Nat. Volatiles & Essent.

Oils, 2022; 9(1): 157-164

Cultural Multiplicity And Cultural Shock In Bharati

Mukherjee’s Wife
T. Devi Priya Darsini1 , Dr.M. Nagalakshmi2

1
Research Scholar, Department of English, VELS Institute of Science, Technology and Advanced
Science (VISTAS), Pallavaram, Chennai.

2
Research Supervisor & Associate Professor, Department of English, VELS Institute of Science,
Technology and Advanced Science (VISTAS), Pallavaram, Chennai.

Abstract:

In the twentieth century, immigration was one of the most prominent trends. With the onset of two global wars,
the establishment of independent nations, and the rise of the internet, ideas like “home,” “family,” and
“identity” have undergone radical transformations. Indian literature in the diaspora Literature from the diaspora
is a byproduct of India’s colonial and post-colonial past, during which a huge number of Indians left the country
in search of employment in other nations. Dream characters from the diaspora often appear in Bharati
Mukherjee’s writings, including yearning, dissatisfaction, uncertainty, and depression. It is hoped that this
research will provide light on how Americans interpret these political and social events. A new country has left
Bharati Mukherjee’s “Wife,” the story’s heroine, feeling alone and bereft. She, too, felt the effects of a culture
shock when she arrived in a new country—alienated in the foreign land. She also experiences cultural shock in
the new land.

Keywords: Culture, Cultural Shock, Identity, Feminism

Introduction
The ‘Grand dame’ of diasporic Indian English literature, Bharati Mukherjee, is one of the most
notable Indian women authors in English. Author of Asian-American and Indo-American
fiction and non-fiction, Indian diaspora literature, immigrant fiction, and non-fiction, as well
as contemporary mainstream American literature, she’s been called many things. In the
words of Clark Blaise, “Bharati has become one of America’s best-known novelists and short-
story writers.” (Blaise and Mukherjee, “Prologue” to Days and Nights, vi). He believes
American novelist Bharati Mukherjee might be considered “Lahiri’s foremother” by Raj Chetty
(2006). In the footsteps of V. S. Naipaul and Bernard Malamud, she became an expatriate
writer like V. S. Naipaul and an immigrant writer like Henry Roth. She has acquired a
reputation for studying the confluence of the Third World and the First World from the
viewpoint of an immigrant to North America, Canada, and the USA.

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T.S.Eliot, in his dissertation, “Notes Towards the Definition of Culture”, says: “Culture
may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living” (13). Cross-cultural clash
has made a quantum leap with science and innovation. People have begun to travel to other
nations to fulfil their aspirations. Their goals. This movement has promoted cross-cultural and
interracial sensitivity. Every culture has its own strong and weak points. The immigrants
typically strive to find harmony between the original culture and the adopted one. This has
resulted in psychological peculiarities that are strange to both civilizations. Hence, the answer
to this difficulty is keeping one’s culture as much as possible, even when living on foreign
terrain.
In the current era of globalization, presenting a cross-cultural dilemma has become
one of the key concerns of modern authors. Writers like Bharati Mukherjee fall within this
genre. Being an immigrant, she was stuck between the competing cultures to build an identity
of her own. This is best expressed in her works. She skillfully illustrates this trend in American
culture as observed by immigrants in America in her writings. She said the following in an
interaction with the Times of India:
We immigrants have fascinating tales to relate to. Many of us have lived in newly
independent or emerging countries… when we uproot ourselves from those countries
and come here, either by choice or out of necessity, we suddenly must absorb two
hundred years of American history and learn to adapt to American society… I
attempt to illustrate this in my novels and short stories ( Oct 1989).
Mukherjee’s heroines travel through the stages of expatriate doubt, immigrant
confidence and eventually acquire the diverse global culture of the global citizen. This process
of evolving identities offers the challenge of identity on many levels. In the aftermath of
globalization, individuals have been travelling about across borders. We currently live in a
world where cultural clashes and encounters are commonplace. It is here that this sort of
investigation and its results would contribute to the knowledge and perspective of people,
offering them insights into the phenomena of immigration. Over the past several decades,
there has been a major outflow of women from India to the West for varied reasons. It has
resulted in a new expatriate mentality because of many dislocations, and expatriate literature
has been able to convert the stereotype of the suffering lady to an assertive or independent
one. The female migrant subject engages in a persistent effort of self-removal from her
original culture, which is tempered by a deliberate opposition to complete inclusion in the
new host culture. She is stuck between cultures, and this sensation of in-betweenness or
being contrasted sets before her a task to maintain a balance between her connections. The
trauma of relocation and dislocations culminate in a new story of identity and the unique
language of female expatriation. Bharati Mukherjee’s distortion and separations described
her own Life and had an obsessive interest in capturing the immigrant experience in her
works. Her encounters in India, Canada, and America have left an everlasting impact on her
sense as a person and an artist. As Mukherjee explains to Chen and Goudie in their
conversation:

