Urban Fears and Subconscious Surrender to Patriarchal Codes: A Study of Chitra Divakaruni’s Novel Sister of My Heart

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the fears of women-only families* living in urban spaces and their subconscious surrender to patriarchal codes to defend themselves from both potential and imaginary urban fears. Chitra Divakaruni’s novel Sister of My Heart deals with the fears of the women-only family of the Chatterjees in the big city Calcutta** and its study provides us important material for the discussion. It is believed that urban spaces with well-built civil security systems liberate women from the clutches of patriarchy, offering liberal living conditions and numerous economic opportunities. But this is not entirely true; women in urban spaces suffer a lot of security problems and face a lot of personal safety issues every day. They frequently undergo humiliations, sexist remarks, threats to violate honor, rape, and other kinds of physical and mental violence in public spaces. This kind of insecure position of women makes their life fearful in urban spaces, and they become helpless many times when civil security systems and other law and order enforcing authorities do not offer effective solutions to the issues. So, women take refuge in patriarchal ways to defend themselves from fears and threats of urban spaces, and these things are not desired by women, but they are helpless and they surrender to patriarchal social codes subconsciously.