Socio-Cultural Conflicts in the Selected Novels of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s The Last Burden

Abstract

Upamanyu Chatterjee presents a portrait of the Indian middle-class family as a gendered structure and silent compromise used in The Last Burden. This research paper advances a feminist reading of the novel.  It argues that the domestic space operates as a site. The patriarchy is reproduced through emotional withdrawal, financial authority, and the normalization of women’s unpaid labour. Urmila’s life was caregiving and emotional restraint exposes the cultural expectation that women must endure without recognition. She is sacrificed and romanticized even as it erodes female subjectivity. It examines the gendered politics of ageing and the uneasy pragmatism of the younger generation. This detachment signals the convergence of patriarchy and emergent individualism. Thus, Chatterjee dismantles idealized notions of love and duty of feminist social conflicts.