Comparisons_Between_“The_Tenant”_and_“Lust”

Comparisons Between “The Tenant” and “Lust” In Mukherjee’s story “The Tenant”, Maya is an Indian woman who immigrates to the United States at the age of nineteen. She only remembers a little of her childhood, but what happens to her grandmother and her great-aunt still has impact on her. She recalls “her grandmother had been married off at the age of five in a village now in Bangladesh. Her great-aunt had been burned to death over a dowry problem” (102). These two incidents give us a sense that in what kind of society she is being brought up. It also reveals that women are always the ones who get suppressed in Indian. As she is growing up in Indian, Maya also has to undergo a lot of things that Indian women ought to go through at their adolescent period. She “had been trained to speak softly, arrange flowers, sing, be pliant” (102). This makes her very feminine. Not only does Maya’s Indian cultural background and experiences determine her behavior, it also gives her an impression that there are no good Indian men. As she proclaims that “all Indian men are wife beaters” (101), we can see indian, men, love, sex, maya, never, married, man, been, women, two, sake’s, really, people, makes, little, know, kind, great-aunt, grandmother, age, woman, wife, whom, way, village, very, unworthy, until, united, undergo, ultimately, ugly, type, true, trained, towards, toward, through, thinks, things, tenant, tell, suppressed, strong, story