Bharati Mukherjee’s Desirable Daughters addresses the anomaly of an ideal marriage, an ideal culture and the stereotype immigrant theory of South Asians into America. Love, marriage, sex, dowry, woman subjugation intertwined with a small plot of victory in the face of child-marriage induces progressive interest through the novel. The conflict of tradition and modernity, irony of arrange marriage and acceptance of cultures beyond the laid-out limit, unfurls instantaneous engrossment.
The two sharply delineated settings of India and America contribute immensely to bring out the differences in the culture and lifestyle of both the places in the story, from Tara’s perspective. The sheer energy of the shopkeepers in Jackson Heights, the expression …show more content…
There is an element of commonality in the beginning of the novel, where the three sisters start from the same place. Later, each settles in a different space far from their hometown, trying to create a setting where they wish they could re-think their way of living. But, strong attachment to their cultural roots, hinders them from changing into a whole new person. More than being an autobiography of a single narrator or depicting the lives of different characters from the protagonist’s point of view, Desirable Daughters speaks for the action of the immigrant community. The immigrants, mostly the Indo-Americans, who have been migrating from South Asian states to the west, are usually swayed away from their roots into the hustle-bustle of a busy, economic oriented life where there is no retrospection. The characters, in various instances, throughout the novel have tried to, subtly, hint at the importance of grounding to one’s origin.
The author gives a choice of character for an Indian woman through the three sisters. Parvati leads a self-congratulatory, confined, domiciliary life in Bombay with a Parkinson’s affected husband Auro. Padma leads a comparatively more independent, yet culturally rooted life with Harish. While, Tara depicts an epitome of indomitable courage (to break free from norms), …show more content…
Tara, amidst all the bewilderment of her family’s past, discovers herself into a whole new plethora of emotions and cultural believes. The acceptance of her son being gay, the concern for preserving her native culture, the quest to prove Christopher Dey(the self-proclaimed nephew of Tara who adds a suspense flavour to the text) as an imposter, show that, no one, but Tara would have qualified as a protagonist. Tara, who started off as a desirable daughter, when the Bhattacharjee family was on the verge of dissolution, was taken by the American culture, but finally, came in terms with her traditional
The two sharply delineated settings of India and America contribute immensely to bring out the differences in the culture and lifestyle of both the places in the story, from Tara’s perspective. The sheer energy of the shopkeepers in Jackson Heights, the expression …show more content…
There is an element of commonality in the beginning of the novel, where the three sisters start from the same place. Later, each settles in a different space far from their hometown, trying to create a setting where they wish they could re-think their way of living. But, strong attachment to their cultural roots, hinders them from changing into a whole new person. More than being an autobiography of a single narrator or depicting the lives of different characters from the protagonist’s point of view, Desirable Daughters speaks for the action of the immigrant community. The immigrants, mostly the Indo-Americans, who have been migrating from South Asian states to the west, are usually swayed away from their roots into the hustle-bustle of a busy, economic oriented life where there is no retrospection. The characters, in various instances, throughout the novel have tried to, subtly, hint at the importance of grounding to one’s origin.
The author gives a choice of character for an Indian woman through the three sisters. Parvati leads a self-congratulatory, confined, domiciliary life in Bombay with a Parkinson’s affected husband Auro. Padma leads a comparatively more independent, yet culturally rooted life with Harish. While, Tara depicts an epitome of indomitable courage (to break free from norms), …show more content…
Tara, amidst all the bewilderment of her family’s past, discovers herself into a whole new plethora of emotions and cultural believes. The acceptance of her son being gay, the concern for preserving her native culture, the quest to prove Christopher Dey(the self-proclaimed nephew of Tara who adds a suspense flavour to the text) as an imposter, show that, no one, but Tara would have qualified as a protagonist. Tara, who started off as a desirable daughter, when the Bhattacharjee family was on the verge of dissolution, was taken by the American culture, but finally, came in terms with her traditional