Desirable relations: diaspora and gender relations in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine and "Desirable daughters

Abstract

The globalized and transnational world of contemporary times is marked by the movement of people, goods and information around the world which is defined by Spivak as the new diaspora. In literary works, one of the first writers to discuss such phenomena is the Indian-born writer Bharati Mukherjee. In her works, the writer usually portrays women who leave India in order to settle in North America. Several critics have examined a variety of topics such as immigration, violence and culture clash in the writer's novels and short stories. Critics do not commonly investigate, however, the relationship between contemporary diaspora and gender in Mukherjee's writings. In this thesis, I analyze two of Mukherjee's novels, Jasmine and Desirable Daughters, to prove my hypothesis that the women characters undergo a major change in the way they develop their gender relations mainly as a consequence of their diasporic experience. I investigate each woman character's process of leaving India Jasmine's, Tara's and Padma's and relocating themselves in the United States and their consequent subversion of the gender roles of daughter, sister, mother, wife and widow. I discuss the women character's complex position as subjects in-between cultures and their exposition to new behaviors in their host-land as a way of trying to comprehend their reaction to the liberal and so-called feminist ideas that they encounter in their new homes. I also compare and contrast their experiences of migration as they are marked by issues of gender, class, caste, education and are connected to the types of transgression they are capable of enacting. Finally, I analyze the characters' perceptions of home and investigate how their displacements at home and away from home are also responsible for their disruptive attitudes. My work is informed by the critical framework of postcolonial, diaspora and feminist literary studies and aims to highlight the role of women in the new diaspora. My analysis of Mukherjee's women characters fits into such approaches as it focuses on the importance of gender in literary works that are set in diasporic contexts.