Critique of Western Feminism: A Study of Mukherjee’s The Holder of the World

Abstract

In The Holder of the World, Bharati Mukherjee presents the general predicaments of Indian women under British colonial patriarchal India through the firsthand experience of her western female protagonist Hannah Easton. Since the colonized women suffer double marginalization: political and gender, the patriarchal social norms and colonial politics that undermine women are presented as the major causes of double marginality of women in India. Mukherjee critiques western brand of monolithic and reductive notion of feminism which homogenized all women of the globe regardless of their cultural, political, and locationalaspects. Likewise, British colonialism that dominates both men and women in India and suppresses their rights is explored as the major cause of domination and exploitation of Indian women. For the liberation from colonial and cultural domination of Indian women, male-female solidarity is called in the fiction. For this solidarity, men should respect women’s freedom rights and provide them with equal opportunity welcoming all sorts of positive changes in the dominating patriarchal norms. Mukherjee implies that through the solidarity of both men and women only women should realize their potential and empower themselves for the development of strong and peaceful society. Therefore, solidarity and reconciliation between males and females is essential unlike male-female antagonism in western feminism.