CONNOTATIONS OF SPACE AND IDENTITY IN CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI'S ARRANGED MARRIAGE

Abstract

The aesthetic of dislocation created by writers of South-Asian origin evokes the anxiety, anguish and violence characterizing cross-cultural mobility and displacement. The multicultural trajectory of thought involves the possibilities of occupying two or more distinct worlds simultaneously. People who live in a foreign country experience the dominant-subordinate relation or the centre-margin divisions.They suffer economic and political inequities on the grounds of discrimination and are sometimes forced to occupy a subordinate and stigmatized social position. The experiences that the immigrants encounter in the host topos due to the clash of cultures are complex and they experience tremendous identity crisis,which is the most inevitable part of their immigrant experience.The concepts of “identity” and “difference”, informed by historical, economic, political parameters, are crucial to a discourse on ethnicity. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, an immigrant writer with Indian ties, has grappled with the promises and problems embedded in immigration. Her anthology of short stories Arranged Marriage (1995) chronicles the regeneration and relocation of the immigrant women in America.This paper analyzes the stories “Clothes”and “Meeting Mrinal”in Arranged Marriage and attempts to depict Indian women's immigration to the United States as an opportunity to escape themselves from the oppressed or depressed conditions of their primary space (homeland) to freedom under the influence of the norms of their secondary space (hostland).