Metropolitan Culture and the Politics of Gender and Class in the Fiction of Namita Gokhale and Aravind Adiga
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29070/arvnth85Keywords:
Metropolitan Culture, Indian English Fiction, Urban Studies, Gender, Class, Postcolonial CityAbstract
The concept of metropolitan culture has become quite an important subject of investigation in present-day literature and urban studies, considering the various aspects of urbanization, globalization, social inequality, and cultural transformation. The metropolitan culture in Indian English fiction has been represented in such a way that not only as a physical place, but also as a living channel for negotiations of identity, power, and experience. This paper reviews metropolitan culture in the writing of Namita Gokhale and Aravind Adiga, especially focusing on the interconnections of gender and class. Using an interdisciplinary approach that involves urban studies, postcolonialism, and literary criticism literature, the paper combines the review of existing literature to demonstrate how both authors challenge the existing ideas of metropolitan modernity. The major difference between the two authors is the emphasis made by Gokhale on the experiences of women in elite urban places, while for Adiga the existing discrepancies between the rich and poor layers of society and the impact of neoliberal development reflect the important role of structural inequalities. The comparison of two authors reveals that the gender and class are communicated through their conjunction in terms of identity, mobility, and feeling of belonging in modern Indian metropolises. Furthermore, this review paper indicates towards the possibility of interdisciplinary future research and stresses the significance of metropolitan fiction for understanding cultural and social realities of post-liberalization India.
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