Calcutta-born writer, Bharati Mukherjee’s novels feature Indian women protagonists. She addresses issues of relevance for diasporic women.
Abstract
Calcutta-born writer, Bharati Mukherjee’s novels feature Indian women protagonists. She addresses issues of relevance for diasporic women. Women in the diaspora find themselves confronted with issues of cultural displacement, personal identity, patriarchy and marginalization. The aim of this thesis is to examine Bharati Mukherjee’s novels for engagement with the multiplicity of challenges that confront migrant women today. The thesis will explore the ways in which Mukherjee’s novels deal with the pain of exile, alienation and isolation, and conversely, how these texts approach matters relating to the liberation of women from the oppressive social order of patriarchy, and the traumatic experience of immigration.
Many Indians and non-Indians have commented on these themes in Mukherjee’s novels. I propose to examine these observations and analyse, in particular, psychological effects on women characters, values attached to name changes, and various forms of violence and violations in their transformation. Name changes are a common feature of Mukherjee’s
narratives, not surprising given that marriage features prominently in Mukherjee’s writings. Mukherjee goes beyond the transformations signaled through a change of surname to depict changes in their identities, some of which are imposed upon them, others assimilated by the women themselves as they strive for autonomy in their lives. Gradually Life skills are gained
through self-knowledge and education, thus fortifying them on their own terms, to reinforce their identities.
Therefore, Mukherjee’s novels are about the ways in which women negotiate matters of identity and agency within an overarching patriarchal and alienating world, Agency is the capability of the women to take action for themselves and to convert those options into preferred end results. Translocation offers freedoms won or freedoms denied within their patriarchal structures. Naturally customs obstruct women’s agency. The novels of Mukherjee portray an exacting communal-political situation and insightfully depict the tribulations faced by women who resettled in the United States and Canada after the Partition of India in 1947. The thesis explores the status of migrant women, the risks and threats they tolerate in their
new countries. These women characters reinvent themselves in cosmopolitan societies, like Canada and America, where they feel ostracized and menial or second-class citizens.
The thesis will examine the expression of these key themes in the selected novels from Mukherjee’s oeuvre: The Tiger’s Daughter (1971), Wife (1975), Jasmine (1991) and The Holder of the World (1994). Other works like Desirable Daughters, Leave It To Me and the anthology of short fiction, The Middleman and Other Stories are not analysed in this research. I chose for this research novels which dealt with those issues that I wished to explore in my quest to gain understanding of migration of women and their search for a home. Thus I shall explore and analyse the evolution of their personal integrity in their adopted countries. Significantly, migration introduces new experiences that are potentially oppressive and traumatic for women characters in Bharati Mukherjee’s novels: the primary desire articulated by the female protagonists in each narrative is to overcome ethnic stereotyping and the anxiety of marginalized existence as they seek a better and wiser existence overseas