Culturally Displaced Identity of the Protagonist in the Novel ‘Wife’

Bharati Mukherjee was an Indian diasporic writer. Though she migrated to USA, her roots have always been in India, associated with the culture and tradition of the native country. As an expatriate writer her works project the cultural displacement faced by the immigrants and the impact that is left on them. Her novels project the different situations the migrated characters face, problems they overcome, the adjustments they make and the feeling of isolation. The present paper discusses the impact of cultural displacement on the main protagonist Dimple das gupta in the novel Wife written by Bharati Mukherjee and published in the year 1975.My objective is to project the problem faced by the first generation of immigrants by studying the character Dimple das gupta and the impact of cultural displacement on the immigrants by using the tools of psycho-analytical theory. Application of Psycho- analytical theory to literary texts helps the readers to study the characters and find out the reasons for different behaviours .According to Sigmund Freud it is clash of id, ego and superego which are the three parts of the human psyche that makes transformation of personalities that result in different behaviors'. If people experience these type of psychological clashes they do not come under normal personality. As the founder of psychiatry Sigmund Freud mentioned the functioning of the mind at various levels in terms of psychology and neurology. The main protagonist Dimple das gupta lives in a fantasy world and makes dream as source of her living in the native country and in the alien country. Her dream takes a violent turn because of the suppressed desires and makes her a negative character. One of the reasons being the cultural displacement. She dreams a beautiful life and a good husband but when her dreams are shattered she kills her husband. She turns out to be a different personality altogether who cannot find happiness in her marriage either in Calcutta or in USA.