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I describe myself as ethnonationalism, and I’d say I am an American writer of Bengali-

Indian origin. In other words, the writer/political activist in me is more obsessed with
addressing issues of minority discourse in the U.S. and Canada, the two countries I
have lived and worked in over the last thirty-odd years.[…] At this moment, my
Calcutta childhood and adolescence offer me intriguing, incompletely -comprehended
revelations about my hometown, my family, my place in that community: the kind of
revelations that fuel the desire to write an autobiography rather than to mythologize
an Indian national identity ( Chen and Goudie 2014).

In her writings, Bharati Mukherjee has objectively represented women’s emotional

and physical concerns. They defied the past’s abstract and social norms. They put much effort
into understanding their characteristics and foresaw many images of women and their public
position. They have discussed women from a new sociological perspective. In literature, a few
female characters exhibit a dismissive and invalidating attitude toward Life, while others
assert and acknowledge their presence with a trading-off approach, resulting in a deep sense
of fulfilment. In this way, postmodern Indian women researchers provided an example of new
research by attempting to debunk the notion of a male-dominated societal structure. They
built a solid foundation in gender studies in English-language Indian literature. In her fiction,
Bharati Mukherjee depicts a variety of women. To grasp these images, it is necessary to
consider the feministic perspective mirrored in Indian English fiction. People throughout the
globe think of America to be a connoisseur. The influx of individuals to this fantasy paradise
has reached unprecedented heights. Migrants have difficulty adjusting to a new society and
undergoing cultural change. They lose touch with their original culture as a result of this. In
her quest for identification in a strange community, Mukherjee’s heroine Dimple goes
through a horrific process of culture shock in her second book, Wife.
Bharati Mukherjee’s most famous book, Wife (1975), has generated many harsh
remarks. In Canada, she went through a painful period when she wrote this. In her portrayal
of Dimple, the novel’s protagonist, there is a clear sense of isolation leading to a sense of
dispossession. An immigrant’s story of the loss of identity is the focus of Wife, a finalist for
the Governor General’s Literary Award. Mukherjee visited India 10 years after her departure
to the West. She just heard the question out of the corner of her eye. Between the ages of
eighteen and twenty-one, what are Bengali women doing? (Calcutta Days and Nights). Her
book Wife resulted from this experience, which impacted her artistic sensibilities. “Any slight
surface depression” is the precise translation of the Bengali heroine’s name Dimple, given to
her by the writers of Wife. However, as the story develops, it becomes clear that she leaves
more than just a mild sadness in the wake of her misfortune.
It’s Dimple, a twenty-year-old Bengali girl from a middle-class family, who is the story’s
focus. She has a romantic inclination towards Life, a consequence of reading books and
cinema magazines which make her ignore the harsh and horrible facts of existence. From the
very outset, she is unique from other typical females. She has set her sights on marrying a
neurosurgeon while her father seeks engineers in matrimonial advertising. Because of Indian

