An Analysis of the Select Fictions of Thomas Hardy and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni through Krishnamurtian Philosophy

Abstract

The aim of this research is to analyze literary texts using Indian Philosophy. This newlinewas done to explore the richness of Indian Criticism. Many analyses have been done newlinethrough Western methods and so there is no dearth of such treatises. A rich repository of critical methods that originate from Mathew Arnold to Derrida have perpetrated all analytical histories. Moreover there is a tendency to replicate the theories of classical masters like Socrates, Aeschylus and employ their methods for analysis of current literary phenomena. In this work, it is proposed to analyze the fiction of Thomas Hardy,a famous Victorian age author along with the fiction of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni,an Indian American writer who writes about the Indian Diaspora in the 21st century.The Indian philosophical method that has been employed in this thesis is that of Jiddu Krishnamurti, a famous Indian philosopher who made a considerable impact on modern philosophy. There have been questions regarding the suitability of analyzing Victorian texts alongside contemporary Indian texts. Thomas Hardy is from the 19th century, which is the Victorian age, an age that is intensely puritanical and at the same time reflective on its treasures of literature. Human emotions however, have been the same from time immemorial. The emotions are the same regardless of the context, culture or political ambience, so to speak. Women and men basically look for comfort and love in times of suffering. They careen towards philosophy, religious dogmas and counsellors in times of grief. This has been the human theme for all the ages. Suffering necessitates the need for philosophical solutions and philosophical solutions have been wanting in that they are never comprehensive to absorb the entire gamut or range of human miseries. Krishnamurtian philosophy is quite comprehensive because it offers solutions newlinefor all mayhem, disorder and woes of humankind newline