In a country like India, where the nurseship (if I may so call the office of a nurse) generally devolves on the mother, the importance of educating the females ... is very great; for unless they are enlightened, they spread the infection of their ignorance in the minds of those they bring up. Extensive dissemination of knowledge amongst women is the surest way that leads a nation to civilization and refinement.5 If nothing else, the cock-sure and inflexible tone of the essay is remarkable, it has the air of being written by a person utterly certain of his destiny. Michael speaks from a vantage point, sermonises from the mount as it were, with all the authority and a feeling of well-being derived from a stable subject-position. The easy buoyancy with which he reels off the heavily-loaded terms like, 'reason', 'science', 'enlightened', 'ignorance', 'knowledge*, 'civilization', 'refinement1, besides indicating self-assurance, gives a clue to the stuff and material out of which that self-hood has been wrought. As a spokesman of 'modernity'—the 'man' part of 'spokesman' being particularly significant—Michael has no hesitation in branding women's 'knowledge' as 'ignorance' pure and simple; judged by the exacting