Bharati Mukherjee’s novel, The Holder of the World, makes allusions to numerous other
works—most significantly, Hawthorne’s The
Scarlet Letter. There are many different ways The Holder of the World alludes to Hawthorne’s novel. More notably,
we see similar names, parallel themes, and a ‘hint’ at other broader
overarching concepts. One of the most important parallels, however, is the
concept of signifiers and signifieds. In her novel, Mukherjee toys with the
idea of changing the meaning of the scarlet “A” to an “I,” changing the meaning
from “adulterer” to “Indian lover.”
On of the first examples we see of this is on page 54 where
one of the main characters, Hannah, renames the ‘meaning’ behind each letter of
the alphabet as seen through her mothers eyes. Because of the way she was
raised, Hannah interprets the things around her according to her background and
personal experiences. She is definitely not a part of the nuclear family, such
as Jane Juffer discusses in her novel Single
Mother. Hannah provides a wonderful example of a character who does not
follow the norms and regular expectations of society. Her mother ran away with
her Indian lover (something that was unheard of during those times), and a
conservative Puritan family then raised Hannah.
Relating back to Juffer once again, it is interesting to
note the expectations placed on Hannah because of her situation. In her novel,
Juffer mainly discusses how people hold single parents to certain expectations
and many times a double standard. In The
Holder of the World, however, we see that these same expectations and
standards are applied to the child of a single mother. The community does not
know how to deal with Hannah because they think that her mother was killed. No
one knows the truth, but even without that piece of information, the community
still seems to hold Hannah as separate from the rest of them. The family that
adopted her even seems in some ways to be weary of her. And later on in the
novel, as Hannah travels the world with her husband, she never quite seems to “fit
in” in any given space. I think Juffer makes a good point about this and how
many communities have already determined their own “norms” (whether they
realize it or not), so it is all too easy for an outsider to remain feeling as
such no matter how long they live in their new home.
