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Gender and Empowerment: A Feminist Study of Begum Rokeya’s
Sultana’s Dream and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings
Kazi Mostari
Assistant Teacher, Government Primary School, Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, Bangladesh
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.910000856
Received: 07 November 2025; Accepted: 14 November 2025; Published: 26 November 2025
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a comparative feminist reading of two landmark texts: Sultana’s Dream (1905) by Begum
Rokeya (Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain) and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) by Maya Angelou. By
situating Rokeya’s feminist utopia and Angelou’s autobiographical narrative of race, gender and self-
actualisation within a broader discourse of gender and empowerment, the study demonstrates how both authors
challenge patriarchal norms and envision women’s agency in distinct historical, social and cultural contexts.
Rokeya imagines a radical inversion of gender roles in a colonial Bengal context; Angelou chronicles the lived
struggles and triumphs of a Black woman in mid-twentieth-century America. Through textual analysis,
feminist theoretical frameworks and intersectional lenses, this study traces how empowerment is constructed,
resisted and realised in each text. The paper identifies convergences and divergences in the authors’ feminist
vision, culminating in a research gap concerning the cross-cultural dynamics of empowerment and the role of
utopian fiction compared with autobiography in feminist literary studies. The findings illuminate how women’s
empowerment is not only about individual transformation but also about structural and imaginative re-
visioning of gendered worlds.
Implications for literary studies emphasise the value of transnational feminist comparison, narrative form and
genre in empowering discourses.
Keywords: gender empowerment, feminist utopia, autobiography, Begum Rokeya, Maya Angelou,
transnational feminism
INTRODUCTION
The study of gender and empowerment in literary texts offers a compelling lens through which scholars may
explore how women imagine, enact and contest agency within patriarchal structures. Feminist literary criticism
has long highlighted how literature both reflects and shapes cultural understandings of gender, power and
emancipation (e.g., Gilbert & Gubar, 2000; Moi, 2006). In recent decades, a growing interest in transnational
feminist perspectives has encouraged comparative work that moves beyond Western-centred paradigms
(Mohanty, 2003; Spivak, 1990). In this vein, this paper undertakes a cross-cultural comparative feminist study
of Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, two texts
separated by geography, genre and historical moment yet united by their visionary engagement with women’s
empowerment. Begum Rokeya (1880–1932) emerged as a pioneering Muslim Bengali feminist thinker and
writer in colonial India. Her short work Sultana’s Dream (1905) is often read as one of the earliest feminist
utopian fictions, imagining a world called “Ladyland” in which women run society, men are sequestered and
science and reason, rather than patriarchal domination, shape social life. (Sharma, 2017; Moniruzzaman, 2014)
Meanwhile, Maya Angelou (1928–2014), an AfricanAmerican poet, memoirist and civil rights activist,
published her first autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969; in it she narrates her childhood
and adolescent experiences of racism, sexual violence and solitude and her eventual emergence as a self-
defining woman of art and activism. (LitCharts, n.d.; Susilowati, 2019) Together, these texts open rich vistas
for analysis of how gender, empowerment, resistance and narrative form intersect across distinct cultural
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milieus. The purpose of the current research is to examine how each author conceptualises empowerment—
both as individual transformation and collective imagining—and to explore how genre (utopian fiction versus
autobiography) mediates feminist intervention. The comparative lens allows us to probe the ways in which
empowerment is articulated in relation to colonialism, race, gender and cultural context, thus contributing to a
more nuanced understanding of feminist literary studies. The hypothesis is that while both texts emphasise
women’s agency, their modes of empowerment differ—Rokeya’s through imaginative reversal of patriarchal
structures and Angelou’s through lived experience and testimony—and that both forms are necessary for a
fuller account of empowerment in literary imagination. The structure of the paper proceeds as follows: we
begin with a review of relevant literature on feminist utopias, feminist autobiography and empowerment; then
synthesise findings and identify a research gap; set out research objectives; describe methodology and ethical
considerations; reflect on limitations; carry out a detailed analysis and discussion; conclude; and finally
explore implications for literary studies.
