In Desirable Daughters, Bharati Mukherjee uses the protagonist, Tara’s point of view, the flashbacks of her past specifically her childhood, and evocative diction in order to reveal how Tara and her sisters integrate their Bengali culture and Western culture which results in them defying the true ideals of a Bengali Society.
Throughout the novel we are provided with various pieces of information simply through Tara, the protagonist’s point of view. We as readers embark on this journey where Tara struggles with integrating the culture she was born into with the culture she’s currently living in. Tara highlights different cultures and situations that she and her sisters and ex-husband Bish are presented with. For example, in Indian culture especially …show more content…
Tara says, “Love” is a slippery word when there are so many meanings, Love to Bish, is the residue of providing for parents and family, contributing to good causes and community charities.” This is what Tara’s definition of love was before she integrated into a western culture and moved to the U.S. But after her divorce her outlook on things completely changed. Now to her “Love is having fun with someone, more fun with that person than with anyone else, over a longer haul”. This is completely against her upbringings which she admits to herself. Not only do we learn that she is defying her Bengali upbringings, but she is losing her sense of being which we distinguish when Tara gives us the insight, “I am not the only blue-jeaned woman with a Pashmina shawl around my shoulders and I feel as if I don’t belong here”. By having such thoughts, Tara is beginning to realize that the cultural barrier between where and how she grew up with and where she’s living now might be too high to …show more content…
Tara’s views towards her sister have drastically changed over the years. When Tara is reminiscing over the past she recalls her older sister, Paravati as being, “Ms. Brains and Beauty” to now simply being “pliable” which appears to be in a negative connotation. Though Tara would never say this to her sister, it reveals how the time has changed and so have the sisters. The fact that her sister is still in the culture that she grew up in is the reason that she hasn’t shown any prominent change in herself other than solely focusing on her husband and his family which is quite the opposite of what Tara experiences when she migrates to the U.S. The diction is simple and easy to understand yet it’s full of emotion and allows for the reader to get an impression of what her relationship with her family is like as well as how challenging it can be to balance two lives one where you hold on to the past and one where despite living in the present she feels like they don’t fit in anywhere neither in her Bengali culture nor in the American culture.
Desirable Daughters is a novel which not only focuses on the obstacles one faces when being placed in a new environment with people from different cultures. The struggle that a person goes through trying to balance the two cultures
Throughout the novel we are provided with various pieces of information simply through Tara, the protagonist’s point of view. We as readers embark on this journey where Tara struggles with integrating the culture she was born into with the culture she’s currently living in. Tara highlights different cultures and situations that she and her sisters and ex-husband Bish are presented with. For example, in Indian culture especially …show more content…
Tara says, “Love” is a slippery word when there are so many meanings, Love to Bish, is the residue of providing for parents and family, contributing to good causes and community charities.” This is what Tara’s definition of love was before she integrated into a western culture and moved to the U.S. But after her divorce her outlook on things completely changed. Now to her “Love is having fun with someone, more fun with that person than with anyone else, over a longer haul”. This is completely against her upbringings which she admits to herself. Not only do we learn that she is defying her Bengali upbringings, but she is losing her sense of being which we distinguish when Tara gives us the insight, “I am not the only blue-jeaned woman with a Pashmina shawl around my shoulders and I feel as if I don’t belong here”. By having such thoughts, Tara is beginning to realize that the cultural barrier between where and how she grew up with and where she’s living now might be too high to …show more content…
Tara’s views towards her sister have drastically changed over the years. When Tara is reminiscing over the past she recalls her older sister, Paravati as being, “Ms. Brains and Beauty” to now simply being “pliable” which appears to be in a negative connotation. Though Tara would never say this to her sister, it reveals how the time has changed and so have the sisters. The fact that her sister is still in the culture that she grew up in is the reason that she hasn’t shown any prominent change in herself other than solely focusing on her husband and his family which is quite the opposite of what Tara experiences when she migrates to the U.S. The diction is simple and easy to understand yet it’s full of emotion and allows for the reader to get an impression of what her relationship with her family is like as well as how challenging it can be to balance two lives one where you hold on to the past and one where despite living in the present she feels like they don’t fit in anywhere neither in her Bengali culture nor in the American culture.
Desirable Daughters is a novel which not only focuses on the obstacles one faces when being placed in a new environment with people from different cultures. The struggle that a person goes through trying to balance the two cultures