Charulata, one of Ray's most admired films, is set in a significant historical context that develops to problematize the assumed role of the contemporary Indian woman. Based on Tagore's novel, the film is set in 19th-century Bengal, on the brink of change, and is one of Ray's attempts to delineate 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, lofty ideals and self-indulgence. He was chauvinistic and devoid of practical wisdom and became a victim of his own high idealism. The high liberal rhetoric of these men was a borrowed voice from the West that had no real connection to the current realities of the day. Most of them couldn't even keep their own houses in order. Bhupati Nath Dutta, Charulata's husband, the self-proclaimed liberal social reformer, is described as so lost in himself that he unknowingly neglects his wife who remains secluded in the 'andarmahal' or inner sanctum of the house. Bhupati, in her Western clothes, spouts the new liberal rhetoric but hardly notices Charu's attempt to break out of her role as a 19th-century housewife. Thus, Ray shows that the neoliberalism these Bengali Renaissance men insisted on was in essence just a façade that sought to hide the same old structures of power and gender. Although Bhupati assigns Amal, his cousin, to take care of Charu's education and creative writing, his general attitude reveals that Charu's creative gifts do not have much importance in the larger social context. Bhupati's neoliberal political and socialist position thus proves very nar... half of paper... looking through her opera glasses means immediate empowerment for her, later prove inadequate to grant Charu real female emancipation and agency. The film, however, is not exactly focused on the question of whether he will ever achieve his liberation, but emphasizes the right to awakening and self-liberation. Whether Charu can ever step outside the confines of Prabina and negotiate with Nabina's terms will ultimately remain unanswered. The famous final scene that Ray confesses was influenced by the ending of Truffaut's Les Quatre Cents Coups - Charu and Bhupati's hands joining yet never meeting - signifies not only 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 sense of ambiguity and incompleteness.