Subarnalata, the play is the adaptation of the well-known novel of the same name, second of the award-winning trilogy written by Ashapurna Debi. The trilogy depicts the lives of three generations of women in the early 20th Century Bengal. Subarnalata is the story of a woman who was married off at the age of nine. She is caught in the web of an orthodox system that denies self-expression, stifles questions and prohibits any interaction with the outside world. She spends her life protesting against indignity and injustice. She has obviously inherited the seeds of this rebellion from her mother, who leaves her home forever when she learns that her daughter has been secretly married off against her wishes at that young age. Subarnalata wages a lonely battle against a well-established male dominated system, only to be isolated from everyone, even her children, on whom she had great hopes, cannot comprehend her angst. The narrative gets added sharpness in it with the backdrop of the nationalist and reform movements prevalent during that period in Bengal.