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Asian Studies, Vol. 1, No 1, 2013
Ethics of Wisdom and Compassion in the Novels by Chitra Banerjee DivakaruniAbstract Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Indo-American writer. She has won many accolades and awards. Among her novels The Palace of Illusions captures the magical world of epic for its twenty century readers. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni writes that she is unsatisfied by the portrayal of women in the Mahabharata. The present paper makes a study of Draupadi’s perspective in the Mahabharata and her struggle to come from the suppression. Indians are fond of talking and celebrating their magnificent history. The Palace of Illusions is a story of friendship, freedom, betrayal, war, rage and revenge. Breaking free from the trends, retellings are the genre where a character like Draupadi has been presented as a heroic sovereign in the epic of Mahabharata. The character of Draupadi in the book The Palace of Illusions has been narrated as one who was firm and a woman with rigid determination. It is to interpret the identity and individualism of a woman in the society. Keywords: Gender, Subdual, Feminism, Assertion, Identity
Writers are always engaged in search for an inspiration in order to incorporate it in their proposed works. Myth serves as a generous subject which provides a profound meaning and affinity to the illustrated literacy works. In English literature, the use of myth is an ancient tradition. Retelling of mythical stories and revisionist studies on mythical stories and mythical characters have now become a new field of exploration. Writers began to analyse mythical stories with feministic, cultural, and psycho analytic approaches. Fresh interpretations are made on the great Indianepic Mahabharata’s stories and characters. The women characters of the epic presented as an ideal epitome of patience and tolerance. But women are kept at the bottom of the social ladder. Their existence is neglected and suppressed. But the contemporary writers recreated, revised, redefined the female characters and give them a new voice, by making them strong, stubborn and independent. Chitra
Abstract Writers are always engaged in search for an inspiration in order to incorporate it in their proposed works. Myth serves as a generous subject which provides a profound meaning and affinity to the illustrated literacy works. In English literature, the use of myth is an ancient tradition. Retelling of mythical stories and revisionist studies on mythical stories and mythical characters have now become a new field of exploration. Writers began to analyse mythical stories with feministic, cultural, and psycho analytic approaches. Fresh interpretations are made on the great Indian epic Mahabharata’s stories and characters. The women characters of the epic presented as an ideal epitome of patience and tolerance. But women are kept at the bottom of the social ladder. Their existence is neglected and suppressed. But the contemporary writers recreated, revised, redefined the female characters and give them a new voice, by making them strong, stubborn and independent. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions retells the story of an extra ordinary woman, Panchaali. She is the protagonist of the novel Divakaruni feminised Mahabharata by projecting the story of the epic through the point of view of Panchaali. Here myth serves as an open medium to express the silent tears, dead hopes and repressed emotions of women. Panchaali’s life and challenges remains as symbol for all women as they all are ‘unexpected’ and ‘not invited’ to this world. Keywords - Myth, Revisionist writings, Feminism, Tradition, Epic
Contemporary Women's Writing
The Power of Storytelling: An Interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni2012 •
... 4 July 2011. Mukherjee Bharati. . ... The Mistress of Spices. Nayar, Deepak, Gurinder Chadha, Paul M. Berges, Aishwariya R. Bachchan, Dylan McDermott, Nitin C. Ganatra, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Caroline Chikezi, Shaheen Khan, Anupam Kher, and Chitra B. Divakaruni. ...
Chitra Banerjee is the author of fifteen books including the Award winning short story collection Arranged Marriage, the Novels The Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, Queen of Dreams, The Palace of Illusions. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages and two of her novels The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart have been made into films. Her writings have appeared in various publications including The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker and have been published in the Best American Short Stories, the O.Henry Prize stories and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. Divakaruni also writes for children. She is the Betty and Gene Mc David Professor of creative writing at the University of Houston.
This essay explores contemporary novelizations of episodes from the Mahābhārata, India's greatest epic narrative, as vehicles for critical reflection on the treatment of women and queer individuals in modern Indian law. It argues that some Mahābhārata 'Epic' fiction places modern Indian debates concerning social justice in a critical, homologous relationship to tales from the Mahābhārata in order to problematize the inequity of ancient and modern legal regimes. In doing so, the essay links law and literature, critical legal studies, Indian feminist and queer legal discourses, and Mahābhārata scholarship.
The story of Delhi goes back in time to the Indus Valley civilization. The city of Indraprastha is a glorious presence in legends, folklore and epics. It has also inspired other later date literary explorations and expressions. Since Indraprastha exists in an indeterminate space between myth and reality, little wonder then that, it has been recreated time and again in the imaginative space. The description of the 'city' of Indraprastha in Mahabharta gets implicated of necessity in the same debates which surround the epic itself today, that is, the reiteration of the existence of the city also simultaneously negates the urban, architectural, material and visual culture imbued in the descriptions of the city. The paper examines these literary retellings featuring Indraprastha. Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni's Palace of Illusions reclaims of the fluid space of Indraprastha froma feminist perspective, Dalrymple's relocates Indraprastha in his City of Djinns to where he thinks it belongs-to the sites of culture and Trisha Das uses the journey from Indraprastha to heaven and back to New Delhi as a journey of self discovery.
http://ijellh.com/OJS/index.php/OJS/article/view/7075/5925
IJELLH - Relocating Heteronormativity and Questioning Feminism Feb. 2019.pdf2019 •
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.
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