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For her classes at University, Anju pens down essays that feature Bengali fairy tales which in turn spell out the pressures of her fading marriage and her dual feelings about India, “a society where property and destiny were controlled by men.”
In the course of the novel, Sudha receives letters from home that pound her head with the apparent limitations she faces as a woman saddled with motherhood but without a husband. And the solution she ultimately avails (of taking up a job to assist a depressed, old man who yearns to return home to India) is portrayed beautifully spiced with realism and sadness by the author.
On the other hand, the male characters in the novel are neither as powerful nor as impressionable as the or Sunil comes across as a typical male, who is impulsive but is torn between his duties (Anju) and his passion (Sudha). And Ashok, whose love Sudha gave up in Sister, wants her to return to Calcutta to marry him, but he now seems hopelessly out of touch - a point Sudha underlines. “Is there anything as conservative as a conservative Indian male?” she asks.
And finally Lalit, the dangerously charming and witty suitor who hopes to win over Sudha with his modern American outlook, fails to overcome his stereotypical “purer-than-pure-Indian-woman” fantasy about her.
The Vine of Desire abounds with vibrant images as evident in “Sudha is a woman who threw herself against the fence of marriage hard enough to knock it down.”
With all the rich imagery and the tapestry of emotions that run through the novel where the sisters search for their identity, Vine of Desire endorses the fact that Divakaruni is a brilliant storyteller, sensitive and passionate. The author is determined on gaining our compassion for Anju and Sudha but at the same time conveys their inherent strength of character and their will to survive in a world laden with hypocrisy and societal compulsions.
In Anju and Sudha, Divakaruni has two intelligent, courageous women striving to reconcile tradition and change as they move through their lives and their sorrows.
Mona Sengupta
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| Arranged Marriage |
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
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| Sister Of My Heart |
by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
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