Partition in the Private Sphere: Family Narratives as Vehicles for the Trauma of National History in Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day and Irina Liebmann’s Die freien Frauen

Abstract

This article probes the allegorical potential of Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day (1980) and Irina Liebmann’s Die freien Frauen (2004), two family narratives which are set in the contexts of Indian/Pakistani and East/West German partition respectively. By appropriating Frederic Jameson’s contested concept of the ‘national allegory’ as a tool that is useful beyond his limited notion of its exclusive applicability to ‘Third World Literature’, I argue that both the Indian and the German text complicate a clear demarcation of private and public spheres. An examination of three themes shared by both novels – the breakdown of communication, the significance assigned to space, and the interplay of personal and collective memory – reveals the intensely political subtext of two narratives that have mostly been considered subjective, gendered explorations of familial past. Situated in this comparative approach, Clear Light of Day and Die freien Frauen mutually highlight the ways in which each text resists a generalising, official version of history and prove their relevance within the discussion of partition literature.