Inside the Spouse Mukherjee uses a young Indian immigrant wife’s experiences as the a fictional design to own narrating the brand new difficulty off cultural dislocation and you will death of label. Inside the doing this, she also offers an incredibly critical look at later twentieth century Indian middle-income group, particularly the fundamental personal and financial affairs of fuel you to definitely she sees impacting the new approved gender opportunities and you can women agencies in marriage as well as in the brand new Indian immigrant neighborhood. Devote new 1970s, the fresh new book means the fresh new willing “exile” from metropolitan, educated Indians exactly who arrive at Ny having economic grounds, to function and you can boost money to make certain on their own a comfortable existence once they go back to India. Spouse depicts Indian immigrant ladies lifetime as characterised because of the a simple paradox: since partnered Indian ladies in a different people, he is so much more closely in the private room out-of household than in India, and yet, undergoing migration, its serves within the private place from domestic and additionally acquire higher personal benefit by the peer scrutiny and you will demand for cultural cohesion for the brief immigrant area.

Dimple keeps compulsively imagining her coming just like the a bona-fide – that’s, partnered and you may legitimately sexual – lady, and you will dismisses “premarital lifestyle while the an outfit rehearsal to have genuine living” (W step three-4)

The latest convergence of one’s individual and the social in-marriage and within the home – throughout the principles regarding “woman” and you may “wife” – is actually foregrounded right from the start of your book, starting with the new tragicomic membership of your own protagonist’s work to safer a partner and you may eliminate brand new boundaries away from their particular childhood domestic.