narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

Her constant self-doubt and guilt that the expression of her wish and desire particularly
of a romantic and sexual nature had broken many other relationships between and
within the families and particularly Bimal’s relation with his family, indicates Pushpa’s
subjective embodiment of nationalistic/patriarchal discourse. This discourse
hegemonically positioned the bhadramahila as the bearer of familial solidarity, national
fraternity and middle-class respectable sexuality that distinguished the nation’s cultural
‘superiority’ from the Western ‘other’ (Chatterjee, 1989: 623). This cultural politics of
gendering is best illustrated by Pushpa’s narrative,
“Apparently I had brought bad name to the family’s reputation in the community.
Of all this I was the most maligned.”
This reinforces the cultural construction that a woman could either make or break a
home underpinned in the metaphors Griha-laskshmi and its counterpoint, Alakshmi
respectively (Chakrabarty, 2000: 226-227). These cultural constructions of femininity
reign strong in Pushpa’s narrative of self-doubt and self-blame. Therefore, even though
she transgresses the normative, she is never completely outside of it. It is important to
note, however, that in retrospect, she thinks that her guilt and self-doubt may be was
not necessary, indicating her shifting perspective of self-esteem with the passage of
time. But as a critique of power herself she nevertheless operates within other power
relations.
Her narrative of pabitra prem that she thinks is not an antidote to her family’s interest is
an attempt to re-inscribe the parameters of her relationship within the existing sociocultural
imagination, and potray her interest as similar to that of her family’s interest
(Mody, 2008). This demonstrates how hegemonic gender codes are reproduced
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