Published Paper Details:

Meena Kandasamy is an Indian writer in English who produces works in context of women suppression, primarily focusing on Dalit feminism, caste annihilation and linguistic challenges in Indian society. She is a poet, translator and novelist who deals with women of affluent society and lower class women who suffer mental subjugation done by patriarchal men and societal dominance that was inherent through generations. Her work When I hit you, or a portrait of the writer as a young wife is one such work wherein she deals with an educated woman who tolerates her abusive marriage hoping to change one day. Her husband, who claims to be a devoted communist leader and revolutionist in society, barely cares for her and expects her to be a perfect housewife. He subjects her to mental torture, humiliate and manipulate in all ways in which she terribly endures his behavior. Meena Kandasamy's way of portraying the tormentation of narrator clearly showcases the mental turmoil that every woman undergoes in Indian household under inevitable circumstances and relatability that she discloses of every woman is part of this world where she is constantly put down to needs of men both emotionally and physically. In this work the subject of psychological submission makes the narrator dazed due to repeated squashing of her ideas, identity and honor in the name of marriage and how she finally breaks the shackles of mental enslavement by her husband. This paper explores the themes of psychological subjugation, humiliation and manipulation which resulted from conditional upbringing of women who think mental suppression is typical and shattering of conventional and disparaging attitudes of men is considered justifiable.