Crossing the Thresholds: The Portrait of Rukmini as a New Woman in Mitra Phukan’s the Collector’s Wife

Abstract

According to the belief system of conventional Indian patriarchal culture, the roles of women are firmly entrenched with the notions of chastity and motherhood. A woman is never considered as a life partner, who shares her life with her male counterpart. Rather, she is looked down as an unpaid servant, or a mere sex object who has to weigh down and take responsibilities for an entire family. She is always commodified as an asset which is transferred from the hands of her father to her husband. She is indebted to look after the children and a full grown male who couldn’t look after himself. Several Indian women authors have incarcerated this double standard of the misogynist, patriarchal Indian society in their works. The predicament of their fellow females who are suffering under this gender biased system has prompted the women authors like Kamala Das, Arundhati Roy, Shashi Deshpande and Kamala Markandeya etc to fight against mainstream patriarchal Indian society. North East Indian women authors have also tried to highlight the predicaments of women through their literary works. Mitra Phukan, an Assamese writer, in her work The Collector’s Life has reflected the attempts made by the lead protagonist Rukmini to attain individuality and freedom from her security bound, disciplined, lonely life. At the fag end of the novel she transforms herself from a dutiful wife to a new woman who bravely stands against the traditional notions of chastity and purity. My paper seeks to analyze the journey of Rukmini from the self proclaimed loneliness to the actualization of her own identity and individuality as a woman.