Beyond the Text: Spatial Reading as a Digital Humanities Approach to Colonial Bengali Women's Travel Narratives

##article.abstract##

This article examines the relationship between geographical movement and narrative organisation in two Bengali women’s travelogues from colonial India: Krishnabhabini Das’s Englande Bangamahila (1885), translated as A Bengali Lady in England, and Durgabati Ghose’s Paschimjatriki (1936), translated as The Westward Traveller. Combining close reading with digital spatial visualisation, the study reconstructs the writers’ westward journeys and compares mapped itinerary with narrative structure. It argues that mapping is most productive not simply as an illustration of where a traveller went, but as a deliberately reduced spatial model against which literary organisation can be examined. Das’s narrative initially follows geographical progression from India towards London, after which route increasingly gives way to thematic concentration. Ghose’s account, by contrast, retains a more conspicuous relationship among itinerary, chronology and continued movement through Europe. The comparison also distinguishes confirmed stops, excursions and locations mentioned without physical visitation. These differences expose a central limit of cartographic representation: geographical extent does not correspond automatically to narrative importance. The article consequently proposes that the discrepancy between mapped movement and textual emphasis can itself function as evidence in digitally assisted travel-writing analysis. It shows how digital mapping can support literary interpretation while preserving the distinction between route and narrative.