La soggettività femminile nello spazio transizionale del mito in The Thousand Faces of Night di Githa Hariharan

Although, in the psychoanalytical field, a systematic exploration of the relationship between mothers and daughters in India has yet to be done, many contemporary Indian female writers’ novels open a novel space for the feminine word to speak for itself. This is the case of Githa Hariharan’s first literary endeavour, The Thousand Faces of Night, first published in 1992. The events of the main character, Devi, reveal the urgency of an individual quest for an identity that binds personal aspirations and filial duty. They are intertwined with those of Devi’s mother, Sita, and her husband’s maid, Mayamma: three generations confront each other, in an encounter/clash of feminine subjectivities that progressively lights up through the mythological tales of Devi’s grandmother. In the present essay, I address Devi’s metamorphosis through the myths in the light of Winnicott’s concept of ‘transitional space’, the intermediate zone between individuation and total dependence on the object (the mother). In the novel, in fact, for each phase of transition in Devi’s life, a mythological motif acts as a counterpoint, thus bridging the gap between Devi’s desire to restore her mother as an ally and the aspiration toward independence. And it is precisely going back to her origins that she will find the seeds of a new possibility, the promise of a récriture of women’s existence in the name of desire, eradicated from the symbolic order of sin to be finally installed as a distinctive mark of freedom.