Maitra Dikaruni: A Feminist Analysis

It also poses a threat to the traditionally accepted ideas about woman’s problem and demystifies ’woman’. It tries to capture ‘heterogeneity, plurality or fragmentation and contradiction’, in its readings and thereby, tries to question ‘essentialism’ and adopts a stance between complicity and critique. Third wave feminist critics embrace ‘contradiction and diversity’ as inherent components of late 20th century and 21st century women’s ( and men’s) lives and they envision a new model of feminist thinking and practise that goes beyond ‘black and white’ and situates itself within popular culture in an effort to bridge the gap between consumption and critique’. (Siegel, Sisterhood, Interrupted

She confesses: My work with Maitri has been at once valuable and harrowing. I have seen things I would never have believed could happen. I have heard of acts of reality beyond imagining. The lives of many women I have met through this organization have touched me deeply. It is their hidden story that I try to tell in many of the tales in my short story collection, Arranged Marriage. It is their courage and humanity that celebrate an honour (Shelvam, 2004: 65).

Divakaruni declares her reason for writing about women in San Francisco Examiner article: In South Asian mythological stories, ‘…the main relationships the heroines had were with the opposite sex: husbands, sons, lovers or opponents. They never had any important friends. Perhaps in rebellion against such thinking, I find myself focusing my writing on friendships with women, and trying to balance them with the conflicting passions and demands that come to us as daughters and wives, lovers and mothers.’ (Feb, 1999)

Divakaruni’s mode of writing, therefore, becomes a mode of feminist