A STUDY OF QUEEN OF DREAMS “ELEMENTARY OF FANTASY” CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI

ABSTRACT

In Queen of Dreams, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni writes about her favorite subject, moving to the United States and the problems that come with it, from the point of view of complicated mother-daughter relationships. Relocation is like a sickness in The Mistress of Spices. It is a sad, traumatic act of dislocation that can only be cured by complex medicines for the spirit that come from India. These medicines reconnect the dislocated subject with the motherland and make relocation more acceptable. In Queen of Dreams, healing comes from making sense of important dreams in the right way. In the mother-daughter story, dreams are seen in two main ways: as Vishnu’s way of making the world by dreaming it into existence, with hidden meanings that should be figured out as a person learns, and as the American dream, which is the idea that hard work will pay off with success and happiness. If the mother is a professional dream interpreter who gets dreams from other people and has to figure out what they come, then the daughter is a nature painter who has dreams she wants to come true. The thing that dreams as contact with the transcendent and dreams as a way to change the world around us have in common is nature: the generous, unspoiled nature of America (or of Divakaruni’s California), which is healing in and of itself if you can find your way back to it.

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