Preview

Cross Cultural Conflict in “the Tiger's Daughter” of Bharati Mukherjee

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2489 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Cross Cultural Conflict in “the Tiger's Daughter” of Bharati Mukherjee
CROSS CULTURAL CONFLICT IN “THE TIGER’S DAUGHTER” OF BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Rajaram Solaimalai
Associate Professor in English,
Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai625 015
Tamil Nadu, India

email: sreng@tce.tce website: www.tce.edu
____________________________________________________________

____________
ABSTRACT:
Bharati Mukherjee, an Indian born American novelist, is a familiar voice in the Indian Diaspora. Her fiction truly reflects the temperament and mood of the present American society as experienced by immigrants in America. She depicts the cross cultural crisis faced by her women in her novels. She found herself difficult to adapt to the culture, customs, and traditions, which she depicts through her female protagonists’ cultural crisis. Bharati Mukherjee’s first novel The Tiger’s Daughter (1972) deals with an upper class Bengali Brahmin girl named Tara Banerjee Cartwright, who goes to America for higher studies.. This paper throws light on the cross cultural conflict of the 22-year old heroine when she revisits India after a seven year stay in the United States. It highlights the cultural turmoil faced by Tara when she refuses to accept Calcutta as her home again. This paper also analyses how Tara, caught in a gulf between the two contrasting worlds, leads to her illusion, depression, and finally her tragic end. The author also attempts to portray how the novelist herself intimately projects her own self through the heroine in this novel. **************** The Tiger’s Daughter and Wife are about two different problems of expatriates. The Tiger’s Daughter, Mukherjee’s first novel, is about the cultural conflict of Tara Banerjee Cartwright, a Benghali Brahmin girl, who goes to America for higher studies at the age of sixteen. Having married a white American, she returns home for a holiday trip to visit her parents. .The fusion of the Americanness and Indianness in the mind of Tara and


References: Mukherjee, Bharati. The Tiger’s Daughter. Houghton Miffin, 1972 Chowdhury Enakshi Prestige Books, 1996. Iain, Jasbir. Foreignness of Spirit : the world of Bharati Mukherjee’s Novels. Journal of Indian Writing in English,13, 2 ( 1985) Writing: A Study in Expatriate Experience. New Delhi , Prestige Books, 1994 Sivaramakrishna, M
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Summary Of Two Ways To Belong In America By Bharati Mukherjee
    • 274 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Summary Of Two Ways To Belong In America By Bharati Mukherjee

    In “Two Ways to Belong in America,” Bharati Mukherjee writes about her struggles self-identifying while being an immigrant in America from Calcutta, India, accompanied with her sister by her side. Bharati and her sister move to America to attend college and get jobs with their degrees. While both sister agreed to return to India when done, they both took different routes. Mira married an Indian man she met in college, had her job of a preschool teacher which she loved dearly, and stuck to her Indian roots. Bharati married a Canadian American and embraced the American culture that she ended up loving more so than her Indian roots.…

    • 274 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Summary Of Two Ways To Belong In America By Bharati Mukherjee
    • 364 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Summary Of Two Ways To Belong In America By Bharati Mukherjee

    Bharati Mukherjee illustrates an example of adjusting to a standard American culture and its effects on a person's identity in "Two Ways to Belong in America." {……}Two sisters mira and bharati are from calcutta lived in the united states for about 35 years as they do seem to disagree on the subject of of the status on immigrants .location affects one's culture because of the people one is surrounded by and educational opportunities . Location is everything . the short story “two way to belong in america “.the author bharati Mukherjee portrays their different view on status of immigrants and culture.…

    • 364 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Compare And Contrast Hell-Heaven And A Good Man Is Hard To Find
    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Compare And Contrast Hell-Heaven And A Good Man Is Hard To Find

    Aparna is a traditional Bengali housewife that had been transplanted to the United States. When the story begins, the reader can’t help but to feel sorry for the loneliness that Aparna must be feeling. She is in a country which thrives on a culture that is very different from the one which she is familiar with. Her husband is engulfed by his work and Aparna is left to entertain herself daily. She has few friends in the United States and nothing to occupy her time. Lahiri writes “…I would return from school and find my mother with her purse in her lap and her trench coat on, desperate to escape the apartment where she had spent the day alone.” As the plot continues, the reader is given hope…

