Feminist Appreciation of Jahnavi Barua’s Undertow

Abstract

Jahnavi Barua in her 2020 novel Undertow narrates a family saga
where the relations are estranged due to the daughter’s decision to
marry outside her caste. The novel can be read as the story of three
woman characters– Usha Goswami, Rukmini Goswami and Loya
Alex. These three women are blood relatives; however, they do not
share a common bond of love amongst them. Usha dies without
accepting her daughter Rukmini’s marriage; thus, Rukmini’s daughter
Loya does not know her grandmother. Rukmini lives an abandoned
life and does not even know about her mother’s death. It is Loya who
goes to her maternal grand parents’ home and claims her mother’s
place in it. All the three women seem to follow their own ideologies
and their thoughts and actions provide a suitable set to explore their
position as a woman. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to explore
whether their decisions are ignited by patriarchy or not and to study
the novel as a feminist text.