Initiation and Identity in Divakaruni's "Clothes"
This essay examines Chitra Divakaruni's short story "Clothes" as an initiation narrative structured around three stages: innocence, experience, and maturity. Through close reading, the essay traces how protagonist Sumita's arranged marriage and subsequent immigration to California expose her to new possibilities for women's independence. The analysis focuses on the irony embedded in Sumita's journey — that following a traditional path forces her out of tradition — and explores how her husband's death becomes a turning point at which she must choose between returning to India and embracing her emerging American identity. The essay draws on scholarship about the South Asian diaspora to situate Sumita's struggle within broader patterns of dislocation experienced by immigrant women.
- Introduction: Irony and Initiation: Story identified as ironic coming-of-age narrative
- Three Stages of the Protagonist's Journey: Innocence, experience, maturity framework applied to Sumita
- The Immigrant Experience and Displacement: California broadens Sumita's sense of possibility
- Sumita's Choice After Loss: Husband's death forces return-or-stay decision
- Conclusion: Independence Through Dislocation: Diaspora dislocation enables Sumita's selfhood
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay identifies a clear structural framework — the three-stage initiation model — and applies it consistently throughout the analysis, giving the argument a strong organizing spine.
- It uses a central irony (that a traditional arranged marriage produces nontraditional independence) as a lens that unifies close reading with thematic argument.
- Specific textual evidence, such as Sumita's characterization of widows as "doves with cutoff wings" and the precise dollar amount saved, anchors abstract claims in the story's details.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of secondary scholarship to contextualize literary analysis. Rather than relying solely on the text, the writer draws on critics such as Katrak and Prose to situate Sumita's personal struggle within the broader "lived reality of relocations and dislocations" of the South Asian diaspora, showing how individual narrative connects to collective experience.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by identifying genre and theme, then establishes the ironic premise that drives its argument. It follows the protagonist chronologically — from the expectations of marriage, through immigration, to widowhood and the central choice she faces — before concluding with a synthesis that frames her decision as an assertion of mature selfhood. The Works Cited section follows MLA formatting conventions.
Introduction: Irony and Initiation
"Clothes" by Chitra Divakaruni is a coming-of-age story filled with irony about the immigrant experience of South Asian women. It is an initiation story that follows a progression of three stages — innocence, experience, and maturity — that the protagonist experiences as a result of her unique circumstances within an arranged marriage. After the premature death of her husband Somesh, Sumita must decide whether she wants to remain in the United States or return to her home country to serve her in-laws.
Three Stages of the Protagonist's Journey
"Clothes" is a story built on irony because, on one hand, by marrying, Sumita is following a traditional pattern of life. But to follow this traditional pattern, she must go to America and leave her old ways behind. Being in California opens Sumita's eyes to new ways for women to live. Because her arranged marriage requires her to be displaced from her traditional homeland, she is filled with a sense of independence she would never have gained had she remained in India. Her innocence ends with an initiation into American ways as a single woman after her husband's death, and her maturity is achieved through her assertion as an independent individual, apart from her status as a wife.
The Immigrant Experience and Displacement
A young woman with her whole life before her, Sumita believes she faces a clear choice: either return to India to live with her in-laws for the rest of her life, or stay alone in America with the $3,605.33 that she and her husband saved together (Albert 99). Her husband, a proprietor of a 7-Eleven in a dangerous neighborhood, worked hard to establish a foothold in American society. To leave his dream behind seems like both a defeat and a betrayal of his memory, as well as a betrayal of her new identity.
Conclusion: Independence Through Dislocation
By using her marriage as a springboard for independence — even after that marriage ends — the author shows how Sumita is engaged in "the strenuous balancing act of having one foot in one country, the other foot in another" (Prose 20). Her struggle reflects the "lived reality of relocations and dislocations" of the South Asian diaspora that are often particularly difficult for women (Katrak 5). Through Sumita's journey, Divakaruni captures how diaspora literature renders the immigrant experience not merely as loss but as a complicated, sometimes liberating, negotiation between worlds.
Works Cited
Albert, Janice. "How now, my metal of India." The English Journal, vol. 86, no. 5, September 1999, pp. 99–100.
Katrak, Ketu H. "The Aesthetics of Dislocation: Writing the Hybrid Lives of South Asian Americans." The Women's Review of Books, vol. 19, no. 5, February 2002, pp. 5–6.
Prose, Francine. "Life in the Global Village." The Women's Review of Books, vol. 13, no. 6, March 1996, p. 20.
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