Cultural Crisis and Identity Quest in the Heroines of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Abstract

This paper attempts to bring forth the manifold identity crisis as witnessed by women since ages, in reference to Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s heroines who frames an identity for themselves within the patriarchal gamut .Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a poignant Indo-American writer who compounds themes of diaspora, identity, crisis, culture and quest of women in the patriarchal pyramid. In a convoluted narration, Banerjee’s heroines mostly discover self-realisation once detached from their male counterpart. Subsequently the two cousins of the novel sequence Sister of My Heart and The Vine of Desire, Sudha and Anju acclaims individuality once they shrug off the wifely orbit. While Sudha becomes a nursemaid in America, Anju completes her education and fulfills her desire of gliding. The Palace of Illusions is the epic retold through the eyes of Draupadi who becomes a figure more than a wife to five husbands, gambled, humiliated and disrobed. Thus Draupadi achieves a new dimension while she airs out her innermost feelings untold in history. Arranged Marriage, the short story collection presents glimpses of longing women disillusioned by cultural conflict and crisis, trying to adopt a pseudo identity that barely tallies with the one in which she grew up. The paper exposes the conjugal identity conflict these women combats through prioritizing self over everything.