BEYOND BORDERS: INCARNATION OF STRENGTH AND CHANGE IN BHARATI MUKHERJEE’S WIFE

Abstract [English]

This paper explores the theme of women's liberation in the works of Bharati Mukherjee, a prominent diasporic female writer, and examines whether the experience of immigration influences the fate, mindset, and lives of women. The writers of the South Asian diaspora, in recent decades, found prominence in the international literary arena. In their fiction, these writers delve into the experiences of migrant characters while also examining themes of displacement and the self-construction of identity, particularly among female characters. The portrayal of women who navigate the challenges of being uprooted from their homeland gains significant relevance when viewed in the context of the expansive Indian subcontinent. The diasporic Indian writers have generally dealt with women characters from their own displaced
community but some of them have also taken a liking for Western characters and they have been convincing in dealing with them. Mukherjee’s fiction deals with liberated identity of women characters. She talks about the concept of migration and one finds her emphasis on female characters, these women keep struggling for their identity, their psychological suffering and they finally come out as a self-assertive individual free from the shackles of relationships of the past. However, the situation imagined in Mukherjee’s text, a middle--‐class, suburban environment, creates a solitary, transnational identity, lived between countries, where travel between the land of birth and the land of adoption remains accessible.