Transcending Gender Binaries: Exploring Manjukapur's “A Married Woman” and “The Immigrant”

Abstract

Gender studies speak of gender exploitation gender stereotypes and gender equity. The whole issue hinges on sex differentiations, which is natural and its variance from gender differentiations, patriarchy has ruled the roost side-lining women as the ‘second sex’. Nature does not permit any differentiation among the sexes based on gender roles. But for generations, women have been victims of oppression, exploitations and denial of rights. In fact, they have become complicitous in their own subjugation by passively accepting and fulfilling stereotypical roles of self – denial, self - sacrifice and spiritual suicide. So, one feels the time has come to de -gender ourselves and be classed as ‘humans’ capable of conscious living and intelligent thinking. This is the solution implied in Manju Kapur’s A Married Woman (2002) and The Immigrant (2008) the two novels have been chosen as test cases. Both the protagonists undergo a metamorphosis in the white heat miserable, familial and social existence. Astha though, she returns to family - life is a different person at the close of the novel. She has seen the bitterness of both sites of life, inner and the outer, the familial and the experimental and become sadder and wiser. Nina in the final chapter of The Immigrant is ‘Arthanari’ having become semi – man expecting a new opening in a new land. The novel portrays her odyssey from India to Montreal and from a helpless immigrant to a militant citizen of the world.