Jhumpa Lahiri's Novels

The themes of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novels are an exploration of the social pressures on a woman. She painted the vision of a destructive discourse of women in family heralds, protest and rebellion. Her protagonists learn how to explore their inner eye at the same time life is full of trials in understanding their own heritage. The “Namesake” truly casts the burden of choosing marriage and maintaining certain role within a marriage. This novel intricately describes the agony arising out of the discrepancies between what a female protagonist hears–– the society’s powerfully persuasive discourse and her own small questioning inner voice. The novel’s attraction lies in the way the novelist dramatizes how the heroine is able to sustain painfully a dialogue between the two.

Self-introspection about one’s individuality also mixed with certain fears about the approval of the society becomes the inevitable feature in the characterization of the female protagonists in the hands of the chosen novelists. The universal literary feature is that characterization develops through focusing characters not merely as representations of universal humankind but only by highlighting the unique features, pertaining to male gender and female gender. It is obvious that women characters usually only hold a secondary positions in such creative writings. A woman is depicted as submissive, she is not the decision maker, anger is to be detested in a woman, strong body language to be avoided but on the other hand the man is the centre of action, pivoted for the development of plot, virile, aggressive dominating and emphatic. In real life women is less individual than man is, she runs less with idiosyncrasies, and she conforms rather to the general type. This however...

... middle of paper ...

...o change men, to change relationships with men, or (an entirely different but equally problematic solution) to abandon all relationships with men develop relationships with other women is the recent trend.

Only, those disappointed with their unrewarding familial roles or those who learnt a lesson from experience, cheated or feel exploited, undertake social work. The protagonists do fairly well as career women and social workers as they are recognized for their qualification, efficiency and potentiality. However both the authors focus on one side the society which accords them recognition and accreditation and on the other side the darker side of the society with exploiters and cheats who wait ever ready to engulf and extinguish women. The tools of the oppressive society are male ego, sexual desire, gossip and scandalizing, girl child abuse and sexual extravagances.