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