Charulata, one of Ray's most admired films, is set in an important historical context which is revealed to problematize the presupposed role of the contemporary Indian woman. Based on Tagore's novel, the film is set in 19th-century Bengal on the threshold of change and is one of Ray's attempts to map female subjectivity at a time when Bengali society and culture were in a state of flow between modernity and tradition. Ray seems to suggest that the Bengali Renaissance was essentially a bourgeois male fantasy sustained by wealth, noble ideals and self-satisfaction. She was male-centered and lacking in practical wisdom and became a victim of her own lofty idealism. The highly liberal rhetoric of these men was a voice borrowed from the West that had no real connection to the actual realities of the time. Most of them couldn't even maintain their own homes. Bhupati Nath Dutta, Charulata's husband, a self-proclaimed liberal social reformer, is described as being so lost in himself that he unknowingly neglects his wife who remains isolated in the 'andarmahal' or inner sanctum of the house. Bhupati, in his Western clothes, spouts the new liberal rhetoric, but he barely notices Charu's attempt to break out of her role as a 19th-century housewife. Thus, Ray shows that the neoliberalism insisted on by these men of the Bengali Renaissance was in substance just a facade trying to hide the same old power and gender structures. Although Bhupati asks Amal, his cousin, to take care of Charu's education and creative writing, her general attitude reveals that Charu's creative gifts are of little importance in the larger social context. . Bhupati's neoliberal political and socialist position thus turns out to be very close to the middle of paper...... looking through her opera binoculars means immediate empowerment for her, they later prove insufficient to grant Charu the real emancipation and action of women. The film, however, is not exactly focused on whether she will ever be able to achieve liberation, but it does emphasize the right to awakening and self-liberation. The question of whether Charu will ever be able to step outside the confines of the Prabina and negotiate on the terms of the Nabina remains ultimately unanswered in the end. The famous last scene, which Ray admits was influenced by the ending of Truffaut's Four Hundred Blows – Charu and Bhupati's hands coming together without ever meeting – signifies not only the uncertainty in the husband-wife relationship, but also shows that the transition from Prabina to Nabina is never complete and is always tinged with a feeling of ambiguity and incompleteness.