Narrative of One’s Own: Discerning Female Standpoint and Magical Realism in Githa Hariharan’s When Dreams Travel

Abstract

The post-colonial perspective on magical realism has been the centre of critical attention which in turn undermines the significance of the women magical realist writers. This paper is an attempt to navigate the eccentricities of magical realism that foreground the exclusion of female voices and feminist perspectives. The study attends to the magical realist narratives by women characters in the novel, When Dreams Travel, by an Indian novelist, Githa Hariharan. Through textual analysis of the novel, it will be illustrated that magical realism’s dichotomy manifests creative recuperation of women’s lost identity. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory, the paper will demonstrate that varying epistemic status (such as gender, class, caste, sexuality, social location, etc.) leads to diverse perspectives on stories. The analysis will further explore how marginalised female experiences, sufferings and realities find a way of expression through storytelling. Not only does the articulation of surreal imaginations, visions and dreams by women characters intermingle natural and supernatural but also represents the narrative from their vantage point, thereby, revisiting and eventually reconstructing their reality.