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Feminist Utopia and Empowerment in Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream
Scholarly interest in Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream has increased in recent years, particularly within
contexts of South Asian feminist studies and feminist science‐fiction criticism. Scholars such as
Moniruzzaman (2014) highlight how Rokeya critiques patriarchal norms, seclusion (purdah) and colonial
educational constraints through a satirical and utopian narrative. Rokeya presents a “Ladyland” where women
operate flying cars, cloud-condensers and solar ovens, men are confined to the “Mardana” (men’s quarters) and
science is aligned with care rather than conquest. (Moniruzzaman, 2014;
Ladyscience, 2019) The utopia is not mere fantasy but a provocative thought experiment: as Sharma (2017)
argues, Rokeya’s reversal of gender roles prompts readers to question entrenched gender binaries and imagines
women’s empowerment as structural transformation rather than individual exception. Further, the critical study
“A Gender-Based Study of Sultana’s Dream” (Hossain, 2020) notes that the story rejects metanarratives of
gender hierarchy and assigns women roles as scientists, educators and leaders, thereby portraying
empowerment as rational selfgovernance and collective emancipation. Other work, such as “Exploring cyborg
feminism in Sultana’s Dream” (2024), reads Rokeya through a post‐human and technological lens, underlining
the way technological mastery in the text symbolises women’s capacity to transcend patriarchal spatial and
epistemic boundaries. (English Journal, 2024)
2.2. Feminist Autobiography, Empowerment and Race in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings
In the domain of feminist literary criticism, Maya Angelou’s first autobiography is a key text for exploring the
intersections of race, gender and selfempowerment. Scholars have identified the text as an expression of Black
feminist consciousness, narrating how the protagonist (Marguerite) confronts sexism, racism and sexual
violence and gradually reclaims her voice and subjectivity. (Teme et al., 2022; Susilowati, 2019) For instance,
the theme of sex, gender and sexuality is foregrounded in LitCharts’ analysis of the memoir: “the memoir
records the experience of a black woman’s life in America and her womanhood— like her blackness—
inevitably shapes and informs her experience” (LitCharts, n.d., para. 2). Similarly, the study “Afro-American
Feminism in Maya Angelou’s Poems” (2023) situates her poems, including those related to Caged Bird, in the
context of Black women’s resistance to both racism and patriarchy. Critical discourse analysis applied to
Angelou’s work (Bibliomed, 2020) elucidates how empowerment is achieved through articulating trauma,
memory and resilience. Angelou’s narrative is not simply selfcelebratory but politicised: the speaking subject
emerges from silence, the marginalised subject speaks to power and the female subject forges community and
identity. (Susilowati, 2019; Teme et al., 2022) Angelou famously asserted: “I am a feminist. I have been female
for a long time now. I would be stupid not to be on my own side.” (Joy, 2017) Thus her work engages with
empowerment as both personal reclamation and collective affirmation.
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2.3.Comparative Feminist and Transnational Perspectives
The comparative literature on feminist utopias and feminist autobiography is somewhat less particularly across
non-Western and Western contexts. The transnational feminist lens emphasises how gendered subjects navigate
coloniality, race, class and culture across geographies (Mohanty, 2003; Narayan, 1997). Comparative feminist
studies underscore how localised experiences of gender and empowerment can reveal both unique singularities
and global resonances. For example, Rokeya’s story is embedded in colonial South Asia, Muslim culture and
early feminist activism; Angelou’s work emerges from the US civil rights era and African-American feminist
traditions. Such cross-cultural vantage invites reflection on how empowerment is shaped by context, genre and
narrative form. However, there remains a gap in scholarship that directly juxtaposes feminist utopian fiction
from South Asia with feminist autobiography from the US and uses empowerment as the pivot of analysis. The
existing scholarship tends to study each text in isolation rather than comparatively.
This observation leads into our research gap.
