Choice is an illusion non-existent in the lives of mothers; and selflessness to them, is not a decision but an encumbrance. This case is proficiently presented by Jodi Picoult in her novel Handle With Care (2009). Dealing with the issues of motherhood and nuptial ties, the novel raises a few important questions in the backdrop of mothering children with special needs. The novel introduces us to a helpless mother fighting for the survival of her dying daughter and gradually moving towards a troubled marriage and dissatisfied relationships. She is committed to saving her daughter’s life by whatever fair or foul means she can think of. This study examines why motherhood, is still the least valued and what are the factors that make motherhood suffer in the hands of other familial roles a mother plays. Another supplementary source My Sister’s Keeper (2008), by the same author, has also been taken into account since it also deals with an identical maternal crisis. Under the theoretical canopy of maternal feminism put forth by Andrea O’Reilly(2007, 2010), an exhaustive critical analysis of Picoult’s plea in question is done.
The “seeming” “color” of the dominant narrative in Shakespeare’s play, King Henry IV is to strengthen and reinforce the conventional socio-cultural constructs like duty, honor, glory, nobility, war, peace and patriotism as absolutes, but this apparent dominant narrative is subverted and undermined by the existence of alternative micro-narratives, which challenge and expose the reality of these absolutes as socio-cultural constructs invented by the status quo and the dominant ideology. These alternative micro-narratives highlight the inherent contradictions involving these socio-cultural constructs and human subjectivities, thereby showing them as split and dispersed, their alleged unification, as merely a pack of myths and lies. The current study means to show that the text of the play manifests postmodernist and deconstructionist perspectivism, pluralism and multiplicity. This applies both to the text and the subjectivities of the characters. The study is to be undertaken in the light of postmodernist and deconstructionist theoretical framework.
This paper aims to explore that the purpose of V.S. Naipaul in synthesizing different features of autobiography, fiction, history, journalism, essay and memoir in The Enigma of Arrival and A Way in the World is the quest for his socio-cultural and aesthetic identities as a man and a writer. Naipaul acts as a historian, explorer, author, character, narrator and traveler, and changes the novel form in both these books to create a discourse which is placed in the uncertain spaces between fiction and non-fiction. Both the novels are hybrid creations in which Naipaul goes beyond generic boundaries to demonstrate the difficulties in identifying himself within a political, literary, and cultural tradition. This paper also analyzes that the fusion of multiple literary genres in both the novels is meant to describe Naipaul's persistent struggle to make his own world, to become a writer and to convert his personal experience into literary works.
The present study means to investigate Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy in the light of eclectic theoretical framework consisting of Feminism, Postmodernism, and Deconstruction. The overt dominant patriarchal metanarrative is to be shown as problematized by the existence of the alternative micro feminist narrative stands. These alternative strands challenge and subvert the absolutist patriarchal narrative. The transcendental position of patriarchy as an absolute stands deconstructed by the play of alternative micro-narrative strands of feminist resistance. The study also means to show that subjectivities of major characters are self-differentiated, fractured and fragmented. This also implies that patriarchal metanarrative and alternative feminist narrative strands continually displace each other, instead of going for mutual synthesis. Seen through the lens of chosen theoretical framework, Anna Karenina becomes a site of pluralism and multiplicity, a story of resistance to the transcendental patriarchal presence.
The present study investigates the representations of the socialist ideology and Russian revolution of 1917 in Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. The thrust of the study shows the alternative micro narratives, deconstructs socialist ideology and revolution as merely illusionist, foundationalist assumptions. These strands challenge and question the dominant status of socialist ideology and revolution as an absolute and an overarching point of reference. The existence of alternative micro narratives expose the myth of the socialist Russian revolution as an icon of brotherhood, freedom, democracy and the socioeconomic justice. The study also shows absence of transformation in the mere replacement of one kind of totality by another of its kind. It only keeps the binaries of dominance and submission intact. The study is undertaken in the light of an eclectic theoretical framework of Marxism and Deconstruction.
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