Alienation in the Works of Bharti Mukherjee with Reference to - ‘Jasmine’

Abstract

Bharti Mukherjee was born on 27th July 1940 in Calcutta, India, to an upper middle class, Hindu Brahmin family. She was the second of three daughters of Sudhir Lal and Bina Banerjee. Both husband and wife provided ample education opportunities to their daughters. Mukherjee’s mother was determined that her daughters’ lives would not be confined to home and family. She was the driving force behind the success of her daughters. At the age of 15 Mukherjee finished her High School and went on to a Calcutta University affiliated women’s college run by Irish nuns. After getting her B.A. degree from the University of Calcutta in 1959 and her M.A in English and Ancient Indian Culture from the University of Baroda in 1961, she came to Iowa, United States to participate in a writer’s workshop on P.E.O. (International Peace Scholarship). She planned to study there to earn her M.F.A. degree, then return to India to marry a Bengali Brahmin as per her father’s wish, as Hindu tradition forbade intercaste, inter-language, inter-ethnic marriages. Bengali tradition even discouraged emigration. To remove oneself from Bengal was to dilute true culture. But here she was drawn to a Canadian writer Clark Blaise. After a fortnight’s courtship, the couple married impulsively in a Lawyer’s office above a coffee shop. She soon realized that the bond was permanent.