Diasporic Identities and Motherhood in Jumpa Lahiri’s "The Lowland"

Resumen

The Lowland, the second novel by Jhumpa Lahiri—an Indian-American writer—journeys through the experience of migration, loss of identity and estrangement, all revolving around a traditional notion of motherhood that the author dramatically subverts. In the process of building the plural identity of the main character, and her development as an autonomous subject with decisionmaking capabilities, Lahiri incorporates new dimensions to the “traditional” imagery about motherhood. The conflict of multiple identities reflected in The Lowland has structural similarities with what has been theoretically proposed by Amartya Sen in Reason before Identity. The process of building a unique and autonomous individual is the result of the conflictual bargaining of multiple identity tensions. In the novel, there are two dimensions of identity that especially stand out: diaspora and motherhood. These, then, come face to face with a third dimension, that of the possibility for a woman to choose her own path while confronting mandatory, predetermined behaviors.