The text takes place in India and in California in the USA. It is an upper class family. We can tell that by the expensive saris, the mahogany almirah and the zari that is used to the sari for the bride-viewing.
There are many persons introduced in the text. The main character is Mita Moni. Later she is called Somita Sen because she gets married. She is an Indian girl, and she is going to get married to the Indian man Somesh Sen, who lives in the USA with his family. It is an arranged marriage but even though Somita is nervous about what it will bring, she is happy for her husband. She also thinks that the marriage and her moving in with her in-laws in the USA would make her life better. Her dreams break when it turns up that the Sen Family also live by the Indian traditions. She thinks Somesh is a beautiful man and she is proud being his wife. He is very kind to her, and buys her clothes and makes her the promise that they will move out his parent’s house as soon as possible. When he dies Somita goes through the Indian rituals that a widow has to do, but her in-laws wants her to be free and gives her the chance to start a life in the USA even though they move back to India.
In the text the saris have a central part. The different colors mean different things and shows different emotions. For example the white one is for the widows and it express that the widow mourn. The one she wears at the bride-viewing is pale pink and it is the color of transition. The saris and some of the other colors in the text support some of the feelings that she has about the marriage. Some of the clothes that Somesh gives her are brown and blue and she says that it is, “color of earth, color of seeds.” By that we can tell that she feels free and like the earth and the seeds she grows and develops.
There are many things that are different between her life in India and in the way she thinks her life would be in the USA. In India they live after the traditions. She won’t get an education and drinking and sex before marriage is totally banned. In the USA women and men are equal. They have jobs, they wear the clothes they want to and sex and drinking is something that everybody talks about and uses if they want. But the Sen Family lives like the ones in India so her new life is still the same.
The text is told by a first-person narrator, who is Somita. It is written in the past tense but have some flashbacks witch is in the preterit. The narrator has used many descriptions that express Somita’s feelings and it appeal to the readers emotions. With the text Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni want to set focus on arranged marriages. She is an Indian-American author, and maybe she has had some of the same problems as Somita. I think that she express her opinion about arranges marriages with the text. I would say that she thinks the women are trapped between the two worlds because of their traditions and norms. The family wants them to do well in life, and therefore they have to marry a man who comes from a good family.
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