Post-Colonial Feminist Perspectives In Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Select Novels

Abstract

Post-colonial literature as an extensive genre includes diasporic, immigrant feminist genres too. The advocate of Post-colonial theory Edward Said has proposed the concept of ‘otherness’. This is considered to be an important theory, especially for diasporas from South Asia bearing a colonial past. It also helps in understanding the effect of power relations between the colonizers and the colonized, the reason for otherness and alienation experienced by immigrants in their respective host lands. The representation of women as an object, sexual toys, and a maid before post-colonial had its transformation with the debut of postcolonial literature. Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex had a huge effect on the readers in the transformation of stereotyped ideologies and myths about the female gender.  Later with the advent of The Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, the females were made to think of their rights, independence, identity, and the need to achieve them. Many post-colonial feminist writers took it as their prime responsibility to propagate and advocate the rights, efficacies, and strengths of women to the patriarchal chauvinists. The writers who move from one country to another occupy significant positions between culture and countries. They realize that their culture or identity doesn’t remain the same as it was earlier. Identity evolves, grows, and is subject to many changes. The act of writing makes him/her explore both cultures of homeland and hostland. Memories of homeland are kept alive in his thoughts and imagination in fact, becomes a channel between the self and the world. (Shailja, 2008, 52)

Post-colonial feminists, who work for the advancement of women, also challenge the assumption that the gendered oppression is the primary force of 23 patriarchy. They question the approbation of the oppression as it leads to the misrepresentation of their lived experiences. Currently, they struggle to fight the gender oppression within their own society to preserve and safeguard the dignity of their women. Thus, the concepts of freedom, equality, and rights to women, stem from the Enlightenment based on the egalitarian beliefs and principles and have become the main area of concern for the postcolonial feminists of today. In short, postcolonial feminism is not just literature written by women, but literature of women voicing their experiences from within. This principle has created a welcoming ambiance for many of the women writers in Indian Writing in English to use literature as a vehicle to present the true state of Indian society, its treatment of women, and the psychological traumas of women due to their own traditional and cultural barriers. To this school of post-colonial transformed feminist ideologies belong the works of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. This paper aims to discuss the reformed feministic perspectives with special reference to Sister of My Heart and Oleander Girl.