Gendered Construction of Home in Bharati Mukherjee’s Desirable Daughters

Abstract

Mukherjee explores the notion of home from a radical perspective. Her novel Desirable Daughters dismantles the conventional notion of home that cements and perpetuates gender roles. Her characters challenge the tradition and she considers it rather a mistake to hold on to the baggage of tradition and live in the past. She envisions the potential of change in imagining a new home of possibilities away from a home that stands for othering and repression. Mukherjee believes that movement and mobility offer an opportunity for the repressed women to escape the bondage of conventional home. Desirable Daughters questions the spatial composition of home which promotes segregation and marginalisation on the basis of gender.