3. Synthesis And Research Gap
From the literature review we can synthesise the following: Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream frames empowerment
as structural transformation via imaginative reversal—women as leaders, scientists and rational agents in a
techno-utopia where men are domesticated. Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings frames
empowerment as testimonial, lived transformation—from racialised, gendered childhood victimhood to self-
defined adult agency and community leadership. The two approaches share an emphasis on agency, critique of
patriarchy and envisioning of alternative worlds (whether utopian or self-actualised). Yet they diverge in genre
(fiction vs autobiography), cultural context (colonial Bengal vs Jim Crow America) and the form of
empowerment (collective utopia vs individual testimony). The research gap lies in a targeted, comparative
study of how empowerment is constructed across genre and culture in these two works. Few studies bridge
South Asian feminist literature and African-American feminist literature in a thematic comparison of gender
and empowerment. Moreover, the role of genre in mediating empowerment—how utopian fiction enables
structural imagining and how autobiography enables lived reclamation—remains under-explored. This paper
addresses that gap by comparing these texts through the lens of gender empowerment and narrative form.
4. Research Objectives
The principal objectives of this study are as follows:
a. To examine how gender and empowerment are conceptualised in Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream and
Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
b. To compare and contrast the modes of empowerment offered in the two texts, considering genre, cultural
context and narrative strategy.
c. To evaluate how narrative form (utopian fiction vs autobiography) influences the representation of
empowerment.
d. To explore the implications of a transnational feminist comparison for literary studies— highlighting how
empowerment is mediated by culture, genre and historical moment.
METHODOLOGY
This study adopts a qualitative, interpretive methodology anchored in textual analysis and feminist literary
criticism. The primary sources are Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream (1905) and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why
the Caged Bird Sings (1969). Secondary literature on feminist utopias, feminist autobiography, Black feminist
theory and postcolonial feminism inform the theoretical framework. The research proceeds through close
reading of selected passages, thematic coding of empowerment-related motifs (e.g., leadership, voice,
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education, technology, autonomy), comparative analysis of genre and context and integration of scholarly
commentary.
The following steps were undertaken:
1. Selection of key sections in each primary text that illustrate empowerment (for Rokeya: depiction of
Ladyland, scientific inventions, reversal of gender roles; for Angelou: childhood trauma, emergence of
voice, education and activism).
2. Coding and thematic mapping of empowerment constructs across manuscripts.
3. Application of feminist and postcolonial theories to interpret how empowerment is mediated.
4. Comparative synthesis of findings: identifying similarities, differences and the role of genre in shaping
empowerment narratives.
5. Reflection on how the comparative findings contribute to broader literary-theoretical debates and
transnational feminist scholarship.
6. Ethical Considerations
Given that the research is purely textual and involves no human subjects, formal ethical approval was not
required. Nonetheless, ethical considerations were observed in the following ways: all sources have been
appropriately cited; direct quotations are clearly marked; interpretation is respectful of cultural, racial and
historical contexts; and the comparative framework does not reduce either author’s work to mere exemplars
but honours their complexity and particularity.
7. Limitations
Several limitations should be acknowledged. First, the study focuses on only two texts selected from each
author; it does not encompass the full corpus of Rokeya or Angelou. This means that findings may not
generalise across the authors’ oeuvre. Second, comparative textual analysis is interpretive and subject to the
researcher’s biases; another scholar might emphasise different themes or readings. Third, as the texts emerge
from very different cultural, historical and linguistic contexts, translation, cultural nuance and historiography
may affect interpretation. Finally, the study does not include empirical readerresponse data or archival
research, which might enrich the understanding of how these texts were received historically.
