A Critical Examination of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies under the Lens of Diaspora

Abstract

The study aims to trace the identity crisis that the female characters go through in the particular work of Lahiri. Hence, the main objective of the study is to examine all the social, political, and cultural factors that seem to offer a series of challenges for female characters in particular short stories, and ultimately put their survival at great risk. Meanwhile, the researcher has applied a qualitative paradigm of research along with the concept of orientalism as the framework of the study. The sample has been comprised of five particular short stories taken from a collection of short stories entitled “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri by the implementation of the purposive sampling technique. The findings revealed that diasporic women suffer more than men while navigating to another land, they endure the agony of frustration, alienation, cultural dislocation, and identity crisis. They long for their past life relations, customs, and rituals in the meantime facing the problems of humiliation and degradation inside and outside of their homes.