Cassie Yount and Sara Savarani
AP English Literature and Composition
Seminar Facilitation
“Clothes” by Chitra Divakaruni
“That’s when I know I cannot go back…I don’t know yet how I’ll manage, here in this new,
dangerous land…I only know I must” (222).
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was born in India and lived in Calcutta until
1976, when she moved to the United States to study. She earned her
Master’s degree from Wright State University and her PhD from UC
Berkeley. While supporting herself to pay for her college education, she
worked in a variety of different jobs, including babysitting, working in an
Indian shop, a bakery, and assisting in a science lab. Today, she is on the
Board of Maitri in San Francisco and the Advisory Board of Daya in
Houston, which both help South Asian women who are in abusive
relationships. On top of that, she has a position on the Board of Pratham,
which helps educate children who live in the more deprived areas of India. She is also an author,
and has won a few prestigious awards like the National Book Award and the PEN Faulkner
Award. Much of her work includes influences from her own life, and deals with immigration and
is often about issues with women from India who are conflicted between cultural values and
traditions and adapting to the American lifestyle.
“Clothes” by Chitra Divakaruni tells the story of Mita, a young Indian woman who is
forced to leave her tiny village to be with her arranged husband in California. Mita struggles to
leave behind her friends, family, and familiar lifestyle to be with a man she hardly knows in a
new country. Mita’s eyes are opened to the endless possibilities and excitement in America and
she develops admiration, love, and respect for her husband. Optimistic about the future and eager
to discover life in America, Mita begins to change into a whole new woman. When tragedy hits,
she is forced to pick up the pieces, set aside her dreams, and cope. We are taken through the
Mita’s journey of developing from a young girl, to a wife, and finally to a widow and the
changes she undergoes along the way.
“Symbols are economical devices for evoking complex ideas without having to resort to
painstaking explanations that would make a story more like an essay than an experience” (213).
Symbol: a person, object, or event that suggests more than its literal meaning
Conventional Symbol: symbols that are widely recognized by a society or a culture such as the
Christian cross or a national flag
Literary Symbol: a symbol that can include traditional, conventional, or public meanings; it can
also be established internally by the total context of the work in which it appears – it can be a
setting, character, action, object, name, or anything else in a work that mains its literal
significance which suggesting other meanings.
Our seminar will focus on the symbolism that is present throughout the entire short story. To
prepare for the seminar, please answer three of the following questions with insightful responses.
Quote the text to support your responses.
1. Reflect on the quote, “A married women belongs to her husband, her in laws”
(215). Discuss your opinion of arranged marriages in the Indian culture. Are they
right, wrong, or just in the practice of Indian culture? Sumita complains of the
“unfairness of it,” (215), but how does her marriage develop throughout the story?
Do you they think were truly in love?
2. What does the “blouse and skirt the color of almonds” symbolize to Sumita?
3. Referring to the above definitions, what kind of symbolism is present throughout the
story? Explain.
4. Is there any significance to how the story is set up? In other words, is it important that the
story is broken up into four separate portions? What is the significance of the actual
wedding and funeral, two major experiences, being left out?
5. Discuss the symbolic meanings of the clothes, especially the saris, present
throughout the story. How do the different types of clothes symbolize Sumita’s
transition from Indian life to American life?
6. “The store was called 7-Eleven. I though it a strange name, exotic, risky…the
store sold all kinds of amazing things—apple juice in cardboard cartons that never
leaked; American bread that came in cellophane packages, already cut up;
canisters of potato chips, each large grainy flake curved exactly like the next”
(216).
- Reflect on this quote and discuss what the store represents and embodies
for Mita and her new American life.
7. Reflect on the experiences Mita has undergone; such as her marriage, move to
American, and loss of her husband and how they have changed her viewpoints,
dreams, and perspective.