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
8.1. Empowerment through Structural Imagination: Sultana’s Dream
Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream imagines an inversion of patriarchal society in a colonial Bengal context
and thereby creates a feminist utopia—a “Ladyland”—in which women govern, scientists and technologists
are female and men are secluded in the Mardana. The opening lines of the story remark upon the narrator’s
surprise at her own mobility beyond the zenana: “I had been used to look upon my sex as a helpless,
unprogressive mass of humanity, a mixture of superstition, sentiment and servility.” (Rokeya Sakhawat
Hossain, 1905/2005) While the original text is in the public domain, it is widely anthologised. The literary
critic Deeksha Sharma (2017) argues that the story demonstrates what a feminist utopia might look like beyond
gender binaries: “A world without patriarchy and gender discrimination” (Sharma, 2017, para. 3).
Rokeya’s structural imagining of empowerment occurs in several key dimensions:
1. Education and Science: In Ladyland, women run all scientific endeavours, having harnessed solar
energy, flying cars and cloud condensers. The utopia links rationality, science and women’s leadership.
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Critics note that Rokeya’s vision preempts debates about feminist science and technology
(Ladyscience, 2019).
2. Reversal of Gender Roles: Men are described as suited only for confinement; women move freely,
govern and teach. This role-reversal is not simply satirical but enables the reader to see the arbitrariness
of gendered division of labour and mobility. For instance, the narrator’s astonishment at entering male
spaces (“I was surprised to find…”) underscores how power is relational and socially constructed.
3. Spatial and Political Freedom: The text explicitly critiques the zenana system (women’s seclusion) and
envisions women in public, professional and political spaces. Rokeya thus links empowerment to
access—not only individual, but spatial, institutional and structural.
4. Technology and Nature: The interplay of science and nature in the text is significant. One critic writes:
“Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s 1905 short story … depicts a utopian alliance between nature, science
and women.” (An Ecofeminist
5. Foremother? para. 1) This suggests that women’s empowerment in Ladyland is not only social but also
ecological and technological.
6. Colonial and Patriarchal Critique: Rokeya’s story is set in British-India under colonial rule; her utopia
indirectly critiques both colonial domination and patriarchal structures, by emphasising rationality,
cooperation, progress and peace. (Moniruzzaman, 2014) Accordingly, empowerment is tied to
liberation from both gender and colonial regimes.
In sum, Sultana’s Dream imagines empowerment as collective, structural transformation: women are not
simply individually empowered but the society itself is re-oriented. This genre-specific strategy—utopian
fiction—allows Rokeya to depict possibilities beyond existing constraints. However, as some critics note, the
reversal is not without critique; Rajia Zakaria in The Daily Star (2023) remarks that the world remains “one
group of women oppressing men”, which complicates the utopia’s feminist credentials (Zakaria, 2023, para.
4). This invites a more nuanced reading: empowerment as structural inversion rather than inclusive
transformation.
8.2.Empowerment through Voice, Self-Definition and Testimony: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou’s memoir offers a profoundly different but complementary model of empowerment. Written as
autobiography, the text tracks the early life of Marguerite (“Maya”) Johnson through childhood trauma
(including sexual assault), racial segregation in the American South and eventual emergence as a vehicle of
creative and political expression. According to the LitCharts themes page, the memoir “is also an account of
how sex and gender influence experience and identity. Marguerite recognises that being a girl is a kind of
disadvantage” (LitCharts, n.d., para. 1). This underlines how the narrative is shaped by gender disadvantage,
but also by racial disadvantage, thereby necessitating an intersectional reading.
Key aspects of empowerment in Angelou’s text include:
1. Voice and Silence: Maya becomes mute for years following her assault; the act of speaking and writing
thus becomes an act of empowerment. As one study notes, “The present study adopts Feminist Critical
Discourse Analysis … because Maya Angelou … spotlit the experiences and challenges of Black women”
(Bibliomed, 2020, p. 2). Speaking, narrating, writing thus become sites of empowerment, enabling the self
to claim voice and subjectivity.
2. Education and Self-definition: Maya’s return to education, love of literature and eventual career as writer
and activist enact a path of empowerment grounded in learning and self-definition. Her comment: “I would
be stupid not to be on my own side” (Joy, 2017) encapsulates the shift from objectification to subjecthood.
