Bharati
Mukherjee, an Indian-American immigrant writer, liberates her women
protagonists for a "New World Order". Mukherjee depicts women
characters is inspired from her experiences in India as well as abroad. Her
main characters, shaped by sensitivity, struggle with an unsettled personal and
cultural identity. These protagonists face victimization, encountering racism,
sexism, and various forms of social oppression. Bharati Mukherjee is concerned
with characters that strain and struggle for the articulation of their
repressed arid stunted voice. As a writer she likes to put much stress on the
fact that her characters, whether they are uniquely Indian or superficially
Western, are basically human. Her women characters vent their feminine
sensibility in their frantic desire for an authentic communication with their
own selves as well as with the society.
“Bharati
Mukherjee’s novels, we get a graphical pattern of a female immigrant’s
self-satisfaction in proportion to the approach she adopts to deal with the
dilemma do being out-rooted but still connected. Significantly, it is the
revised or modified forms of these concepts that define their typical
existence.”[2]
These types of
themes can be easily identified in works of immigrant writers of Indian English
literature. Bharati Mukherjee’s novels deal with the problem of female
suppression but on the other side she gives a new identity to the women of
modern times. Bharati Mukherjee portrays the character of Tara Banerjee as the
new woman who adopts the new lifestyle in an alien country. She makes her
identity in new groups that are shaped by the culture and tradition of her
adopted country but also influenced by her motherland. Her early work led to her
being seen as a writer firmly enclosed in the bosom of Indian writing in
English. But this was an embrace that Mukherjee herself sought to avoid. With
the publication of Darkness, her third book of fiction, she convincingly
declared her desire to be seen as a North American writer.
“Bharati
Mukherjee, now settled abroad, is a significant woman novelist. Born in 1940,
she went to the U.S.A in 1961. Even though it is more than three decades since
she left India for the American continent, familial ties continue to bind her
to the country of her birth. But she is clear about where her loyalties lie
today and is at pain to emphasize that she is an American writer. She has been
greatly attached to Calcutta. Since she was born and brought up there, she
says, "the city will remain a habit with me, but as a writer, I have
developed entirely in the United States." Mukherjee's writing career began
in 1971, with The Tiger's Daughter.” [3]
Bharati
Mukherjee deals with the themes related to Indian women particularly the
problem of identity crisis, cross-cultural issue and search for Identity. She
also depicts the clashes between two culture and caste. Her protagonist tries
to tackle the problem of loss of culture and established a new identity in the
U.S. This cultural transplant leads to a crisis of identity and becomes an expression of our governing systems of
ethnicity, race and religion, interacting with the social, economic and
political world around us.
“India is
safely in the camp of democracy, whether science and technology are compatible
with tradition values in Indian life and whether India can be assured of
increasing prosperity are chiefly because of inadequate recognition of India's
attempt, throughout the age, at a reconciliation of the opposing forces of enjoyment
and renunciation. There are also misconceptions regarding the pillars of the
Indian social structure namely the joint family, the caste and self-sufficient
village community.”[4]
In this way, cultural identity represents the extent we feel connected to
the part of a given cultural group. While identity formation is a fluid
construct which is subject to evolution and influence, one could argue that
people born to the dominant in group experience a relatively smooth and
unvaried transition into their sense of self. Conversely, first- or
second-generation immigrants who have stake in two different worlds may find
themselves stuck by conflicting values, practices and identities. Indeed,
globalization has opened up the door for culture to flow between time and
space.
Bharati
Mukherjee has also explored the positive and negative aspects of
multiculturalism. She places her protagonists in a various situation where they
find different cultures and traditions. She portrays the different types of
situations in her novels like the journey for quest of identity, struggles
between the two cultures, alienation, rootlessness, loneliness, isolation and
dislocation. She draws her characters who remain connected to their homeland.
In The Tigers Daughter, Desirable Daughters and The Tree Bride, The
Holder of the World, leave it to Me, these are the stories
in which her character always remain their roots and native lands. In such a
multicultural background, they go through identity crisis which leads them to
undertake a quest of their own identity.
“The religious
individual is not closed off against the world and the society in which he
lives. In a dual manner, he is open in relation to these. Logically, prior to
any ‘religious experience’ he has received from society a whole host of
symbols, concepts and spontaneous emotive associations connected with these.
They flow into his experience and flavor it and provide a social or ‘cultural’
dimension to it. Nobody could even identify in his own consciousness a
religious experience, had he not learnt from society the words and their
meaning, of ‘experience’ and ‘religious’. This example also shows that,
naturally, ‘culture’ encompasses a much wider range of words, concepts and
symbols than what we would call ‘religious.”[5]
Cultural
alienation is a huge problem today. This can be termed as culture shock when a
person moves away from their own culture and old values come into clash with
the new ones which they find. Bharati Mukherjee describes the American
immigration experience as one of a “two-way process” in which both the writer
and the immigrants grow by the interchange and experience.
