SUBALTERN VOICES IN INDIAN FICTION: A STUDY OF MARGINALIZED NARRATIVES WITH A FOCUS ON BHARATI MUKHERJEE’S JASMINE AND DESIRABLE DAUGHTER
Keywords:
Subaltern voices, marginalized voices, hybridity, women’s resistance, oppression Novelists in India, writing in English have always expressed their concern for the women in their works: women working, women domestically employed, women situated in other locales, women in alien or foreign lands, women who have experienced discordant notes in their martial relations, women in distress and abused. Women oppressed by patriarchy and women having conflicts from within and from outside. Notable among such women novelist in India include Anita Desai, Kamala Margandiah, Manju Kapur, Kiran Desai, Duwakarane,Abstract
Indian women Novelist have in their works given an expression to the conflicts that women in general confront in their native locals and also in alien environment. The struggles of the under privileged people, such as, women, Dalit, Adivasis, and other subaltern groups have long been expressed in Indian fiction. This study examines how subaltern voices are portrayed in Indian literature, with a particular reference on Bharati Mukherjee’s works Jasmine and Desirable Daughter. The novel criticizes patriarchal oppression, gendered violences, and the complex negotiations women undertake within structures of tradition and modernity.
Bharati Mukherjee has been highlighting the need to accept and adapt to the cultural hybridity of their environs by becoming self-actualized individuals. Hybridity as a term negates the notions associated with homogeneity and centrality, truth, purity and unity though at another level hybridity holds out a new integral unity a fusion that is created from diverse origins. In addition to exposing the silent suffering and subdued struggle of women in Indian society, the novel emphasizes the linkages of cast, class and gender through its female protagonists. The article attempts to identify the cultural conflicts confronted by the women protagonist in the Desirable Daughters and Jasmine the novel by Bharathi Mukherjee. The cultural conflicts are mostly multi-cultural. This paper also attempts to find the novelists way of overcoming such conflicts.