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    two ways to belong to america bharati
    • 622 Words
    • 3 Pages

    two ways to belong to america bharati

    In Bharati short story “two ways to belong to America” she talks and her and her sister experience as first time immigrants migrating from India to America. At their arrival to America they were similar in a lot of ways, appearance and attitudes-views and sentiments. They were both seeking degrees-Mira in child psychology and pre-school education, bharati went on to peruse a degree in creative writing. After they obtained their degree’s they were to return to India and marry, a man of their fathers choosing.…

    • 622 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Two Ways to Belong in America
    • 359 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Two Ways to Belong in America

    Mukherjee’s diction is one that asks for attention as well. To convey her story, she uses very simple word choice; nothing fancy is found anywhere throughout the essay. Questionable words such as “Indianness” are used in her writing. This, perhaps, is a result of guilt, or sense of realization that she was an Indian before she was American. Perhaps she realized that she came to the country without knowing a word of English and is now a successful writer, at the cost of her native heritage. She mentions she has a white husband, which broke her family tradition which lasted for at least 3000 years. This was the conflict that the story brought up, which may have affected her writing at the time. The sense of emotion within her was what compelled her to write simply yet effectively. After all, she is…

    • 359 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Two Ways To Belong In America 'And An Indian Father's'
    • 923 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Two Ways To Belong In America 'And An Indian Father's'

    Both sisters, who were born in India, moved to the United States to receive a college education. While in America, Mira kept her Indian culture by marrying an Indian man and staying a legal immigrant to the US to stay true to her culture. Bharati decided to become an American citizen and even marry a Canadian-American man. The decision to choose which culture to adapt to impacted the girls lives in two different ways. Bharati had to deal with what her family would think because she was marrying a white man, but she was able to transform her identity and experience another culture. “America spoke to me—I married it—I embraced the demotion from expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody, surrendering those thousands of years of ‘pure culture,’ the saris, the delightfully accented English. She retained them all” (Mukherjee, 71). Bharati let everything she grew up learning, be pushed to the side so she could adapt and try to be part of the American culture and she was fine with that. However, her sister, Mira, symbolized the people who stayed “rooted in one job, one city, one house, one ancestral culture, one cuisine, for the entirety of their productive years” (Mukherjee, 71), meaning that she stayed true to her Indian roots and did not experience and adapt to the American culture, even though she was living in the United States. Even though they both experienced the hardships of being immigrants, the two sister’s views on life are much different because one had adopted another country's culture, while the other one had stayed true to her original…

    • 923 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Simple Gift Belonging Analysis
    • 997 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Simple Gift Belonging Analysis

    The narrator’s sense of belonging grows upon arrival in India. She recalls many places from her readings of Olivia’s letters and she discovers an emotional connection to the long-ago family intrigue. India also satisfies her own purpose of trying to find a new path for herself. In Bombay the narrator discovers that everything is different now, allowing the reader to see that through her new connection to place in India, a new world can be seen creating new opportunities to develop her sense of belonging.…

    • 997 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Diasporic Experience In Family Life
    • 1131 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Diasporic Experience In Family Life

    Diasporic experiences can be extremely challenging and testing at the least, and Akhil Sharma’s life, represented in his novel Family Life, is no exception. The semi-autobiographical novel illustrates the hardships faced by an Indian family after moving to the United States and soon after, almost losing one of their sons to an accident that changed all of their lives. The novel, however, focuses mostly on Ajay, and how his life slowly transforms as we read the story from his perspective. Being a member of the Indian diaspora myself, the empathetic connection between Ajay and myself allowed me to understand and relate to the ever changing relationship between him and his parents, and how that shaped Ajay as a person in his future, for better…

    • 1131 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    American Revolution Essay
    • 1373 Words
    • 6 Pages

    American Revolution Essay

    An influence of the revolution was the French and Indian War (www.echeat.com) In 1764; British troops fought a hard 7-year war against the French and Native American soldiers. The Natives teamed up with France and the war ended in about 1763 (kidport.com). After the war, this left Britain heavily in debt. As an after affect, the British started taxing the colonists on all sorts of things. The taxing caused anger and hatred against the king and the colonists were furious. The colonials wanted to separate themselves from England and become their own independent country. They were sick and tired of all the restrictions that the king had forced upon them. Between all the new taxes and the Proclamation of 1763, the colonists were acting up and causing trouble for the Britain’s. This changed the ‘relationship’ between Great Britain and the colonists but also, these were the things that sparked the thoughts of revolting. When the Boston Tea Party took place, it was the “last stick on the pile.” It was the main cause/ the push of the American Revolution that triggered the people’s fuse.…

    • 1373 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    American Dream Analysis
    • 1286 Words
    • 6 Pages

