IN SEARCH OF THE DAUGHTER’S SPACE: DECONSTRUCTING THE NOTION OF DAUGHTERS AS ‘PARAYA-DHAN’ IN ANITA DESAI’S CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY

This paper attempts to demonstrate how Anita Desai has deconstructed the trope of the girl child as ‘paraya-dhan’ (‘someone else’s wealth’) in her novel Clear Light of Day (1980). In the novel, Bimla Das and the two Misra sisters, Jaya and Sarla, defy the construct of daughters as belonging to their husband’s house. Written at a time when girl children were still considered as their father’s responsibility until their marriage and their husband’s responsibility after marriage, Desai has challenged the notion of women as incapable of taking care of themselves and their family. This paper examines the factors that enable Bimla and the Misra sisters to challenge this stereotype and expose the patriarchal system of marriage that positions daughters as ‘paraya-dhan’. Apart from a change in one’s marital status, marriage for a woman also necessitates spatial displacement from one’s parental house to one’s marital house. In remaining unmarried, Bimla deflects the ‘paraya-dhan’ narrative and spatial dislocation that comes with marriage. The paper shall also analyse the characters Bimla and her brother Raja as a challenge to the established gender roles of women as the dependent and man as the provider and lay bare the “constructedness of gender” roles (Butler,1999). The paper draws on the work of Gayle Rubin, Judith Butler and Simon Beauvoir to substantiate the arguments.

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