PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

The image of Indian women has often been associated with the act of obedience and submission. Previous studies on gender and sexuality in India’s literary tradition and culture point to the dominance of heteropatriarchal normativity and the scarcity of the image of a powerful woman capable of contesting and dismantling such impositions. In this study, we argue that Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Before We Visit the Goddess (2016) presents a more nuanced image of the Indian women who constantly problematize the mainstream prescriptions of gender roles and boundaries. In pursuit of the argument, this study aims to explore the novel to examine the multiple ways in which the leading female characters contest, negotiate, and reconstruct pre-existing definitions of gender identities. As an analytical framework, we draw upon the poststructuralist feminist Hélène Cixous’s notions of “the feminine,” “the other,” and “écriture féminine” (feminine writing) to shed light on female characters’ struggles against submission to patriarchal discourses. The findings reveal that the three female characters—i.e., Sabitri, Bela, and Tara—resist discourses of masculinity through empowerment in their unique ways: establishing a business, getting a divorce, and having an abortion. Through such practices, the female characters demonstrate the will of both a woman and a mother and a strong sense of love that works as a key factor in their resistance to patriarchy and rewriting identity relations.

• Alban, G. M. E. (2017). The Medusa gaze in contemporary women’s fiction: Petrifying, maternal, and redemptive. Cambridge Scholar Publishing.

• Anuar, N. A. N. B. A., & Asl, M. P. (2021). Gender and sexual identity in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: A Cixousian analysis of Hijra’s resistance and remaking of the self. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 29(4), 2335-2352. https://doi.org/10.47836/pjssh.29.4.13

• Anuar, N. A. N. B., & Asl, M. P. (2022). Rewriting of gender and sexuality in Tanwi Nandini Islam’s Bright Lines: A Cixousian approach. In M. P. Asl (Ed.), Gender, place, and identity of South Asian women (pp. 131-151). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-3626-4.ch007

• Asl, M. P., & Abdullah, N. F. L. (2017). Practices of (neoliberal) governmentality: Racial and gendered gaze in Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction. 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 23(2), 123-140. https://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2017-2302-10

• Asl, M. P., Abdullah, N. F. L., & Yaapar, M. S. (2018). Sexual politics of the gaze and objectification of the (immigrant) woman in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. American Studies in Scandinavia, 50(2), 89-109. https://doi.org/10.22439/asca.v50i2.5779

• Bauerova, K. (2018). Motherhood as a space for the other: A dialogue between mother Maria Skobtsova and Hélène Cixous. Feminist Theology, 26(2), 133-146. https://doi.org/10.1177/0966735017737718

• Bhopal, K. (2019). Gender, ‘race’ and patriarchy: A study of South Asian women. Routledge.

• Cixous, H. (1976). The laugh of the Medusa. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1(4), 875-893. https://doi.org/10.1086/493306

• Cixous, H. (1981). Castration or decapitation? (A. Khun, Trans.). Signs, 7(1), 41-55. (Original work published 1976)

• Cixous, H. (1991). Coming to writing and other essays (S. Cornell, D. Jenson, A. Liddle, & S. Sellers, Trans.). Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1986)

• Cixous, H. (1996). The Newly Born Woman (B. Wing, Trans.). I. B. Tauris & Co. (Original work published 1975).

• Cixous, H. (2003a). Preface. In S. Sellers (Ed.), The Hélène Cixous reader (pp. xv-xxiii). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203408483

• Cixous, H. (2003b). First names of no one. In S. Sellers (Ed.), The Hélène Cixous reader (pp. 25-34). Routledge.

• Das, B. (2021). Sexual violence in the Indian diaspora: How culture impacts coping and support-seeking. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling, 43(2), 101-112. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10447-021-09433-1

• Das, S. K. (2016). Diasporic literary worlds of three authors: Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Jhumpa Lahiri. Journal of Literary Aesthetic, 3(1), 22-34.

• Divakaruni, C. B. (2016). Before We Visit the Goddess. Simon & Schuster.

• Farahbakhsh, A., & Bozorgi, S. (2013). The Cixousian Woman in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Treatment of Bibi Haldar. Journal of Language, Literature and Culture, 60(2), 118-13. https://doi.org/10.1179/2051285613Z.0000000009

• Habiba, U., Ali, R., & Ashfaq, A. (2016). From patriarchy to neopatriarchy: Experiences of women from Pakistan. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 6(3), 212-221.

• Haptiyal, J. (2016). Writing the desire that fire bore: Emergent motherhood in Hélène Cixous’s The Book of Promethea. Women’s Studies in Communication, 39(4), 380-398. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2016.1229239

• Nazneen, S., Hossain, N., & Chopra, D. (2019). Introduction: Contentious women’s empowerment in South Asia. Contemporary South Asia, 27(4), 457-470. https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2019.1689922

• Rajeswari, P., & Rajarajan, S. (2019). Aspects and ultimate goal of Indian women writers in diasporic literature. Language in India, 19(7), 364-367.