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custom and patriarchal culture, it’s difficult for an Indian woman to find her place in society.
It is the feminine responsibility in a male\sdominated culture to surrender her emotions and
want her father’s wishes. Thus she feels that marriage is a godsend in disguise which would
provide her independence, money, and ideal pleasure, things she is too servile to ask for in
her own family: “Marriage would bring her freedom, cocktail parties on carpeted lawns, and
fund-raising dinners for noble charities. Marriage would bring her love” (WF 3),
“An apartment in Chowringhee, her hair done by Chinese girls, trips to New Market
for nylon saris,” is what Dimple dreams about most of the time (WF 3). But at the same time,
she sees herself as “Sita, the ideal Wife of Hindu legends,” because of her conventional
upbringing (WF 6). She feels that premarital living is a dress rehearsal for true Life. What
pleases her most is dreaming about marrying a guy who would provide her with all the
materialistic luxuries. Meanwhile, her father seeks a suitable guy for her. He is Amit Kumar
Basu, a Consultant engineer. He has filed for immigration in Canada, and his employment
application is waiting in Kenya. Dimple is delighted about her marriage, but her aspirations
stay unsatisfied after marriage. Amit’s mother wants to rename her daughter ‘Nandini’
instead of ‘Dimple.’ This feature of re-christening irritates Dimple, even though it is customary
in Hindu culture. This is the first time she’s had to hide her true identity. She worries whether
taking on a new name would make her lose who she is. Is it possible for her to alter her
identity or become a new person with a new word? Her mother-in-law has given her a new
name, which she dislikes. She considers the flat to be tiny and unappealing; the sight of the
injured crow is repulsive to her, but it is simply a passive resistance at this point: “it was this
passive resistance, this withholding of niggardly affection from Amit, this burying of one’s
head among dusty, lace doilies that she found so degrading” (WF 30). She cannot connect
herself with anybody in the family at this point, as she starts to recreate her ‘ideal’ guy based
on the faces in magazines. Slowly, she realizes that marriage is not a natural fit for her. The
fictional universe she had painstakingly and lovingly crafted began to disintegrate into little
shards. She hates everything at her in-laws’ house, and her displeasure frustrates her. As a
result, her psyche changes. Her mother-in-law has given her a new name, which she hates.
The apartment is dreadful, as is the interior design, and bliss eludes her head, and she
despises the concept of becoming a Wife.
Dimple exhibits evidence of a cultural problem, which, in the end, is a domino
consequence of her phobic state. Her forced self-abortion and her terrible killing of her
husband, both depicted in the text, are typical of her struggle, which is bordered by the other
and the self. Her female characters are seduced by the prospect of excitement, which they
misinterpret as self-esteem and self. For many Indian females, America, which looks to be a
free place, a real dreamland, is the conundrum of living. Dimple, who has never been taught
the importance of marital Life and motherhood, responds in the other direction. She believes
that being a mother would deprive her of the delights of living in other locations. As a result,
she harshly aborts the baby. “She had skipped rope until her legs were numb and her stomach
was burning, then poured water from the heavy pail over her head, shoulder, and tight light
curve of her stomach.” She’d spilt till the last drop of blood had washed away from her legs,

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and then she’d fainted.” (P.42) Dimple shows no guilt for her actions and is relieved because
she will no longer be transporting any mementoes from her previous Life to the United States.
This heinous deed exemplifies how The fantasy of relocation exacerbates Dimple’s moral
deterioration. Rosanne Klass comments:
“For an Indian Wife, childlessness is a disaster, pregnancy the achievement that seals
her status. To overturn such ingrained values would involve a major emotional
upheaval; yet Dimple acts on the vaguest aid, most defined impulses, and thinks more
about it” ( Klass 88).

