Gaban by Premchand: Summary, Characters and Themes

The necklace. Since childhood Jalpa has dreamed of a chandrahaar, a crescent-shaped gold necklace. When she marries Ramanath, a pleasant, idle young man from Allahabad who likes to appear richer than he is, the necklace is missing from the wedding jewellery, and her disappointment is plain.

The lie. Ramanath takes a clerk's job in the municipal office. To win Jalpa's admiration he buys jewellery on credit and lets her believe he can afford it. When the jeweller presses for payment he dips into the government money in his keeping, cannot put it back in time, and, terrified of exposure, runs away to Calcutta.

Calcutta. He is taken in by Devidin, an old vegetable seller, and his wife, who treat him as a son. Living in fear of arrest, he is eventually picked up by the police, who discover that he can be useful: they offer to make his own case disappear if he will testify, falsely, against a group of young men accused of revolutionary crimes.

Jalpa. Meanwhile Jalpa has learned the truth, repaid the missing money and set out to find her husband. In Calcutta she finds him living comfortably as a police witness. Her grief and anger, and the example of people around them, force Ramanath to choose between his safety and the lives of innocent men.

Ramanath: weak rather than wicked, a man who cannot bear to look small in his wife's eyes.

Jalpa: who begins as a young bride in love with jewellery and grows into the moral centre of the novel.

Devidin: the poor Calcutta vegetable seller whose generosity and patriotism shame Ramanath.

Ratan: Jalpa's friend, a young widow whose story shows how little protection the law gave women.

Zohra: a courtesan the police use to keep Ramanath content, who proves more decent than her employers.

Show and debt. The middle-class need to look prosperous, and the jewellery that marks a family's status, drive the whole plot.

Conscience and the nation. Ramanath's private lie becomes a public crime when the colonial police use him against freedom fighters. Premchand links personal honesty to political courage.

Women's strength. As in Godaan, it is a wife who sees most clearly and acts most bravely.