Analysis Of The House Holder By Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is comprised of eight short stories about different Indian families’ struggles in America, many of them going through the immigrant experience. The conflicts are with friends and family, and also with themselves, as each of them attempt to find their own identity along with fitting in with the rest of society. One of the causes of these struggles that because the families in the stories are mixed in terms of generation. Many of the adults in the stories were first generation immigrants from India, while many of the children were raised in the United States, which is the second generation. This led to blending of culture and at the same time, clashes between the immigrant mentality of living and the American mentality of living. In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri demonstrates to the reader the important influence of environment, specifically culture and how it impacts parental teachings, on the personality and development of an individuals’ identity, and how the actions and development of characters can affect one’s family and friends; the impact of environment and culture is shown especially by the characters and stories “Hell-Heaven” and “Hema and Kaushik”.

The novel deals with the story of two very different worlds- an extremely orthodox and domineering Indian family and an unusually idiosyncratic family in Massachusetts. Uma, the protagonist of the first part of the book represents the attitude of the author. Through this woman character, Desai endeavours to expose the hypocrisy and male-chauvinism in a particular conservative society or family. She shows how Uma bears the brunt of many insults and abuse flung by her own

She has been instructed that a woman’s only goal is to be a dutiful wife and daughter-in-law. She is a post-graduate and has served as a teacher in a school for eight years. She married Swaminathan who is qualified and well set in life. Her mother-in-law symbolizes the cruelty that woman carry out on womanhood. After bearing two daughters and a son, and serving her mother-in-law with uncompromising devotion for seventeen years she realizes the emptiness of her life. She is shocked to know that she has all along been exploited both by her husband and mother-in-law. Girija’s mother-in-law selfishly makes her observe strict rules of austerity and piety described in Tamil as “madi” and

In this essay I am going to compare the main characteristics of the two most important characters of this book. They were both born in Afghanistan but each of them was raised by totally different families. In spite of not having the same social background after several years they meet one another and live together, as wives of their strict husband Rasheed who refuses modern rights for women.

This joint family, like any social organization, must face problems such as acceptable division of work, relationships and specific family roles. These familial relationships are managed on the basis of a secular hierarchical principle. In fact, all Indians owe respect and obedience to the head of the family, who usually is the father or the oldest man of the family community. In The Gift of a Bride: A Tale of Anthropology, Matrimony and Murder by Nanda and Gregg, it is explained that, “females [are] placed under the perpetual guardianship of first their fathers and elder brothers, then their husbands.” (Nanda & Gregg 22) Thus, all the spending decisions, studies and profession, or marriage, are exclusively the responsibility of the father after the possible discussions with the other men of the family. Age and sex are the basic principles of this hierarchical system. The eldest sons enjoy greater unchallenged authority than their cadets. Of course men have more authority than women, but older married women have an important role within the family. In fact, the authority of a woman depends on the rank of her husband inside the group. Traditionally, the wife of the patriarch rules over domestic affairs and has considerable power over the other women in the community, especially her daughters- in-law.

The present paper attempts to assess the consequences ensued due to the cultural hybridity of two generation of characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake. The first immigrants - Ashoke and Ashima transmit the Bengali culture to their US born children Gogol and Sonia who in turn, transmit the American cultural patterns to their parents. The psychological writhe of the Indian mother Ashima trying to adjust herself in the American culture and endeavoring to inculcate the moral values archetype of India into her children, is the primary focus of the novel. The paper centers on the reflection of Jhumpa Lahiri’s own inclination for Bengali culture and cultural hybridity through a variety of characters painted by her in the novel The Namesake.

In Lahiri's "a temporary matter" the author presents a couple’s failing marriage after the early death of a baby. Along with this, in Lahiri's "interpreter of maladies" the author describes a family that is disconnected from each other as they take a trip to India. Overall, the author, Jhumpa Lahiri, presents the necessity of communication in relationships, through the presentation of two failing marriages.

