International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

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Negotiating Aesthetic Distance: A Reception Study of Love and Wisdom in Sita’s Narrative in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Forest of Enchantments

Author(s) Ms. Hetvi Manojbhai Thanki, Prof. Dr. Firoz A. Shaikh
Country India
Abstract The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a novel that primarily focuses on Sita’s voice, thoughts, feelings, emotions, viewpoints, sufferings, and life experiences, presenting her side of the story and making it a Sitayan rather than merely a retelling of the Ramayana by Sage Valmiki, which centers on male figures. It clearly blends age-old mythology with contemporary female awareness, creating a strong connection with the modern audience of the present era. Sita, being the best daughter, sister, daughter-in-law, wife, sister-in-law, mother, warrior and a perfect idol for the women of all over the world through ages, has always been analysed or viewed through the male characters around her, the most prominent one being “The Wife of Lord Rama of the Raghu Dynasty.” Her divinity, wisdom, devotion, chastity, identity, and sacrifices that she made throughout her life seem to remain unnoticed and unheard over time. This paper examines the character portrayal of Sita through the lens of Reception Theory by Hans Robert Jauss, which is also known as Horizon of Expectations, which shows how the meaning of any literary work is produced through the interaction between the text and the reader and how the meaning of the same work keeps changing over time with the generational shift of the readers. This gap between the expectations of the readers from different generations and the actual experience of the literary work is termed "Aesthetic Distance" by Jauss, who shows how it plays a significant role in preserving the relevance as well as interpretive richness of the text, as any literary work, being dynamic, continuously keeps evolving. This paper analyses the lessons of love and wisdom discussed by Divakaruni’s Sita in the novel The Forest of Enchantments through the lens of Aesthetic Distance that shows a clear differentiation between the portrayal of traditional Sita by a male author and her modern depiction by a female author. By highlighting this gap, this paper aims to urge the readers to reassess the established ideas of love, wisdom, and duty. This research paper examines how Aesthetic Distance increases the involvement of readers and allows the literary work to be interpreted in a variety of ways depending on the historical as well as cultural context. This study also reaffirms the applicability of the Reception Aesthetics by Hans Robert Jauss on the modern mythic retellings of the ancient epic to show how The Forest of Enchantments holds different responses from the readers.
Keywords Aesthetic Distance, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Hans Robert Jauss, Horizon of Expectations, Reception Theory, Sita, The Forest of Enchantments, The Ramayana.
Field Arts
Published In Volume 8, Issue 2, March-April 2026
Published On 2026-03-11
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