3. Intersectionality — Race & Gender: Angelou’s empowerment narrative cannot be separated from race; the
text emerges in the context of Jim Crow America and the memoir is recognised as a major statement of
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Black feminist consciousness (Teme et al., 2022). The dual discrimination of race and gender shapes her
sense of disempowerment and her eventual reclaiming of power.
4. Community and Solidarity: While her journey is individual, Maya’s story resonates with collective
experience: the Black female subjecthood and the civil-rights movement form a backdrop. Her
empowerment is not solitary triumph but connects to community, though not always explicitly.
5. Genre as Testimony: The choice of autobiography allows Angelou to blend personal and political, memory
and critique. The form itself becomes a vehicle for empowerment: the writing of selfnarrative is a
reclamation of history, agency and voice.
Thus Angelou enacts empowerment as personal transformation, from marginalised subject to empowered
speaker and actor in the world. Her work exemplifies feminist empowerment as lived, embodied, vocal and
intersectional.
8.3.Comparative Insights: Genre, Context and Empowerment
I.Genre and Form: Rokeya’s utopian fiction allows a macro-vision of empowerment: structural reversal,
techno-rational women’s rule, alternate society. Angelou’s autobiography offers a microvision: lived
experience, voice, transformation. Each form has strengths: fiction permits imaginative possibility;
autobiography grounds empowerment in reality and testimony. Together they suggest that empowerment is
multifaceted— it requires both imagining new orders and realising personal agency.
II.Context and Culture: Rokeya writes in colonial Bengal, Muslim female context, at a time when women’s
education and mobility were severely restricted. Her empowerment vision is deeply informed by that context.
Angelou writes in midtwentieth-century America, Black female subject, civil-rights era; her empowerment is
shaped by racial-gender intersectionality. Thus empowerment must be read not as universal but as historically
and culturally situated. The comparative approach illuminates how empowerment is mediated by coloniality,
race, religion and culture.
III.Mode of Empowerment: Rokeya emphasises systemic change and the collective: women’s emancipation
through new social order. Angelou emphasises individual resilience, voice and personal journey, though with
communal resonance. The two modes complement each other—structural and individual empowerment are not
mutually exclusive but interdependent. The fiction of Rokeya gestures to structural possibilities; Angelou’s
memoir enacts personal realisation.
IV.Challenges and Critique: Both texts also raise critiques of empowerment. Rokeya’s model has been
critiqued for simply reversing rather than dissolving gendered oppression (Zakaria, 2023).
Angelou’s empowerment emerges in the context of trauma and struggle, reminding us that empowerment is not
easy or clean. Hence, empowerment must be seen as contested, embodied and ongoing rather than final.
8.4. Towards a Model of Empowerment in Transnational Feminist Literary Studies
Empowerment in these texts can be understood through several interconnected dimensions. In Rokeya’s
writing, empowerment takes an imaginative form, envisioning new social orders and alternative possibilities
that challenge patriarchal and colonial constraints. Angelou, on the other hand, embodies subjective
empowerment, reclaiming voice, agency and identity through the act of personal narration. Both forms of
empowerment are shaped by their contexts— cultural, historical and structural factors that mediate how power
is experienced and expressed. The literary genre itself also plays a crucial role: while fiction allows Rokeya to
imagine utopian change, Angelou’s memoir grounds empowerment in lived experience and self-revelation.
Finally, when these two writers are viewed together, a transnational connection emerges, revealing how
empowerment, though rooted in specific histories and geographies, resonates across boundaries through shared
struggles and aspirations for gendered liberation. The analysis shows that empowerment is not simply a matter
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of individual success but involves re-imagining the social fabric, transforming structures, reclaiming voice,
resisting oppressions and recognising intersectionality.
9. Implications For Literary Studies
The findings of this study carry significant implications for literary scholarship, particularly in feminist,
postcolonial and transnational literary studies.
