Wandering Between Two Cultures

Jhumpa Lahiri,the Indian-American author,is considered one of the most celebrated young writers in contemporary America.Till now,she has published four literary works which include two collections of short stories Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth and two novels The Namesake and The Lowland.The Lowland is her latest novel published in 2013.The story in The Lowland features two brothers,Subhash and Udayan,of the middle class family of Mitra who live in the suburb of Calcutta,India.Being intimate when growing up,the two brothers gradually drift apart in terms of the path of life,with Udayan the younger brother participating in the politically-charged Naxalite movement and getting himself killed by the brutality of police,leaving behind his wife Gauri pregnant with a baby,and Subhash going to the United States for graduate education.Out of affection for his brother and sympathy for Gauri,Sabhash offers to marry Gauri and takes her to the United States.The story mostly focuses on the three members of the family,namely,Sabhash,Gauri and Gauri's daughter Bela,with all of them being torn apart by their efforts to integrate into the mainstream society of their adopted country on the one hand and their deep-rooted cultural link with their home country on the other hand.Although absent in the major portion of the novel,Udayan is the common source of trauma for Gauri,Sabhash and Bela,who each feel the pain of loss and wander between two distinctive cultures of India and America.Throughout the novel,the author noticeably employs a number of spatial images to help present both the characters and the story.Therefore,this thesis is intended to study the novel from the perspective of spatial criticism,aiming to cover regional space,social space and cultural space,to see how Lahiri has constructed the identity of the three characters in the novel,and how the author tells a story of acculturation with spatial images.