Analysis On Bharati Mukherjee English Literature Essay

Analysis On Bharati Mukherjee English Literature Essay In turn, Mukherjee lays claim to an America that is both constantly transforming, and transformed by, the new immigrant. As the title of her short stories collection â€Å"The Middle Man† and Other Stories (1988) suggests, each protagonist from a different part of the world functions as a mediator of cultures, negotiating the â€Å"two-way transformation† (Mukherjee, â€Å"AUP† 141) of either an expatriate or immigrant experience in America. That the collection won the National Book Critics Circle Award undeniably affirms the appeal of such a Maximalist narrative strategy professing to give an equal voice to each immigrant group. On further analysis, however, it is clear that Mukherjee’s representation of a fluid American (trans)national identity influenced by diversity is ultimately predicated on the foregrounding of differences. Despite Mukherjee’s call for America to go beyond multiculturalism in its treatment of new immigrants, her own postcolo nial immigrant subjectivity-inevitably shaped by her elite British and American educational background-remains aligned with white hegemony, which continues to hierarchize its immigrants on the bases of ethnicity, class and gender. After all, Mukherjee specifically reveals in Jasmine that â€Å"[e]ducated people are interested in difference† (33). Keeping Mukherjee’s explicitly stated literary agendas in mind, this chapter will attempt to examine the ironies in Mukherjee’s postcolonial subjectivity in the novel Jasmine and the two short stories â€Å"A Wife’s Story† and â€Å"The Tenant,† both from â€Å"‘The Middleman’ and Other Stories† collection. Radical alterity of India From the vantage point of a successful female intellectual in America, Mukherjee disavows India precisely because its repressive patriarchy severely limits women’s opportunities in life, insofar as the sanctity of women’s lives is largel y disregarded and constantly endangered. However, â€Å"feudal compliance was [precisely] what still kept India an unhealthy and backward nation† (Mukherjee, Jasmine 77). This necessitates that Mukherjee’s heroines break the vicious cycle of being locked into arranged marriages that technically seal their fates with violent subjugation. In Mukherjee’s short story â€Å"The Tenant,† Maya’s claim that â€Å"[a]ll Indian men are wife beaters† (99) may be an exaggeration, but the more disturbing revelation is that â€Å"the groom’s mother was absolute tyrant of the household† (Mukherjee, Jasmine 147) in India. Indeed, generations of Indian women have also been physically abusing female subordinates deemed to have transgressed patriarchal norms. Yet, when meted out to any woman who defends or is interested in the pursuit of an education, such domestic violence is clearly a violation of basic human rights, unjustified to an America t hat champions the inalienable rights of every individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In Jasmine, Jyoti’s mother suffers strikes from her husband because she supports Jyoti’s aspiration to continue her studies and become a doctor. In the short story â€Å"A Wife’s Story,† Panna’s mother is beaten by her illiterate mother-in-law because she enrolled in French class at the Alliance Franà §aise. The fact that even these Brahmin wives are not spared the rod underscores that physical violence against women cuts across the entire caste system, denying all women personal and professional progress. These scenarios emphatically portray the radical alterity of India, insofar as it becomes utterly incomprehensible to Americans who privilege individualism and gender egalitarianism. Aligned with these values, Mukherjee attempts to consolidate her status approval from the American market by positioning herself â€Å"not as [an] advantaged in side[r] of Asian culture but as similarly disadvantaged as [her] Anglo readers in finding that Asian component bizarre, distasteful, and difficult to comprehend† (Shirley Lim, â€Å"AG† 161) as well. As Mukherjee reveals, it is necessary to give Jasmine â€Å"a society that was so regressive, traditional, so caste-bound, genderist, that she could discard it† (â€Å"IMC† 19) in exchange for a rebirth in America. In exposing the oppression inherent in India’s patriarchal structure, Mukherjee situates her decolonizing impulse as one that embraces emancipation in America, a land that seemingly affords women endless opportunities to attain self-actualization.