Exploring the Implications, the Outcry and the Outcome of Marriage in Bharati Mukherjee’s Miss New India

3340 Words7 Pages

Bharati Mukherjee’s novels range widely across time and space dealing especially with the consequences emerging out of cultural confrontation of the East with West in the alien land. All her novels are female centered and deals with the changed psyche of the protagonist’s behaviors. But her latest novel Miss New India (2011) takes a U-turn in dealing with the protagonist, Anjali Bose, in her own country i.e. India bringing the western cultural confrontational effects of highly sophisticated life style in rural and urban India. This paper focuses on the issues of marriage in typical Indian family in which marriage is considered as the utmost holy duty of parents. It also brings out the challenges, implications, outcry and outcome of marriage of the protagonist. Miss New India is the last of the trilogy consisting others two as Desirable Daughters (2002) and Tree Bride (2004).
Fiction by women writers constitutes a major segment of contemporary writing in English. It provides insights, a wealth of understanding reservoir of meanings and a basis of discussion. Through women’s eyes we can see different world, with their assistance we can seek to realize potential of human achievement. One of the reasons that women have, in such a large number, taken up their pen is because it has allowed them to create their own world. It has allowed them to set the condition of existence, free from direct inference from men. Similarly, so many women have taken to reading a women’s writing because it allows a ‘safe place’ from which they can explore a wide range of experiences of the world, from which they can identify with a range of characters and a variety of existence. That’s why women’s writing has occupied such a significant and central place ...

... middle of paper ...

...f call centre job and settles in Bangalore.
Later on, Peter sends a letter which reveals that Anjali’s father is no more in the world and her mother is staying in Patna with Sonali. In fact, the devil ‘marriage, the so called—holy Hindu ritual’ has destroyed full Bose family. Thus novel explores the implications, the outcry and the outcome of marriage which is not much favorable.

Works Cited

Dhawan, R.K. Ed. The Fiction of Bharati Mukherjee: A Critical Symposium. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1996. Print.
Kumar, Nagendra. The Fiction of Bharati Mukherjee: A Cultural Perspective. New Delhi:
Atlantic Publishers, 2001. Print.

Mukherjee, Bharati. Desirable Daughters. New Delhi: Rupa Publication India Pvt Ltd, 2011. Print.
---. Miss New India. New Delhi: Rupa Publication India, 2012. Print.
---. Tree Bride. New Delhi: Rupa Publication India Pvt Ltd, 2011. Print.

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