“Eliot believes
that there is a very close relationship between culture and religion. It is
religion of a people which makes them culturally different from the people of
other faiths. Two religious may have something in common but their differences
might bring about a clash among their followers. It is really very difficult to
reconcile between two antagonistic religions. Eliot begins his enquiry into the
relationship between culture and religion with a very important assertion: -
“No culture has appeared or development except together with religion …culture
will appear to be the product of religion, or the religion the product of the
culture.”[6]
Mukherjee
brings American and Indian culture together, especially the Bengali culture. In
her novels she mainly focuses on Bengali culture and traditions. Which are
deeply rooted in her characters. Marriage is a social connotation culture that
ties a man and woman into a relationship intending mutual understanding and
support between them. It reflects the culture of a particular community, group,
religion etc. In a novel The Tiger’s Daughter Mukherjee
handles marriage as the second important theme. “It is, thus apparent that
culture owes much of its existence to religion. An individual, class or group
or a society’s way of living is molded and shaped by its religion which in turn
becomes that religion of that particular society. In other words, we can say that
culture and religion are complementary to each other. Viewing the deep affinity
between them, Eliot dilates: -
“And both
‘religion’ and ‘culture’ besides meaning different things from each other,
should means for the individual and for the group something towards which they
strive, not merely something which they possess. Yet these are an aspect in
which we can see a religion as the whole way of life of a people, from birth to
the grave, from morning to night and even in sleep, and that way of life is also
its culture.”[7]
In the novel The
Tiger’s Daughter Tara plans a trip to India in search of the Indian
memories. Which also reflects the conflict between illusion and reality. But
the novelist has adopted the technique of documentation to bring out the contrast
between two cultures and two worlds. An immigrant away from home idealizes
their home country and fond memories of it. Tara is packed off by her father at
early age of fifteen for America because he is prompted by suspicion and pain
about his country. But in foreign land sometime she feels homesick and even
small things cause her pain. Bharati Mukherjee, an Indian-born writer.She
distinguishes herself from many European writers for several reasons, making
her a notable figure among American immigrant writers. There are many such
features in Bharati Mukherjee's literature, which differentiate her writings
from other European writers. Bharati Mukherjee’s female protagonists are
immigrants and suffered from cultural shock but they are potential women and
anxious to establish their identity by undertaking their heroic journeys. This
is the reason Bharati Mukherjee has received considerable critical attention
from almost all the quarters of the globe in a relatively short period of just
twenty-five years. Even though she has been acknowledged as a “voice of
expatriate-immigrants” sensibility, a close observation of her novels reveals
that she has written all the novels with predominantly feminist views.
Since Bharati
Mukherjee’s women characters are the victims of immigration, all the critics
focus her novels as problems and consequences due to immigration but the
problems are not because they the characters in Mukherjee's works are
immigrants, yet they stand out because the female protagonists actively advocate
for their rights both as women and individuals. Mukherjee endeavors to
establish a redefined relationship between men and women, emphasizing equality
as a cornerstone.. In Bharati Mukherjee’s first novel The Tiger’s
Daughter, the protagonist Tara Banerjee returns to India after seven years
stay in America. The story is drawn on Mukherjee’s own experience and those of
her sisters who had gone to study in America.
When Tara lands
to India, her first stepping at Bombay fills her disappointment. The unfamiliar
territory appears to have transformed into a place that feels more like home to
her. She repents to have come to India without her husband and she is unable to
keep him off her mind. “Perhaps I was stupid to come without him, she thought,
even with him rewriting his novel during the vacation. Perhaps I was too
impulsive, confusing my fear of New York with homesickness. Or perhaps I was
going mad.”[8] She is not comfortable with her relatives. Here, Tara’s
Bombay relatives cannot accept a woman who not accompanied by her husband,
David. According to Indian tradition, a man should lead the woman, he plays a
protective role. Travelling alone, living alone and moving alone are part of
unfamiliarity in many parts of India.
In Indian
tradition, one should marry in his own caste, if anyone marries from another
caste, they will be treated as an outcast or a sinner. Tara, the main
character, goes against these norms by marrying a foreign man who is a Jewish.
“In India she felt she was not married to a person but to a foreigner and this
foreignness was a burden. It was hard for her to talk about marriage
responsibilities in Camac Street, her friends were curious only about the
adjustments she has made.”[9] She is totally forgetting her caste and
religion through her marriages. The primary factor intensifying her sense of
discomfort and unease is her marriage, which weighs heavily on her heart like a
burden.
When Tara
Banerjee landed in Bombay, after seven years, there she realized that she
forgot her Bengali culture and this is the reason to know much more about her
culture and for rerooting herself she visits to India. “Tara’s mother, Arati,
was a saintly woman. At least, she was given to religious dreams. Her religious
dreams were not holy enough to turn her hair white overnight. But they were
adequately religious.”[10] Tara’s mother is a very kind and virtuous
woman. All the day she is doing Pooja Path. She spends most of
her time in god’s prayer. “As a saintly woman, Tara’s mother spent a great deal
of time in the prayer room.”[11]
Tara’s mother
is a spiritual kind of lady; she follows all her cultural rules. She takes
three times bath in a day. “The saintly mother also spent an unreasonable
amount of time in the bathroom next to dressing room. Taking three baths a day
was a principle with her.”[12] Taking three-time baths in a day is her
principle, because she does not like to touch the god from dirty hands. When
Tara’s mother sits in her prayer, she does not want any kind of disturbance
during her worship. When Tara thought to leave Pooja room then
her mother said “Don’t leave,” her mother said, swiveling slightly on her tiny
carpet but not breaking the rhythm of her Sanskrit prayers.”[13] She
doesn’t want to pay attention to any kind of sound during her prayers.
Mukherjee makes
a criticism of the conservative attitude of the Indians who are crazy of
foreign things and clothes but they do not accept the marriage with foreign
people. In the presence of her mother, Tara feels alienated within herself.
Tara becomes mentally turbulent and makes her return to the USA. In this way
Tara's journey to India proves as a quest for self and quest for immigrant psyche
which prove frustrating slowly leading to her illusion, alienation, depression
and finally her tragic end.
