WE ARE NOT OURSELVES - FEMALE CHARACTERS IN BHARATIMUKHERJEE’S NOVELS

• Main Author: Adriana Raducanu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Social Sciences Research Society 2011-07-01
• Series: International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanity Studies
• Online Access: http://www.sobiad.org/ejournals/journal_IJSS/arhieves/2011_2/adriana_raducanu.pdf

Louis A. Sass, borrowing from Shlovsky’sdefamiliarizationdiscusses certainpatients, affected by specific mental disturbances,as “taking a very distant or elsefragmentary microscopic view of an object, avoidingstandard causal/narrativeschemas of meaning and describing an object in terms of its mere existence orgeometrical form (that is, by avoiding use of its name and suppressing allreferences to its usual functional role in human life)”. With the above quotationsuggestive for the theoretical framework employed,the present study aims atdiscussing the Indian-American writer, Bharati Mukherjee’s three works- thenovel “Wife” and “Jasmine”, the story and the novel- from a Gothic perspective,focusing on the psychology of the characters, in order to argue for madness andmonstrosity as both subversive survival strategiesand/or escapes from narrowpatriarchal, political, social and cultural confines.