Impact of Cultural Clashes and Migratory Experiences in Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife

Abstract

The major concern of this paper is with the dislocation of an individual and the resulting crisis of identity in his/her personality. It concentrates on Bharati Mukherjee’s second novel, Wife (1975). The tale describes an Indian wife who wishes to travel abroad and encounters an alien environment. It delves into a highly nuanced aspect of the immigrant experience. Mukherjee takes a more serious look at the challenge that an Indian woman Dimple’s age and type suffers when she migrates to a culturally diverse country like America in this novel. Dimple’s story begins in Calcutta and continues in the United States of America. Additionally, the loss, creation, or restoration of an effective identifying relationship between the self and the area they occupy is an issue. The paper seeks to demonstrate how dislocation caused by migration degraded a real and active sense of self and how this feeling was destroyed by cultural denigration, the conscious and unconscious suppression of indigenous personality and culture by an allegedly higher racial or cultural model.