In Chapter one Mathangi Subramanian describes how she went back to India in 1999 when she went was nineteen. She describes how even though she was nineteen her grandmother was asking “ Mathangi when are you going to get married” and her mother tells her grandmother “ that I always told her and her brother that they should be independent”. This story remind me of my own mother who raised me and my siblings to be independent and that we should only marry someone if we are in love. She wanted us to focus on our education and the things that we love such as running, reading, and dancing. Many young girls are not taught independence at a young age, but pressure to get married before they become “too old”. In addition, in this article Subramanian

Forty Six years ago, on January 24, India got her First Lady Prime Minister - Mrs. Indira Gandhi. The nation of male dominance stood standstill in the awe of the power of this one lady whose determination spoke volumes. Today, India stands high in the race of urbanization but in the genre of social development, it is away behind. It is an irony in this country that where mother is worshipped as Mother Divine, there is domestic violence. In a country where ‘Kumari Puja’ is done, there is female foeticide.

The two novels are produced based on a common definition of marital status with respect to religious and social orthodoxy in the Indian Sub-continent from the period of Bengal Renaissance (19th century) to present days. (Padmavaat-Movie). “Parineeta” argues how Shekhar cannot acknowledge his parents and the society about marrying Lolita fearing social shame of marrying

Jhumpa Lahiri, reflecting on her personal experiences and her keen observation of diasporic culture, brings lawful and touching experiences to the predicament of the Gangulis in the foreign land. The novel is indeed a work that is created by a woman who understands the convolutions that arises from a cultural merger. The novel does an excellent job of mixing along side by side the autonomous, integrated American way of life in a manner that avoids suggesting the dominance of one over the other. The Namesake does not propose the importance of either fully clasping one's cultural heritage or completely integrating into American culture; instead, it allows the reader to apprehend , if not completely, the complexity of negotiating a life where one has a foot in American culture, and the other in their ideal Bengali tradition .In short, the novel is a the a guide of experience for immigrant population of Indian

The attitude of her friends are very different to her, she finds that her friends are very admire about her American life, fashions. Here Tara loses her longings of her friendships. She finds surprise of her friends behaviour, “………… her friends let slip their disapproval of her, they suggested her marriage had been imprudent, that seven years abroad had eroded all that was fine and sensitive in her Bengali nature”(TD,55). When Tara writes letter to her husband regularly, she fails to communicate her feelings and experiences in her homeland. Tara again confused for her behaviour that she did not share her feelings and experiences to her husband. She finds very difficult to mingle with her family and culture. In that she occurs a conflict in her mind between her old senses of her past

The novel has a greater degree of contextualized realism than Possession. In this novel, Markandaya does not dwell on the abstract cultural concepts of East – West but rather objectifies them into actual situations and incidents, thereby effectively dramatizing the theme. The dichotomy of the East – West axis becomes more prominent in this novel because it is shown through the underserved plight of an old Indian immigrant in England; the portrait of his misery is probably the result of a deep study of the helplessness of Indian expatriates in Britain. The main thread of the novel is related to the reality that people who come to settle in a strange country have difficulties while adjusting to a new way of life. Speacially, Asians in Britain face acute problems. Strongly attached to their own religions, languages and customs, they feel that the western culture is a threat to their values and traditions and so they tend to become isolated. Hostility and racial discrimination from the host community further prompt Asians to seek support from their own groups. As they strive to preserve their culture and identify, it becomes harder for them to ‘assimilate’ to be accepted as British. The protagonist problems as he tries to fit into the corpus of British society form the content of the plot. The cross cultural situation brings about the feeling of

The Portrayal of Indian Marriages in the Stories The Old Woman and The Bhorwani Marriage

Inside The Haveli is a novel that defines a few bad customs like purdah- traditions, narrow-mindedness, women exploitation, girls’illiteracy and child marriage prevailed in a Rajputana haveli of Udaipur in Rajasthan, India that is symbolic of prevalence of all these bad customs, rituals and rules in all over India. The novel is an attack on traditinal mam dominating society. Almost whole story revolves around the haveli where females are deprived of their right and liberty and where the birth of a girl- child is considered bad.