Women Empowerment: A Critical Study of Bharati Mukherjee's Wife

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Recommended: Woman's role in the patriarchal society

In the novel, the main female character named Dimple Dasgupta breaks the traditional notion of an Indian wife. She is shown in the novel as a vibrant person but with a sort of mental aberration or apathy. Even while she was unmarried, she nurtured number of fixations such as the nature of husband she is going to have, the manner in which her marriage is going to take place and the kind of married life she is going to lead …etc. All her dreams and aspirations about her married life get shattered. She suffers from total loss of personality and it culminates into murder of her husband by herself

In the early part of the novel, Dimple gets prepared for her marriage. Here, she is shown as a woman who is quite conscious about her physical appearance. She is very often worried about her lack of physical charm and dark complexion. She employs desperate measures to make herself beautiful. She follows all beauty tips and does physical exercises to appear trim. All these prove to be futile exercises and she develops chest related health problems. This is the first hint seen in the novel about her troubled mind and complicated psyche where lie qualities such as self destruction and murdering tendencies. She is obsessed with desires like beauty and complexion which expedite her marital collapse and breakdown of her senses.

Dimple hopes that her social status would improve after her marriage. Therefore, she wishes to marry a neurosurgeon. She longs for leading an aristocratic life and enjoy all the comforts offered to the upper strata of the society. Without any worry and guilty consciousness, she skips writing her B.A. Degree examinations as her marriage is fixed. She starts spending her time in empty desires and vague imagination. S...

... middle of paper ...

... Critical Essays . Ed .Nair Rama,B.Gopal Rao

and A.Venkateswaralu. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Pvt.Ltd.1995.p.121.

Swain.S.P. “ Dimple in Bhrati Mukherjee’s Wife: A Study of the Lacerated Self.”

Indian Women Novelists: set III Vol.3. Ed.Dhawan,R.K. New Delhi: Prestige

Books,1995.p.122.

Indira.S.“Splintered Self.”An Approach to Bhrati Mukherjee’s Wife”.

Commonwealth writing : A Study in Expatriate Experience. Ed.R.K. Dhawan

and L.S.R.Krishna Sastry. New Delhi: Prestige Books,1994.p.73.

Sujatha.S. “ The Theme of Disintegration : A Comparative study of Anita Desai’s

Cry, the Peacock and Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife.” Commonwealth Writing;

A Study in Expatriate Experience. Ed. R.K.Dhawan and L.S.R.Krishna Sastry.

New Delhi: Prestige Books,1994.p.41.

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