A Study Of Spatial Theory In Jhumpa Lahiri's Fiction

Jhumpa Lahiri who is a famous contemporary Indian American writer has published four works including short stories:Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth, long fiction The Namesake and The Low land.This thesis would take the methods of text interpretation and theoretical analysis to divide the three dimensions of geographic, social and cultural space and analyze a series of space image in Lahiri's stories since she is a post-colonial writer in order to explore character identity with spatial criticism.This thesis is divided into five parts:Introduction mainly introduces the Lahiri's family background, abundant literary achievements,her writing style and domestic and international research on her works. Then, this section would put forward to the thought and the method of this thesis. A detailed review of external spatial criticism and identity theories would also be discussed in the section. The first chapter interprets the leap in geographic space. Geographic space refers to the physical space in the stories. This means that it is the activity place of characters and the background of subjunctive story. Calcutta and Rhode Island, which is loaded with diaspora demand, are demonstrated several times in these Lahiri's works to express immigrant implication, value and sentiments. Chapter two represents the social space. Social space reflects the dominant ideology and social order in space which is the representation of the social relationship. Lahiri refuses to load the grand narrative of revolutionary historical themes while focus on the sentimental social space where, ethnic and authority has been magnified to apparent the imparity relationship. Vulnerable communities attempt to dispel the stable social hierarchy constructed by hegemony bourgeois. The third part discusses the cultural space in these works. The focus of cultural space research is how the different culture converges to a specific place and impacts local residents since they have different forming process. Ethnic diaspora strive to explore their cultural identity in such cultural space images like "enclave", "station", "low land" and so on. This cultural identity which rooted in the Indian American spatial experience is a refreshing and miscellaneous identity but not an either/or situation. The last part is the conclusion of this thesis which expresses the desirability of ethnic diaspora. They desire to have equal conversation and communication with western world and construct a mixture, comprehensive, external third world in order to eliminate racial barriers and cultural prejudices so as to obtain the sense of self-identity and belonging.