• Ramshaw, S. (2003). Nearing the ‘Wild Heart’: The Cixousian ‘feminine’ and the quest for law’s origin. Australian Feminist Law Journal, 19(1), 11-27. https://doi.org/10.1080/13200968.2003.10854312

• Rasool, K. R. (2019). Adrian A. Husain’s search for truth and identity within dialectics of violence and freedom. In M. P. Wong & M. Y. Saeed (Eds.), The changing world of contemporary South Asian poetry in English: A collection of critical essays (pp. 91-213). Rowman & Littlefield.

• Sahoo, A. K., & Shome, A. (2020). Diaspora and transnationalism: The changing contours of ethnonational identity of Indian diaspora. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 19(3), 383-402. https://doi.org/10.1163/15691497-12341561

• Sellers, S. (Ed.). (2003). The Hélène Cixous Reader. Routledge.

• Shameem, M. (2016). Narrative of Indian diasporic writing: A new perspective on the women writers of the diaspora. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 3(1), 185-196. https://rupkatha.com/V8/n1/19_Indian_diasporic_women_writers.pdf

• Sharma, S. (2017). Relationship between culture and gender inequality in India. Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2(10), 30-35. https://doi.org/10.9790/0837-2210063035

• Shukla, S. B., & Shukla, A. (2006). Migrant voices in literature in English. Sarup & Sons.

• Siddiqi, N. (2021). Gender inequality as a social construction in India: A phenomenological enquiry. Women’s Studies International Forum, 86, Article 102472. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2021.102472

• Singh, A., Chokhandre, P., Singh, A. K., Barker, K. M., Kumar, K., McDougal, L., James, K. S., & Raj, A. (2021). Development of the India patriarchy index: Validation and testing of temporal and spatial patterning. Social Indicators Research, 159, 351-377. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02752-1

• Sivakumar, I., & Manimekalai, K. (2021). Masculinity and challenges for women in Indian culture. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 22(5), 427-436.

• Terjesen, S., & Singh, V. (2008). Female presence in corporate boards: A multi-country study of environmental context. Journal of Business Ethics, 83(1), 55-63. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9656-1

• Torre, E. (2010). French and Italian feminist exchanges in the 1970s: Queer embraces in queer time. [Doctoral dissertation, The University of Michigan]. Deep Blue Documents. https://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/77903

• Zuke, H. M. (2013). Theorizing patriarchy: Development paradoxes and the geography of gender in South Asia. Gender, Technology and Development, 17(1), 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0971852412472121

• Hoctor, K. E. (2013). “White ink”: The body and écriture féminine in Toni Morrison’s Beloved [Master’s thesis, DePaul University]. The Institutional Repository at DePaul University. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/151.

• Jagganath, G. (2017). Foodways and culinary capital in the diaspora: Indian women expatriates in South Africa. Nordic Journal of African Studies, 26(2), 107-125.

• Jaggar, A. M. (1989). Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology. Inquiry, 32(2), 151-176. https://doi.org/10.1080/00201748908602185

• Jain, A. (2014). Gender role attitudes and marital satisfaction among Asian Indian couples living in the U.S.: An exploratory study [Doctoral dissertation, The State University of New Jersey]. RUcore: Rutgers University Community Repository. https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T30P0XGF

• Jones, A. R. (1981). Writing the body: Toward an understanding of “l’écriture féminine”. Feminist Studies, 7(2), 247-263. https://doi.org/10.2307/3177523

• Jordan, N. (2016). Daughter of writing: Mother writ large with Hélène Cixous. Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, 7(2), 94-104.

• Kumari, S. (2018). Diasporic women writers with special reference to Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices. Cyber Literature, XXI(42), 70-87.

• Lathabhavan, R., & Balasubramaniam, S. A. (2017). Glass ceiling and women employees in Asian organizations: A tri-decadal review. Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration, 9(3), 232-246. https://doi.org/10.1108/APJBA-03-2017-0023

• Laxmiprasad, P. V. (2020). Diasporic literature—An overview. Journal of English Language and Literature, 7(3), 98-106. https://doi.org/10.33329/joell.7.3.20.98

• Mohanty, C. T. (2003). “Under Western Eyes” revisited: Feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(2), 499-535. https://doi.org/10.1086/342914

• Naupančič, M. (2020). Divakaruni’s Before We Visit the Goddess: Overcoming fears and instabilities. In K. Kaukiainen, K. Kurikka, H. Mäkelä, E. Nykänen, S. Nyqvist, J. Raipola, A. Riippa, & H. Samola (Eds.), Narratives of fear and safety (pp. 289-314). Tampere University Press.