PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN THE NOVELS AND SHORT-STORIES OF BHARATI MUKHERJEE AND EDITED POEMS OF HARPRASAD SHARMA BY DR. RAM SHARMA
Taking into account the complexity of life,different histories culture and different structures of values, the woman’s question despite basic solidarity, needs to be tackled in relation to the socio-cultural situation. The novels of Bharati Mukherjee are self actualising. Quest for the definition of self and search for identity are the main features of her women who are seen caught in the flux of tradition and tradition and modernity. Neither can they completely detach themselves from their part, nor do they have any certitude in the future. Bharati Mukherjee has interceded reworked the study of feminism in her writings. Central to her vision in The Holder Of The World, Wife and jasmine are issues related to women. Feminism in her works has something of What Caroll Smith Rosen Berg (1979) argues is -the emotional segregation of women and man, which brought about, led to the development of a specifically female world(137)-. The network of female world comes to us not only in Mukherjee’s novels but also in her collections of Short Stories. She advocates many faces of feminism encompassing agitation for equal opportunity, sexual antonomy and right of self determination.
Justification
Mukherjee’s fiction convinces us that gender is a multifaceted category open to change and variation, and reinforces, what Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing had suggested-that particular forms of female marginality must be examined in relation to the conditions of women’s lives-as immigrants, minorities, wealthy, poor, black, white, sex workers, maids, or academics (quoted by Rayaprol 135). Mukherjee’s depiction of women and their different relationships portrays the dominance of patriarchal practices in traditional society, as well as the forms of liberation and empowerment which are available to women in their diasporic situation. Mukherjee’s female characters are real, modern lifelike. They are typical representatives of young woman particularly of The Third World countries who cherish the dream of emigrating to America for higher education and higher wages, and then after arrival there, aspire to settle there permanently. Their situations and the difficulties they face are also realistically portrayed. In nearly, all stories there is a fixed pattern. In the first part of each story, the focus is on narrating the situation of an immigrant who is in the process of immigration or settling down and in the second part who is in the process of immigration or settling down and in the second part the protagoinst is invariably given to making love with a partner of the opposite sex who is rooted in the American soil.
