Key elements of adultery narratives, indicating the transgression and subversion of social systems, are transformed in today's transnational context. This essay examines how and why female adulterers in South Asian immigrant narratives can be read to provide insights into the upheavals that occur due to transnational flows of immigrants. I argue that in three such South Asian women's narratives, Manhattan Music (1997), Brick Lane (2003), and The Namesake (2004), female adultery functions less as a moral transgression than as means of psychological development, exerting a vital influence over reformation of the female characters' diasporic identities, and developing their autonomy. In a diasporic milieu, in which national identity is destabilized and familial relationships unsettled, adultery provides a discursive space that facilitates an alternative mode of repositioning female agency. © 2014 The Author.

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