    American Dream Analysis

    Although walking different paths, they ended in similar places: Mira felt betrayed by America since she devoted her almost entire career into American education system but had to face the new rules curtailing benefits for legal immigrants like her; Bharati, the author of this article, although not yet compromised by this country politically, had undergone a hard time fitting into the community that she was supposed to be in. Undeniably, cultural difference between America and India played a significant role in Mira’s feeling of not belonging to America so much—-as the final sentence of the article says: “The price that immigrant willingly pays, and that the exile avoids, is the trauma of self-transformation”. It is the unwillingness of cultural self-transformation that make Mira “happier to live in America as expatriate Indian than as an immigrant American”, which causes her political disadvantages and thus tears apart her American dream of living well as an Indian in America. Unsurprisingly, unwillingness of cultural self-transformation is neither the only nor the most important factor that complicates people achieving American…

    • 1286 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Women's Role In America
    • 1358 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Women's Role In America

    Women and men have always had opposing differences since the beginning of time. In this paper I am going to discuss the role of the women of India verses the role of women in America and I am going to tell you why I think the women of India are treated disgracefully. Female feticide, dowry deaths and domestic abuse offer a gruesome background of basic cruelty in India. In a typical society in India a person will find that there are still beliefs and traditions about women that are not relevant to the American woman, but instead are an inheritance from their brutal past. This is the case in traditional women, women of rural societies, and women of urban societies (Vidyut , 2007).…

    • 1358 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    White Tiger- Western Cultures Influence on India
    • 542 Words
    • 3 Pages

    White Tiger- Western Cultures Influence on India

    Ketchup is delicious when added to certain foods yet when mixed with chocolate the results can be disastrous. Similarly in Aravind Adiga's book The White Tiger, western culture, which is normally a great part of certain societies, when mixed with indigenous culture, leads to corruption. Adiga’s novel is about an Indian entrepreneur who sees a world much bigger than the one he lives in. He notices how those with wealth take advantage of the rest of society. Laws, political power, and other western societal developments are traded for bribes. India’s class system takes a whole new meaning when mixed with western culture and society.…

    • 542 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Turmoil and the Ensuing Stories of Saadat Hasan Manto
    • 2727 Words
    • 11 Pages

    Turmoil and the Ensuing Stories of Saadat Hasan Manto

    Saadat Hasan Manto’s works portrays the darkness of the human psyche, as values continuously plummeted during the Partition. His works, released during the dark social climate of post-partition Indian subcontinent reflected an innate sense of human helplessness towards darkness that prevailed in society. The tragedy of partition is brought into focus by his works. Manto’s life and works serve as a mirror to capture the human element of sectarian conflict in the final decades and immediate aftermath of the British Raj. This paper draws on Manto’s stories, characters and incidents to paint an image of the Indian subcontinent during partition and to personify its devastating toll.…

    • 2727 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Indian Lit. in English - Untouchable
    • 3397 Words
    • 14 Pages

    Indian Lit. in English - Untouchable

    It may lie in the transformation of words into prophesy. Because, what is writer if he is not the fiery voice of the people, who, through his own torments, urges and exaltations, by realizing the pains, frustrations and aspirations of others, and by cultivating his incipient powers of expression, transmutes in art all feeling, all thought, all experience - thus becoming the seer of a new vision in any given situation. (qtd. in Dhawn, 14)…

    • 3397 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Can The Subaltern Speak Summary
    • 780 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Can The Subaltern Speak Summary

    They are compelled to be muted. Their voices do not get an opportunity to speak out of the women’s problems and needs. Their desires always get lost before the grand narratives of patriarchy, even the national history and narrative rarely recognize the major contribution of the females in the texts or document. Whenever the woman is portrayed, she is put in the second position below the man. She is always kept silent. Identifying this issue, Indian critic and feminist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak asks— can the subaltern speak? in her essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’. To answer this question, she says: “There is no space from which the sexed subaltern subject can speak . . . The subaltern cannot speak” (Spivak 103-104). The reason, Spivak shows, is that Indian woman is always given a label of Sati or good wife. “Sati as a woman’s proper name is in fairly widespread use in India . . . Naming a female infant ‘a good wife’ has its own proleptic irony . . .” (102). By giving a great woman portrayal to the Indian woman, the grand narrative of patriarchy stereotypes the status of woman in the society. Through this, a boundary is imposed on the Indian women’s lifestyle and so-called freedom. While examining the power and position of Indian women, Spivak observes a fragile…

    • 780 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics