Relevance of Chitra Benerjee Divakaruni’s Palace of Illusions

Abstract

A prolific writer of Indian writing in English, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has always aimed at giving voices to female characters in her novels like MISTRESS OF SPICES, SISTERS OF MY HEART, PALACE OF ILLUSIONS and many more. Writing in a Postmodern world where women issues are still relevant though different from the medieval times,she aims at creating fiction which all women can relate to. Feminism as a movement should not lose its significance even in this Postmodern society especially in a country like India which is yet to set itself free from the bars of age-old prejudices related to the existence of a woman; as Simone De Beauvoir speaks about it in her renowned work THE SECOND SEX arguing that women are socially conditioned to assume the role of a ‘woman’ in stereotypical terms.