Relocating Heteronormativity and Questioning Feminism: A Study in the Fiction of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

A Critical Study of the Selected Novels of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni deals significantly with the post-feminist literature written by women novelists belonging to the Indian origin. She has delineated upon the thinking women of the Indian diaspora, whose mental faculty compels them to introspect their so long stereotypical status quo in the prevailing customs, traditions, myths, patriarchy, motherhood and marital life, that they have inherited or imbibed genetically to the alien lands far from their imaginary homelands. Due to literacy, technology, science, employment, migration, and the equal opportunities, economic independence, their sense of metaphysics has set equilibrium with their non-conventional discomfort zones and they have attempted to cross customized thresholds of comfort zones. They have advanced further from the set paradigms of women’s image which have been popularly prevalent from the historical perspective. the selected writings of the Indian – American diaspora woman author indicates that the dimensions of contextualizing in-betweenness, hybridity of thought in women’s personality and psyche have although been issues of conflicts and contradictions both in private and public space; however, they are more thoughtful to revamp and retrace their old-patterned trajectories for breaking the track of ice-ceiling. They have challenged fragile zones of both expectations and realities. Women characters in the novels of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Contemporary Indian-American Diaspora Woman Novelist) have been projected with the capacities of self-emancipation in their own negative and positive perspective; they represent the modus operandi of self-sufficient, self-independent and self-exploratory to emancipate their lives, although, in their quest of being free, they deviate. They acknowledge the fact of mutual understanding and acceptance of differences which are the metaphorical ways of resistance. They attempt to oscillate their self-disintegration and self-denigration. The selected novels discuss the double standards of society/community in terms of the expected standards and reality standards and that’s what makes sense in the author’s creative-writing scholarship that analytically, dexterously, meaningfully and emotionally brings out a contemporary critique on the choices, changes and commonalities confronted by women, against women, and for women. The author explores uncommon reoccurrences of gender existential needs, responsibilities and roles in order to demystify the stereotypical, sociological and psychological myths with regard to women’s thoughts and actions.