AN EXPLORATION OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND MARITAL RAPES IN MEENA KANDASAMY’S WHEN I HIT YOU: THE PORTRAIT OF THE WRITER AS A YOUNG WIFE : INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE (IPV)

Abstract

This paper comes up with a question of self- identity in Meena Kandasamy’s novel when I Hit You: the Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife, a fiction which provides psychoanalytical framework of sexual abuse with protagonist. This study upsurges a critical discussion on gloomy aspects of sexual violence, marital rapes and how it affects self- identity. Still in twentieth century and Digital India condition of Indian women’ life is made more pathetic by entangling her with enough laws made by patriarchy to sabotage her basic rights of living life with dignity. It is not the story of underprivileged, uneducated and rural women but demolishing dignity and hitting a strong woman like Meena is like a challenge and a conquest Indian husbands. Various ideological, constitutional and philosophical sources will serve as a theoretical framework within which research expands and explores the themes of sexual violence by Intimate Partner (IP) in the novel. Besides, this study throws light on social stigma, prejudice, internal conflicts, multifaceted strains of sexual abuse on women’s body and her suffering soul. This paper concludes with a message that, a journey, where the unnamed protagonist examine her realities and her fight which is going inside her  and outside forces which intruded upon her consciousness and conception of selfhood.