Representations of violence against women: a study of selected Indian fiction

Abstract

The present research project entitled Representations of Violence against Women: A Study of Selected Indian Fiction attempts to critically examine the representations of violence directed against women in a selection of Indian fiction. It focusses on the problematic of gender-based violence which exceeds physical torture and takes the shape of subtle, covert and legitimized forms of violence. The basis of this investigation is the idea of violence as a complex phenomenon which takes a range of colours depending upon the situation in which it takes place. Violence is, in fact, inevitably linked to every aspect of human being?s existence. Various thinkers have focussed on the subtleties and complexities of violence. Their theoretical insights reveal violence to be creative, revolutionary, constructive, curative, liberating, destructive, subtle, conspicuous, disguised and/or convoluted. But they have failed to take into account the role played by every person?s gender, race, religion and class in her or his experience of violence. In fact, Western theorists have been largely ineffectual in the articulation of violence that targets women belonging to the Third World. The present study concentrates on the problematic of violence as it impacts Indian women. It undertakes a study of the complexities of Indian woman?s experience of violence. Indian fiction provides ample testimony to this experience. However, no one has attempted a detailed analysis of violence against women as depicted in Indian narratives. The present study examines the representation of violence in selected Indian literary texts written in English as well as those translated into English. The study is carried out, in part, by relating the theories of violence with feminist theory. This theorization of violence is also brought to bear on the violence against women in particular representations in the selected texts in order to pinpoint and articulate various subtle and overt instances of violence.