Immigrant Women and Body Culture in Jhumpa Lahiri‟s The Namesake (2003) and The Lowland (2013)
Immigrant Women and Body Culture in Jhumpa Lahiri‟s The Namesake (2003) and The Lowland (2013)

Summary/Abstract: The first or second generation immigrant women face the effects of cultural and identity dislocation in Jhumpa Lahiri‘s books. Wives following their unknown husbands in a foreign country, mothers who need to deliver their babies in totally unfamiliar conditions, daughters fighting their parents‘ cultural and memory burden, her female characters construct patterns of bodily practice that reveal inner tensions and contradictions with deep significance. The aim of this paper is to explore the feminine universe as a physiological and psychological response to cultural trauma, alienation and identity crisis, with a close look to Lahiri‘s two novels, The Namesake (2003) and The Lowland (2013). Body culture acquires new dimensions and forms in Indian immigrant women‘s lives. Clothing, nurturing, bodily display and movement, the relationship with space and nature, sexual experiences or body decoration become ways of expressing their reaction to cultural conflicting demands and subsequently their struggle to create a new identity.

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