“Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Women : A Comparative Reading of Sudha Murthy and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni”

In this research paper, I consider how women are represented through crosscultural perspectives by comparing the works of two renowned authors Sudha Murthy and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Cultural, social and economic forces have always affected the role of women in society and this role has been documented in literature as a strong tool to depict the lived realities. Writing within the Indian socio-cultural system, Sudha Murthy emphasizes everyday encounters, sacrifices, and determination of the women which are well entrenched in Indian traditions and values. Her characters, inspired mostly by the lives of middle classes, are concerned with such problems as dowry, gender discrimination, domesticity, and the conflict between individual ambitions and family requirements. By contrast, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, as an Indian-American author, introduces women in diaspora that travel between two worlds-India and the West. Her stories are about migration, cultural displacement, identity crisis, generational conflict, and finding independence in a foreign country.

This paper, by juxtaposing these two authors, shows that, gender roles as well as cultural context shape the lives of women. Whereas Murthy provides a redefinition of women within the frames of Indian society, Divakaruni’s women bargain the freedom and belonging in the cross-cultural domains. There are also common points in the work struggle, empowerment, and self-discovery, which confirms that women of the different parts of the world have similar struggles in trying to establish their identities, regardless of the differences in the location and culture. It is pertinent to quote about the writers, ‘Language and cultures are transformed when they come in contact with the others. These writers are often pre-occupied with the elements of nostalgia as they seek to locate themselves in new cultures. They write in relation with the culture of the homeland and at the same time adopt and negotiate with the cultural space of host ‘land.’ (Wanjari, Priya D., 36-37).

Through this comparative research paper, it becomes evident that despite their cultural positions, both Murthy and Divakaruni make important contributions to literature of women by bringing forth female characters who are powerful, strong willed and transformational. Their writings are rich sources of information on the interaction of tradition, modernity, and globalization to form the experiences of women. In this way, the paper highlights the significance of cross-cultural feminist ways of seeing the voices of women in modern literature.