Trauma and Resistance in Translation: A

Psychoanalytic Study of Female Subjectivity in

Select Novels of K. R. Meera

Primary Texts:

And Slowly Forgetting That Tree

Hangwoman

Jezebel

The Poison of Love

Chapter 1: Introduction

1. Background and Significance of the Study

2. Female Subjectivity: Historical and Theoretical Overview
3. An Overview of Feminist Approaches So Far
(General types: liberal, radical, psychoanalytic, postmodern, intersectional, and
backlash discourses — with relevance to Meera's texts and your framework etc.)
4. Research Problem and Questions
5. Objectives and Hypotheses
6. Scope and Rationale for Choosing Meera and Translation
7. Methodology: Psychoanalytic and Feminist Framework
(Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray — psychoanalytic models of subjectivity, trauma, and
resistance.) Post-Freudian Feminists: Nancy Chodorow, Juliet Mitchell,
Cultural Feminists: Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique), Kate Millett
(Sexual Politics)
8. Importance of Translation Studies in Literary and Gender Research
9. Chapter Overview
Chapter 2: Hangwoman (chetna )
 Hangwoman as the core text to examine trauma, resistance, and female subjectivity
through Chetna Grddha Mullick’s fractured psyche
 Narrative Technique and the Construction of Subjectivity in
Hangwoman
 Chetna inherits the burden of patriarchal legacy and historical violence; execution
becomes both profession and psychic wound (Freud’s Nachträglichkeit)

Freud’s concept of Nachträglichkeit (deferred action) provides a critical

lens to interpret Chetna Grddha Mullick’s psychic rupture in Hangwoman.
According to Freud, trauma is not always rooted in the immediacy of an
event but is often the product of a temporal split — an initial experience
that appears insignificant or normalized becomes traumatic
only retroactively, when reactivated by a later experience. This dynamic
is vividly captured when Chetna recounts, “Before I was five, I could
fashion a noose on my own... I also learned how to fix it on the human
neck—tested it on the child next door” (Meera, Hangwoman, trans.
Devika, p. 3). At the time, this skill is absorbed as a matter of familial
routine, devoid of emotional weight. However, once she is officially
appointed as an executioner, these early exposures are symbolically
recharged and transformed into the psychic residue of patriarchal
violence. The past returns, not as memory, but as an unprocessed
trauma — this is the Freudian mechanism of deferred trauma. In this
sense, the noose is not just a family tool; it becomes a signifier of
historical violence that she inherits, enacts, and internalizes

 Her identity is shaped within the Lacanian symbolic order, where the father (Grddha
Mullick) embodies the law and institutional authority
 Mass media sensationalism turns Chetna into an object of public consumption; she is
eroticised, shamed, and politicised (Laura Mulvey, Julia Kristeva)
 Abjection defines her public image — the woman rendered sacred and polluted, watched
and excluded (Kristeva, Powers of Horror)
 Chetna’s name ("Grddha" = vulture) reinforces her association with death, decay, and
symbolic marginality
 Social conditioning pressures her into obedience — loyalty to her father over autonomy
and self-definition (Nancy Chodorow, Kate Millett)
  Asymmetrical parenting: emotionally absent mother and controlling father distort
Chetna’s emotional and psychic development (Chodorow, Jessica Benjamin)
 Her desire for paternal approval becomes a symptom of emotional repression and
gendered guilt (Freud, Benjamin)
 Even as a public figure, Chetna is emotionally domesticated — caught in the “feminine
mystique” of duty, silence, and sacrifice (Betty Friedan)
 Trauma surfaces in guilt, self-blame, and emotional disintegration — rebellion is
internalised as collapse (Judith Herman)
 Resistance emerges through Chetna’s linguistic defiance: sarcasm, silence, irony, and
fragmented narration (Luce Irigaray on mimicry and language)
 Naming as a political act: "Hangwoman" is a contested term — culturally marked and
symbolically loaded in both Malayalam and English
 Translation as affective distortion: power-laden gendered meanings shift or vanish in
English (Gayatri Spivak, Sherry Simon)
 Chetna embodies the core concerns of the thesis: trauma, resistance, subjectivity, and the
ideological politics of translation

