Neurosis as Resilience in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Diasporic Short Fictions

My essay explores the ways in which neurosis governs Jhumpa Lahiri’s short fictions. By mapping the configurations of neurosis across psychoanalysis, trauma theory and diaspora studies, I shall focus on the narrative strategies aligning Lahiri’s short stories with the aesthetics of signifying loss. The prospect of the model minority is a source of anxiety for some of her fictional immigrants who face psychological dilemmas, whilst others, capable of adjusting to the host land, tend to dwell in the interstices of cultures. Lahiri’s tales, therefore, juxtapose vulnerability and resilience in everyday life, bringing to the fore an aesthetics of neurosis as a way to criticise socio-economic pressures. I shall, first, discuss how “suburban neurosis” discloses the controversial assimilation of the new Indian diaspora into American competitive society. By examining the dynamics between diaspora and “suburban neurosis” in “Mrs. Sen’s”, a story in the 1999 collection Interpreter of Maladies, I argue that metonymy is the master trope of a poetic of neurosis, since it conveys the impossibility of achieving unity between signifier and signified. I shall turn, than, to examine the maladjustments of Amit Sarkar, the hero of “A Choice of Accommodation”, a story in Lahiri’s second collection Unaccustomed Earth (2008). Amit’s problematic accommodation results in a melancholic exposure to pain, in which metaphor and prosopopoeia become the central tropes. Metaphors condensate meaning, whereas prosopopoeia confers a human voice to a non-human speaker. In line with the agenda of the volume, I finally maintain that, by interrogating the socio-economic transformations of our contemporary world, Jhumpa Lahiri’s short fiction foregrounds the ethic dimension of literary imagination.