Explicating Tradition and Identity Crisis in Bharati Mukherjee's Desirable Daughters and Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle

Abstract

The passionate pursuit of national culture and traditions, while often creating a sense of discord and division, is the driving force behind finding the essence of nativism. Despite having traditional wealth, ethnic heritage, geographical advantages, and racial superiority, people are willing to die fir a native cause. Being in search for native values as dictated by social moral psychology is what creates the question if identity and culture. Diaspora writings merge together the traditional culture from an adopted land and transforms that of the immigrants inherited culture. Bharati Mukherjee' s novel, Desirable Daughters unveils the struggle for self-definition and identity for modern educated women who are stuck between tradition and modernity; it tells a story about immigrants and how three sisters( Padma, Parvati, and Tara ) maneuver their way through identity. Margaret Atwood is a renowned Canadian author whose primary focus is on gender, her works revolves around women looking for their lost identity in a patriarchal society. Lady Oracle (1976), is one soch work which explores complexity of reinvention while Joan Foster (the protagonist) attempts to recreate herself. This paper aims to discuss the impact that tradition has in identity formation in Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle and Bharati Mukherjee's Desirable Daughters; it sheds light on the struggle that women face in terms of trying to balance their traditional values with their crisis of identity.