Protest against Misogyny as Portrayed in Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You: Or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (2017)

Rahmat Taufik Rangkuti, Tommy Christomy

2019

Abstract

Violence against women is actually not a new experience faced by women throughout the world. India, which is portrayed as a country that respects and adores women through the story of the Goddess, in fact has complexity in women's issues. This is marked by a surprising finding by Thomson Reuters Foundation in 2018 which stated that India is the world’s most dangerous country for women. Referring to the issue, this research aims to reveal how the biographical novel criticizes misogynistic views in Indian modern era. This can be seen through the marriage of a married couple from different caste classes. The husband is a person who belongs to the upper caste and works as a lecturer (professor) in the field of literature. He also claims himself as communism adherent who gets involved in political and revolutionary movement that fights for social justice. Meanwhile, the wife comes from the middle class and works as a young feminist writer. In analyzing the data / text, the researcher applied a feminist literary criticism approach combined with the concept of gender écriture feminine by Helene Cixous to see the independence of the main character at once the narrator in voicing her feminine world such as happiness, desire (to fight back), and her freedom. Meanwhile, the method used is qualitative method. The findings show that Indian women who have sufficient class and power remain very vulnerable when faced with caste and patriarchal domination. This research also shows that the misogynistic view is not only believed by the people who belong to lower caste and is close to backwardness. In other words, groups that have a high level of literacy are also very likely to have extreme misogynistic views. Urban spaces in India also become the arena for the men and the caste elites to maintain and to assert their power. To fulfil their ideological and political demands, men or the caste elites, including Indian politicians, continuously show their supremacy even though they are well established hierarchically.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Rangkuti R. and Christomy T. (2019). Protest against Misogyny as Portrayed in Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You: Or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (2017).In Proceedings of the International Conference on Education, Language and Society - Volume 1: ICELS, ISBN 978-989-758-405-3, pages 392-401. DOI: 10.5220/0008999503920401

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icels19,
author={Rahmat Taufik Rangkuti and Tommy Christomy},
title={Protest against Misogyny as Portrayed in Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You: Or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (2017)},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Education, Language and Society - Volume 1: ICELS,},
year={2019},
pages={392-401},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0008999503920401},
isbn={978-989-758-405-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Education, Language and Society - Volume 1: ICELS,
TI - Protest against Misogyny as Portrayed in Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You: Or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (2017)
SN - 978-989-758-405-3
AU - Rangkuti R.
AU - Christomy T.
PY - 2019
SP - 392
EP - 401
DO - 10.5220/0008999503920401