“Intersectional perspectives and youthful trauma”: (Re)considering Gauri in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland

Abstract

This article offers a new reading of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Lowland (2013), focused on the protagonist Gauri, by challenging earlier critical accounts of her character. Using an intersectional analysis supported by insights from trauma studies, it scrutinizes the elements that shape Gauri as a woman, revolutionary, wife, mother, and migrant. It argues that her persona is best understood as a product of her multiple interactions with the world and their related discourses within The Lowland’s exploration of the impact of the Naxalite Movement (1967–72) on a conservative middle-class Bengali family and especially on Gauri’s development. Contending that existing readings of Lahiri’s narrative are constrained by gaps in intersectional understandings or misunderstandings of the impact of trauma caused by her engagement with the Movement, the article offers a reading of how Lahiri’s protagonist subverts heteronormative discourses in multiple contexts, voicing her trauma culturally through actions rather than words.