Some critics, however, saw her self-abortion as “a sacramental of freedom from

typically feminine roles and constraints.” But whatever she does stems from a complete lack
of understanding of Indian values and morals. Dimple arrives in the land of milk and honey
with her goals and aspirations, devoid of Indian values. Despite her adventurous nature,
Dimple is perplexed by American society. Nagendra Kumar describes her situation as follows:
“How a boorish, an innocent Indian Wife can keep her nerves in a country where the murder
was like flapping the bugs” (49). Dimple’s response is understandable, given that she hails
from a sheltered family; at first, Dimple suffers due to Amit’s unemployment. Amit’s job later
makes her upset since he has little time for his Wife.
Mukherjee uses this work to demonstrate cross-culturalism by presenting Indian
Americans and Americanized Indians. Sens, Mehras, Khannas, and Bhattacharya symbolize
the former, while Mullicks represents the latter. In reality, Sens has been at Amit’s side
through thick and thin. The Indian Americans are proud of their heritage. Sens, for example,
uses a framed batik wall hanging with an image of King Ram and his court to create an Indian
atmosphere in their residence. Indian Americans are aware of their Indianness, while
Americanized Indians are mindful of their oneness with foreign culture. Ina Mullick, who
wears “pants and mascara” and is “more American than the Americans,” exemplifies this
mindset. Despite the Sens’ warnings about Ina’s bad inlousyence on Dimple, a lady with
misconceptions about American society falls victim to Ina’s enigmatic attraction. Dimple is
left befuddled and disillusioned by the novel’s conclusion.
Amit and Dimple are frustrated on different levels; while Amit’s joblessness gives him
the creeps, Dimple feels that her marriage is doomed. She was enraged because her marriage
had deceived her and failed to offer her with all of the glitzy things she had hoped for; “had
not brought her cocktails under canopied skies and 3 A.M drives to dingy restaurants where
they sold divine kababs rolled in roti”. (WF 102) Ashe despises Amit because he hasn’t lived
up to her expectations. He isn’t the guy she had hoped for. Dimple is depressed and supports
Meena Sen while watching TV or reading newspapers. She is exposed to violence via the
media. In addition, she hears more about murder, trafficking in the building’s basement, and
other crimes. As a result, she is always in the dark. In marriage, communication skills are
essential. Padmini Singh ends in a ‘Women’s Era’ essay on “saying what you want and
anticipate from your husband”: “communication between husband and Wife is essential to
marital happiness. So, be bold enough to communicate your feelings and views. This is how

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you are to go about it”(WF 24). Amit and Dimple cannot articulate their true love for one
other after being introduced to another culture. This communication breakdown creates a
chasm between the pair that expands day by day, eventually destroying their partnership.
After Amit gets work, the situation worsens. He spends more time on his job. He is
unable to comprehend Dimple. He feels that just offering financial comfort would satisfy her.
The couple relocates to a well-equipped apartment with all of the latest equipment. The
couple’s living situation improves, yet they remain lonely. Dimple attempts but fails to
integrate into American culture. “It’s difficult for her to adjust to idiots who don’t realize
Durga Puja,” she says (WF 114). Dimple is so distressed by her new Life in America that she
injures Amit with a knife when he approaches her from behind. She apologizes to Amit and
faults America for getting her jittery: “This would not have happened if we stayed in Calcutta.
I was never so nervous back home” (WF132).
Every quarter of Dimple’s existence is filled with loneliness. She goes to the media to
get rid of the sensation. T.V. is her only buddy. She is so enamoured with the media that she
becomes preoccupied with phrases like dark, evil, ominous, horrible, murder, suicide,
mugging, and so on. She has complete faith in the media. “Her body seemed strangely alien
to her, filled with hate, malice, and an insane desire to punish, yet light, almost airborne,”
says the author (WF 117). Linda Sandier expresses her emptiness in this way:
She is uprooted from her family and her familiar world and projected into a social
vacuum where the media becomes her surrogate community, her global village. New
York intensifies her frustrations and unhooks her further from reality (Sandier 84).

