Negotiating Identity and Desire: A Comparative Analysis of Women in Namita Gokhale’s Selected Novels

Abstract

This paper examines the complex interplay of identity and desire in the selected novels of Namita Gokhale, with particular reference to Paro: Dreams of Passion and Things to Leave Behind. Situated within the broader framework of Indian English literature, the study explores how women characters negotiate their sense of self within shifting socio-cultural and historical contexts. While Paro: Dreams of Passion portrays the lives of urban women navigating modernity, sexuality, and social performance, Things to Leave Behind presents women embedded in the rigid structures of nineteenth-century colonial society marked by caste, tradition, and reformist influences. Through a comparative analysis, the paper highlights the continuity and transformation in women’s experiences across time. It argues that despite differences in setting, both novels reveal the persistent influence of patriarchal norms that shape female identity and regulate desire. The study further demonstrates that Gokhale’s female protagonists are neither passive victims nor wholly liberated individuals; instead, they occupy complex spaces of negotiation where agency is expressed through both resistance and accommodation. Drawing upon feminist and socio-cultural perspectives, the paper analyses how desire emotional, intellectual, and sexual functions as a driving force in the construction of identity. It also examines how cultural frameworks, whether traditional or modern, simultaneously enable and constrain women’s choices. Ultimately, the study establishes that Gokhale’s fiction offers a nuanced portrayal of women’s lived realities, revealing the layered processes through which identity is continuously shaped, challenged, and redefined.