Scholarship has presumed that a universal reformist model was shared by the rising middle class men and women in early 20th century India. This article argues that even though the public construction of private life in Premchand: Ghar Mein is a cultural product of middle class consciousness, it cuts across class and can be identified as a specific form of indigenous feminist practice. Shivrani Devi Premchand's book settles and unsettles the feminine self within the domesticity, tradition and reformism of the times and forces this discomfort upon the anti-colonial programme while being a part of it.
