A Study On The Immigrants' Loneliness In Jhumpa Lahiri's Works

Jhumpa Lahiri is one of the most distinguished contemporary Indian American novelists.She has published four pieces of work so far,including two collections of short stories,Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed Earth and two novels,The Namesake and The Lowland.Scholars from home and abroad focus on her fiction with the perspectives in post colonialism,diaspora,feminism and cultural identity.Few studies discussed the problem of loneliness in Lahiri's works systematically.Thus,the author of the thesis attempts to study the immigrants' loneliness in her works in hope of finding something new.Most characters in Lahiri's works are Indian immigrants who have long lived in America.They have received higher education and come here for dreams.However,as a marginalized group from a heterogeneous culture,they all suffer from different types of loneliness under the discrimination and prejudice from the mainstream society.Being away from the home country and unable to integrate into the local society,the loss in emotional relationships or the sudden and unexpected death of parents aggravate their loneliness which can be well understood from Weiss' s theory.In 1973,Robert Weiss in his influential monograph Loneliness: The experience of emotional and social isolation divided loneliness into emotional loneliness and social loneliness.The former refers to the loss of intimate relationships or attachment figures while the latter is associated with the absence of desired social networks and social relationships.In general,newly divorced,widowed and lovelorn individuals are likely to suffer from emotional loneliness while migration,displacement,and social isolation may lead to social loneliness.According to Weiss' s theory,immigrants are the most appropriate group for loneliness research.Therefore,this thesis will focus on the problem of loneliness in Lahiri's works with major reference to Weiss' s and some other scholars' theories of loneliness.The present study consists of an introduction,a body of three chapters and a conclusion.The first chapter makes a brief introduction to Jhumpa Lahiri,the relevantstudies on her works and different theories on loneliness.Chapter two and three discuss respectively the presentation of emotional and social loneliness in the text.With a close reading of the novels,the author of the thesis maintains that the emotional loneliness of the immigrants is closely related with the deterioration of marriage and dating relationship as well as bereavement while social loneliness is a consequence of low quality in social relations and low quantity in social participation.Chapter four probes into the major causes of loneliness among immigrants in Lahiri's works.Both emotional and social loneliness are associated with their hybrid identities,marginal situation and cultural conflicts.In the conclusion part,it's pointed out that though Lahiri fails to propose any effective measures against the loneliness of the characters,her focus on the problem shows her deep sympathy for Indian immigrants and her helplessness about the society.