First, comparative feminist readings across cultural and historical contexts enrich our understanding of
empowerment and agency beyond the boundaries of Western-centred paradigms. By juxtaposing a South
Asian Muslim feminist writer and an AfricanAmerican feminist autobiographer, the analysis demonstrates how
empowerment acquires varied meanings shaped by colonialism, race, religion and class, thereby broadening
the methodological horizon of global feminist criticism.
Second, the study underscores that genre is central to feminist representation. Utopian fiction and
autobiography, though distinct, both function as potent vehicles of empowerment. Sultana’s Dream deploys
imaginative inversion and structural re-visioning to challenge patriarchal norms, while I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings uses self-narration and testimonial voice to reclaim subjectivity. Future scholarship could explore
these genres in dialogue with other forms— such as essays, poetry and epistolary narratives—by Rokeya and
Angelou to trace how genre mediates evolving feminist consciousness.
Third, the analysis highlights that empowerment involves both the collective and the individual. The contrast
between Rokeya’s structural model of emancipation and Angelou’s personal model of selfrealisation suggests
that feminist theory must account for their interdependence. A more critical interrogation of these modes could
clarify how utopian abstraction and autobiographical specificity complement or challenge one another,
revealing the productive tensions within feminist thought.
Fourth, incorporating archival research and historical reception studies would deepen understanding of how
these texts were circulated, interpreted and institutionalised in their respective societies. Such work could
reveal the historical processes through which women’s voices were legitimised—or marginalised—within
literary canons, enriching feminist historiography.
Finally, this study encourages literary scholars to embrace a transnational feminist framework that bridges
imaginative and experiential modes of empowerment. It calls for future comparative studies linking feminist
writers from different linguistic and cultural traditions—such as Latin American, African and South Asian
contexts—to construct a more inclusive, intersectional map of global feminist expression. By recognising both
the diversity and interconnectivity of women’s literary voices, literary studies can more effectively theorise
empowerment as a dynamic, relational and globally resonant process.
CONCLUSION
This study has examined how Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings articulate gender and empowerment through distinct yet complementary frameworks. Rokeya’s
feminist utopia offers a radical structural vision of women’s empowerment, while Angelou’s autobiography
presents a personal, intersectional journey of voice, self-definition and agency. The comparative analysis
reveals the interpretive value of contrasting genre, context and cultural background to understand how
empowerment operates across different literary traditions. In doing so, the paper addresses a notable research
gap concerning crosscultural feminist literary comparisons of empowerment narratives. The findings highlight
that empowerment is not a uniform or static concept but is mediated by genre, culture and history. Feminist
utopia and feminist autobiography represent two different but interrelated modes of empowerment— one
collective and structural, the other individual and experiential. Recognising this dynamic tension contributes to
a more holistic understanding of feminist literary expression. To enhance the study further, future research
could broaden the textual scope by incorporating additional works by both Rokeya and Angelou. Including
Rokeya’s essays and Angelou’s later autobiographies or poetry would strengthen comparative insights and
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capture thematic variations across their oeuvres. Moreover, incorporating archival research or historical
reception studies could illuminate how these texts were received and interpreted within their respective cultural
and temporal contexts, thereby situating the question of empowerment within the social histories of reading
and resistance. A more critical engagement with the contrasts between collective and individual empowerment
would also deepen the theoretical contribution of the study. This would allow for a nuanced interrogation of the
potential limitations and affordances of utopian versus autobiographical forms—whether structural
transformation without personal testimony risks abstraction, or whether individual empowerment without
collective vision risks isolation. Such inquiry would reinforce the transnational feminist commitment to
viewing empowerment as both personal and structural, imaginative and lived. Ultimately, empowerment
emerges here as a process of becoming rather than a final state—a continuous negotiation between self, society
and narrative form. Women, as subjects of literature and history, imagine, enact and narrate transformation not
only of themselves but also of the worlds they inhabit. By bringing together Rokeya’s visionary utopia and
Angelou’s autobiographical realism, this study affirms that feminist literature— across cultures and genres—
remains a vital site for reimagining the possibilities of gendered liberation.
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