Tracing the Trajectory of Female Liminal Personae: Elif Shafak’s Honour and Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine

Abstract

Both Bharati Mukherjee and Elif Shafak belong to the group of the most prolific and prominent female writers, whose works focus on the phenomenon of in-betweeness and liminality. The psychological and spatial dislocation and relocation lead their characters to be in a state of liminality, where their identities become fluid and ambiguous. Their works seem to apprise some of their own experiences as liminal beings, navigating between their native culture and foreign influences. The present paper attempts to portray the trajectory of female liminal personae in Elif Shafak’s Honour and Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine. The selected novels will be analyzed through the lens of Victor Turner’s theory of liminality shedding some light on a spatio-temporal stage, and a state of in-betweenness and ambiguity through which the women characters of these novels pass. These works reflect the passage of life of the female characters while moving from pre-liminal to post-liminal phases, and the transformation they undergo while passing through the liminal spaces. Elif Shafak’s Honour portrays the socio-psychological nature of liminality, and its impact on the life of the people undergoing the process of transition while moving from one stage of life to another. While Bharati Mukherjee’s novel, Jasmine unravels the ordeals of an immigrant, Jasmine, whose life is a series of incarnations; a succession of different lives lived in a single life time; undergoing a sequence of transmutations, from Jyoti to Jasmine, to Jase, to Jane before her final incorporation in USA.