Womb, Widow, and Womanhood: A Feminist Reading of Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman and its Alternate Sequels

Abstract

Perumal Murugan, a distinctive figure in the regional literature of India known for his counternarratives, easily comes alongside Rushdie, Nasrin and other fearless writers who see literature as a hammer that shapes rather than a mirror that reflects. Focusing on themes like honour killing, caste-based violence, forced exile, and patriarchal oppression led him to literary suicide and self-exile. Murugan was saved by poetic justice, marking him a one-man countertrend. From this perspective, the paper explores the subversive representation of women in Murugan’s One Part Woman (2010) and its alternate sequels, A Lonely Harvest (2018) and Trail by Silence (2018). By probing into gender-based discrimination that is prevalent in rural India, the study seeks to highlight how infertility and widowhood face troubles and turmoil in the feminine mystique society. With sections such as gender threads in Murugan’s writing, fertility and its absence, widowhood as an anomaly, and shattering stigmas, the paper examines the social and cultural milieu which oppresses, depresses and represses women. In doing so, the paper shows how
nuanced feminism and more profound dialogues are needed to eradicate gender discrimination in the country’s rural regions.