Objectives of the Study

9

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A. Review of Related Studies

The Lowland is Jhumpa Lahiri’s fourth book. It was shortlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction in 2013, the Man Booker Prize 2013 and the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction 2014. This novel sketched in a town named Tollygunge, Calcutta, India during the 1950s and 60s. The story begins with the story of two brothers named Udayan Mitra and Subhash Mitra. These two brothers were close in age but they were very different. Udayan was restless and impulsive. He protested the corruption and joined the Naxalbari movement in India. Meanwhile, Subhash Mitra was static, detached and settled in his own loneliness. Although both were very close, they remained different. The character of Udayan who joined the Naxalbari movement has inspired other reasercher like Yahya Chaudry to write a journal “Reading Mao In India: Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland and Naxalism” with the ideas on mapping the border between the personal and political views. Chaudry was interested in revealing the characteristics of Udayan and it became the base of an examination about the role of personality and impulsivity in joining the Naxalbari movement in India, he used Marxist theory to analyze the concept of Maoism and Nalxalism in India. Lahiri vividly limns an image of Udayan as the restless youth, who begins championing the Naxalbari cause at home and immersing himself in Marxist theory. To Udayan, the Left Front and CPI M are nothing more than the puppets of wealthy landowners, and parliamentary politics has proven futile. Mao and Che’s exhortations to bring about a revolution through violent struggle are all that remain for him, and fit his Newtonian sense of history newleftproject.org Moreover, the main difference between this undergraduate thesis and Chaudry’s is the approach of the study. This undergraduate thesis considers this novel as a Postcolonial Feminism novel, different form Chaudry who considers this novel as a Postcolonial novel. Based on the Postcolonial Feminism perspective, this undergraduate thesis focuses on the character named Gauri as the base of an examination about her effort to redefine the concept of motherhood. Quoting from Cahudry’s journal about Gauri’s characteristics: In Gauri, Lahiri has written the most captivating and controversial character in all of her fictional works. She is a thoughtful and impulsive feminist; the perfect match for Udayan and the worst for Subhash and Bela newleftproject.org Gauri was a character which came across as the most complex, unpredictable character whose thoughts and feelings were opaque from all - even from her own daughter, Bela Udayan and Gauri’s daughter. According to TK Pius in his journal Jhumpa Lahiris the Lowland: A Critical Analysis, Gauri had several dominant characteristics as a character in the novel. She was intelligent, open-minded, and has strong determination. Gauri was described as a smart, complicated, and selfish woman. The qualities of her character help him to survive several crises in her adulthood life: the life before her 1st marriage with Udayan, her first marriage,