Honour And Ownership Of Women: Shauna Singh Baldwin's What The Body Remembers

Abstract

A woman’s life in the Indian subcontinent is inextricably linked to her submission, or else, at times, resistance to the idea of her being of lower status in society. Contained within the body yet having no authority over herself or her body, she leads a marginalized, exploited, and silenced life, often becoming a victim of sexual violence even within the home. While women’s oppression may be a continuous reality across generations, the consequences of ideas of ownership and honour located in the female body were experienced beyond imagination during the 1947 partition of India. Baldwin’s novel What the Body Remembers (1999) offers a context to explore and comprehend how women’s selves are conditioned to accept and even perpetuate the culture of discrimination and marginalization of women. The paper explores how the patriarchal structures governing gendered identities and relations affected, contributed to, and led to unspeakable acts of violence during the partition. The paper also examines how Baldwin recreates the social and cultural milieu of the times to reveal expectations from women to conform to existing roles and selves within society.