“Uncanny Domesticity” in Contemporary American Fiction: The Case of Jhumpa Lahiri

Abstract

The argument contends that Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction – in particular her two novels to date, The Namesake (2003) and The Lowlands (2013) – features a combination of the elements of homeliness and estrangement, domestic and foreign, ultimately, self and the other, that evokes the Freudian concept of the uncanny. Placing it in the context of the diasporic family dynamics, prevalent in Lahiri’s fiction, the uncanny effect may be seen to reside in the unspoken secrets and repressed content passed on from the first to the second generation and disturbing the neat acquisition of the trappings of middle-class domesticity. Drawing on recent models of the “geopolitical novel” (Irr), the “new immigrant fiction” (Koshy) and the “South Asian diasporic novel” (Grewal), the reading engages with the irruption of the unhomely into the domestic space, sustained by immigrant families in the face of local and global disturbances.