MEDICAL ADVERTISEMENTS IN COLONIAL BENGAL, 1920-1940: SOME REFLECTIONS ON NOTIONS ABOUT WOMEN’S HEALTH AND DOMESTICITY

Through a study of medical advertisements in late colonial Bengal, this paper seeks to engage with the notions of domesticity and womanhood. Medical advertisements in local newspapers were directed towards the Indian middle class, and hence these reflected, reinforced, and contributed to emerging discourses on Indian middle-class domesticity and women's health. Women's health, motherhood, and childhood were significant in the debates about the future of the nation and had become central to the reformist agendas of the British Raj, missionaries, Indian men, and women political activists since the nineteenth century. By addressing and reflecting these concerns, the ads foregrounded women's role as mothers and wives in managing family consumption and well-being.