Investigating Identity and Transformative Self in Bharati Mukherjee's Wife

Abstract Since the postcolonial debates came to limelight, the very notion of understanding and perceptions of literature is changed and the theoretical stances have proved and challenged multiple ways of interpretations. Bharati Mukherjee, controversial because of her identity issue, at an international level is perceived as an immigrant writer rather Indian or Indian Diasporic writer. Her multiple identities are evident in her fiction. This paper is an attempt to historicize the novel Wife in the various contexts of turbulent 1970s, and to identify the discursive strategies employed by the novelist. The transformation of a wife to move away from traditional structures of the East to western form of new woman, through a series of events to deconstruct the colonial attributions to wifehood is the strand of thought, and how finally the decolonizing process is formed a new self is a finding of this paper.