Negotiating the Notion of Identity and Space in Manju Kapur’s ‘Home’

 Traditions and conventions go a long way in the socialization and conditioning of an Indian woman who, very often, is seen to be willingly accepting the responsibility of being the custodian of the family and its prestige. In an Indian society, family constitutes the dominant milieu and constructs the primary identity of women. It defines and prescribes the social roles that women will play in familial terms: daughter, wife, and mother. Very often, the family becomes a major site of women’s oppression. On the other hand, women have internalized, so deeply, the social engineering laws, that go a long way in their conditioning, that they do not realize the extent to which they are subjugated to in the name of family.  An Indian woman is yet to seek an identity as a human being with equal status in the family in which she is born and in the family to which she is given in marriage. This paper is an attempt to make a study of the evolution of woman in the novel of Manju Kapur, with special reference to Home (2006), in the midst of the repressive patriarchal structure of the Indian society.&nbsp