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Bangle Sellers by Sarojini Naidu
Bangle Sellers by Sarojini Naidu
Key thoughts –
The entire poem is a tribute to Indian women and their beauty and grace.
It is a celebration of their femininity or female form. It threads various
stages of a woman’s life and into the cultural wealth of India. It also
acknowledges the part of bangle sellers in the customs and traditions of
India
Stanza 1
• Bangle sellers are we who bear
Our shining loads to the temple fair...
Who will buy these delicate, bright
Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
For happy daughters and happy wives.
Stanza 2
• Some are meet for a maiden's wrist,
Silver and blue as the mountain mist,
Some are flushed like the buds that dream
On the tranquil brow of a woodland stream,
Some are aglow with the bloom that cleaves
To the limpid glory of new-born leaves
AFL
1.Where are the bangle sellers going to sell their bangles and
why?
2.How are the bangles described in the 1 st stanza?
3.What colours of the bangle are meant for maidens? What do
the colours symbolize?
1.The bangle sellers are going to the temple fair to sell their bangles to women of different age groups.
2.The bangles described here are delicate, bright, colorful, and shiny like a rainbow.
3.Silver, blue, rosy, and leaf green are the colors of the bangles meant for maidens. While silver is the
symbol of purity and brightness, blue symbolizes emotional intensity and depth, rosy and red and leaf-
green colours are symbols of beauty and freshness, respectively.
Stanza 3
• Some are like fields of sunlit corn,
Meet for a bride on her bridal morn,
Some, like the flame of her marriage fire,
Or, rich with the hue of her heart's desire,
Tinkling, luminous, tender, and clear,
Like her bridal laughter and bridal tear.
Stanza 4
• Some are purple and gold flecked grey
For she who has journeyed through life midway,
Whose hands have cherished, whose love has blest,
And cradled fair sons on her faithful breast,
And serves her household in fruitful pride,
And worships the gods at her husband's side.
AFL
• 1. What does the simile ‘the flame of her marriage life’ suggest about
the colour of some bangles? Which phrases used in these lines tell you
about the life of a married woman?
• 2. Discuss the use of colour imagery used in stanza 4.
Poetic Devices
• Simile
In the second stanza, while describing the colors suitable for
young maidens she uses the similes “Silver and blue as the
mountain mist” and “Some are flushed like the buds that dream.”
Again, in the third stanza too, the poet compares the colors of
bangle for a bride to the “fields of sunlit corn,” and “flame of her
marriage fire.” The simile used in the last line of the third stanza
“bridal laughter and bridal tear” comprises the joy and sorrow of
getting married.
Metaphors
• Imagery
One could visualize the “mountain mist,” “buds that dream”, “new
born leaves” and “flame of her marriage fire” and the ‘tinkling’
sound. They beautifully describe the scene.
Alliteration
Rhetorical Questions
“Who will buy these delicate, bright/ Rainbow-tinted circles of
light?”