The Depiction of Violence as a Social Reality: A Cross Sectional Analysis of Mahasweta Devi’s The Hunt and Indira Goswami’s The Beasts

Abstract

The paper attempts to explore the violence meted out to gendered subaltern and also scrutinizes the destructive role of patriarchy in the lives of women protagonists in the writings of Mahasweta Devi and Indira Goswami.  Violence against women is as old as the world. The kind and the intensity of violence vary from time to time and place to place, but it is there everywhere. Mahasweta Devi and Indira Goswami are some of the rare women writer-activists who have taken a daring attempt to expose the kind of violence faced by the women in their everyday life. Their writings expose the cruel deeds of patriarchy. The cruelty happening in the lives of gendered subalterns in terms of caste and class is heart breaking. Through their writings, they advocate them that protest is the only choice to stop such atrocities against women instead of being a mute observer. Only by resisting, women can minimise the violence committed on them. Women protagonists of Devi and Goswami are trying to protest and they challenge patriarchy. The gender based violence like rape and sexual assault threatens the well-being and the dignity of women. The paper analyses Devi’s short story The Hunt (2001) and Goswami’s The Beasts (2002) in bringing about the stark reality and cruelty occurred in the lives of “gendered subaltern” of the contemporary West Bengal and Assam in the 90’s through their writings.