The Portrayal of Women in the Short Stories of Bharati Mukherjee

Abstract Mukherjee is a feminist writer in a true sense because she not only advocates feminism in her literary creations but her personal life is an evidence of it because she practices what she preaches. She discovers her identity at an early age and realizes that patriarchy is deeply ingrained in Indian culture. Bharati Mukherjee has been accredited as a writer of immigrants; the predominant fact about her literary works is that her works are female centered and about immigrant women. The maiden novel of Mukherjee, The Tiger’s Daughter, is autobiographical in nature because the protagonist Tara is like her who returns to India after seven years stay in America. Tara’s Indian relatives condemn her marriage with a foreigner, named David and criticize her decision of coming alone to India without the company of her husband. Mukherjee presents the evolution of the female characters from muteness to voice. The affirmation in their behaviour arises due to the amalgamation of two cultures; first of their native land culture and second of the host society’s culture. As most of the female characters hail from the Indian sub-continent so Indian patriarchal culture affects their lives but when they come into the contact of the liberated Western culture then ‘a new woman’ arises who seeks for ‘individual identity’. The quest for identity results in the assertion of their identities. Some of the female protagonists assert their identities while other swing in-between the two worlds and in the end take shelter of their old native land culture.