The alien civilization has enraged Dimple’s soul, and she has begun to act out. To fuel
her rebellious spirit, she begins mingling with Ina Mullick and Milt Glasser, wears Marsha’s
clothing, and goes to the length of enjoying the illegal freedom. She adopts Marsha’s tinted
spectacles because: “The purple-tinted sunglasses are perhaps the most typical index of
American culture. For Dimple, they are a masquerade, borrowed from the West, exactly like
Marsha’s clothing and the flat in which she is living” (Janet 98).
She persuades Milt in her bedroom and conceals it from Amit to top it all.
Dimple’sbehaviours are entirely a product of her quest to get one with American society. In
the end, she succumbs to her neuroses. She protests against her Life: “Life should have
treated her better, should have added and subtracted in different proportions so that she was
not left with a chimaera…she was furious, desperate; felt sick. It was as if some force was
impelling her towards disaster…” (WF 56). Amit observed the outward changes in Dimple, and
he connected them to culture shock. He even says he’ll accompany her to India. But nothing
affects her essence. The impact of the media on Dimple’s Life takes a nasty turn. She considers
the murder of her husband: “He would kill Amit and hide his body in the freezer. The
extravagance of the scheme delighted her, made her feel very American somehow, almost
like a character in T.V series” (WF 195).
Dimple devises ten alternative methods to take her Life. She gets psychotic, ses her
body and soul separate. She suffers from imagined sickness and gets sleepless. She fails to

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discriminate between reel life and the actual world. She has an emotional breakdown, which
Amit fails to notice. No matter how hard Dimple tries to integrate the foreign society, the
Indian ideals resting entrenched inside her condemn her over the extramarital connection
with Milt. When she murders her spouse in a condition that resembles a dream, his decline is
complete. Dimple would not have endured such embarrassments had she remained in India.
She would have learned to reconcile herself to her disappointments. She would not have been
a murderess. In reality, there is no mystery in her becoming a murderess since in America,
“talking about killing is like talking about the weather” (WF 161).
Wife Bharati Mukherjee’s first book is noted for its profound investigation of its
protagonist’s psychology. Both Bharati Mukherjee and Dimple, a migrant, slowly catch up
with locals. Dimples’ personality, rather than the continual reminder of language, physical
distinctions, and the loss of the original place, adds to the mysterious appeal of the integration
process. Mukherjee has focused on the disillusionment of the female protagonist in this story.
She has a mental illness as a result of the cultural struggle. She writes, “The end of the story
encapsulates both the strength of her spirited struggle to refashion herself and the difficulty
of achieving wholeness when one is stretched between two cultures”.

Conclusion
Women's personal life has undergone dramatic physical and mental transformations due to
marriage and travel abroad. Despite their apparent capacity to adapt, the initial shock they
experience is essential. Because they were all born and raised in India, they all have a strong
desire to break free from the constraints of their culture and lead a more Western lifestyle,
but at the same time, they see it as a fantasy. They talk a good game about feminism and
emancipation but struggle to put it into practice. For all of Mukherjee's females, it appears
that this is the most challenging aspect of their existence.

References:
Alison B. Carb (1989). An interview with Bharati Mukherjee, The Massachusetts Review
(winter, 1988-89), p. 619.
Banerjee, Debjani (1993). “In the Presence of History: The Representation of Past and
Present Indias in Bharati Mukherjee's Fiction” in Bharati Mukherjee: Critical
Perspectives. New York: Garland.
Bharati Mukherjee (1990). The Tiger’s Daughter (New Delhi: Penguin Books 1990), p.34.
Subsequent References are in the thesis.
Carb BA (1989). ‘An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee.’ The Massachusetts Review.29(4):
645 – 654.
Chen, Tina; Goudie, S.X. Holders of the Word: An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee
Available at: <http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v1i1/Bharat.Htm>. (1997).
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Clark Blaise and Bharati Mukherjee (1977). Days and Nights in Calcutta, (Garden city, New
York: Doubleday), p. 284.

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Dayal, Samir (1993). “Creating, Preserving, Destroying: Violence in Bharati Mukherjee's

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Jasbir Jain (1988). Foreignness of Spirit: The World of Bharati Mukherjee’s Novels, Journal
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Mukherjee, Barathi (1989). Jasmine. New York: Penguin Books Ltd.
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