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Postmodern Feminist Perspectives in Eat Pray Love

Surabhi Basotia and Arpit Kothari

Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, Volume 28, Issue 4, December 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47836/pjssh.28.4.24

Keywords: De/reconstruction of self, gender performativity, non-essentialism, postmodern feminism

Published on: 24 December 2020

Postmodern Feminism is the epitome of two massive movements, Postmodernism and Feminism, in literature. It inculcates the features of Postmodernism into Feminism, hence urging feminism to confront and reconstruct its framework. Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia (2006), deserves scholarly attention as it allows us to apply the notions of the theory on the text and analyze it in the light of the theory. This paper evaluates the points of similarities and/or differences found during the discourse analysis of the chosen text with a focused emphasis on the aspects of ‘Non-Essentialism’, ‘De/Reconstructing the Female Self’, and ‘Breaking free from the boundaries of cliché Feminism’. The study reveals results which satiate the expectations of a Postmodern Feminist in the form of the protagonist, Elizabeth Gilbert. Gilbert breaks free from her ‘Essential’ mundane life and embarks on her inward and outward journey of self-discovery and in the process Deconstructs and Reconstructs one’s own self.

ISSN 0128-7702

e-ISSN 2231-8534

Article ID

JSSH-5624-2020

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