SOURCE: “Love and the Indian Immigrant in Bharati Mukherjee's Short Fiction,” in Bharati Mukherjee: Critical Perspectives, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1993, pp. 197-211.

In the following discussion of themes common to the short stories in Darkness and The Middleman and Other Stories, Pati illustrates how Mukherjee skillfully sheds light on the immigrant experience and the search for self-realization and integrated identities.

Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight. 

—William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 129”

Love, desire, and romance as experienced by immigrant men and women from the Indian subcontinent in the New World appears as a recurring theme in Bharati Mukherjee's short fiction collections of the eighties, namely, Darkness (1985) and The Middleman and Other Stories (1988). Desire, both for material advancement and for...