chapter Two: Jezebel

 Jezebel’s identity is shaped by external judgment — court, religion, husband — reflecting
Lacan’s mirror stage.
 Her subjectivity is fractured by symbolic roles imposed by the law (Lacan’s Symbolic
Order).
 Jerome’s aggression masks internalized homophobia via reaction formation (Anna Freud).
 Jezebel suffers due to his repressed identity — a displaced form of trauma.
 Maternal teaching links the female body to sin — an instance of Kristevan abjection.
 Religion enforces shame and bodily control, reinforcing patriarchal guilt.
 Jezebel performs the wife role under pressure — a Butlerian case of gender performativity.
 She resists through divorce, education, and refusal of conjugal duties.
 She embodies Beauvoir’s “Other” — denied autonomy in every institution.
 Her trauma is ongoing, structural — aligned with Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory.
 Bodily suffering reflects van der Kolk’s idea that trauma is stored in the body.
 The court acts as an ideological state apparatus (Althusser), invalidating her voice.
 Jezebel’s pain is ungrievable (Butler) — not recognized as legitimate suffering.
 Female solidarity with Ann Mary shows Irigaray’s woman-to-woman ethics.
 Sexual violence is shown as systemic, not exceptional.
 Jezebel adopts Christ-like endurance — combining martyrdom with resistance.
 Her story is mistranslated by media and law — a feminist translation problem.
 She is repeatedly miscast — as wife, sinner, criminal — erasing her real self.
 Resistance emerges through narration, care, and refusal to conform.
 The novel critiques how institutions repackage women’s trauma into acceptable roles.
 Jezebel’s fractured subjectivity persists despite erasure — a form of agency.
 The chapter shows trauma, misrecognition, and resistance as key to female subjectivity.

Chapter Three – Key Points

🔸 The Poison of Love (Tulsi's narrative)

 Romantic obsession as psychic entrapment (Freud’s repetition compulsion)

 Narcissistic fixation on Madhav’s gaze (Lacan – Mirror Stage)
 Desire shaped by masculine discourse; Tulsi becomes “the 28th” (Lacan – Symbolic
Order)
 Tulsi’s abandonment of ambition = erasure of self for male desire (Beauvoir – Woman as
Other)
 Madhav’s polygamy framed as natural; gendered essentialism (biological determinism)
 Tulsi’s guilt and maternal failure = Kristevan abjection + patriarchal internalization
 Self-harm and ascetic retreat as punishment (Irigaray – female masochism under
phallocentrism)
 Spiritual surrender in Vrindavan = escape from symbolic order, not liberation
 Poisoning children = traumatic breakdown, symbolic rejection of motherhood (Butler –
Grievability)
 Madhav’s final condition = symbolic castration; male decay, female withdrawal
 Structural trauma and emotional dependency (Caruth, van der Kolk)
 Love as addictive, not emancipatory; a psychic death drive (Freud – Thanatos)
 Tulsi’s body as archive of betrayal and punishment
 Resistance through renunciation, not revolution — self-erasure as protest

🔸 And Slowly Forgetting That Tree (Radhika's narrative)

 Childhood rape trauma tied to object (tree) = symbolic fixation (Freud – fetish object)
 Trauma reactivated by scent, memory (Caruth – unclaimed experience)
 Body as site of inherited trauma (van der Kolk – trauma memory stored somatically)
 Patriarchal abandonment and maternal shame = doubled abjection (Kristeva)
 Repeated sexual violence = cycle of victimization (Freud – repetition compulsion)
 Emotional dependence on rapist (Christy) = split ego, internalized abuse (Lacan)
 Christy’s claim of being “a lover not a father” = male disavowal of responsibility (Butler –
gender roles)
 Churchyard rape = sacred space turned violent; symbolic collapse of femininity and divinity
 Later marriage to Ajith = partial healing, but based on pity, not mutual recognition (Beauvoir
– woman as object of sympathy)
 Pregnancy anxiety and refusal = resistance to patriarchal reproduction
 Christy’s insanity = destabilization of male authority, yet not redemptive
 Radhika’s lingering empathy = trauma bond, not closure
 Closure denied: symbolic betrayal at the terrace = final act of masculine disappearance
 Subjectivity fragmented by layered traumas; identity mediated by pain
 Resistance exists in survival, legal profession, refusal to mother on patriarchal terms

Shared Themes Across Both Novels

 Female subjectivity constructed through male desire, erased through male betrayal
 Trauma as structural, cumulative, and often silenced by social expectations
 Romantic love depicted as destructive, not liberatory
 Women trapped in the roles of lover, mother, wife — none freely chosen
 Male characters embody patriarchal impunity, emotional cowardice, and symbolic decay
 Institutional failure: no legal, familial, or religious structure supports female healing
 Self-harm, withdrawal, and detachment as forms of post-traumatic resistance
 Psychoanalytic lens reveals internalization of oppression and distortion of desire
 Feminist reading shows gendered suffering as normalized and aestheticized
 Resistance is not heroic; it is fractured, compromised, embodied in refusal and endurance