Analysis Of Divakaruni's The Palace Of Illusions

Chapter 1: Introduction

The world seems to be grown so much for centuries, say for technology to

infrastructure to life style and every second thing seems to change but what didn’t seem

to change is the way women are treated in our society. These so called changes on this

earth can be termed as development in the hands of Science but what about being

changed socially? May it be Dvapar Yug (or the Third age of man) or Kal Yug (the

current age) one thing that didn’t seem to change is the way women are seen as an not so

important member of society or family but as a property or object that a man owns. But

even after so much sufferings that women went through for generation their confidence

could not be broken and today they stand

This research project is an attempt to focus on the psychological aspect of the

inner conflict experienced by the women of Mahabharata in The Palace Of Illusion where

Divakaruni tries to outline the women engaged in the quest for values. The search for

self and an attempt to define it also explains the mixture of the fiction and

autobiographical elements that can be found in the writings of Chitra Banerjee. In her

novels, not only the protagonist is a female and remains in the center of the plot but even

the story is narrated from her perspective and The Palace Of Illusions is a great example

of it as it has totally changed the way Mahabharata was seen before that is from the men

eye but Divakaruni in her novel kept Panchaali as the center character and narrated the

story from her point of view.

“This may also be interpreted as a refusal to conform to traditional genres of the

dominant literary culture.” (Joshi 139).

Shashi Deshpande says that “Women especially, have always had to be more

careful, to stay within the lines drawn for them by social rules, by their own conditioning-

a kind of self-censorship, something that women impose on themselves without