Unveiling Gender Constructs and Body Politics in Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi”

Anushka Mitra
Independent researcher, Kolkata

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Abstract

This paper analyzes the character of Dopdi Mejhen from Mahasweta Devi’s short story “Draupadi” to explore the territory of women’s subjective identity as opposed to the social definition of ‘woman’. This research work includes feminist and existentialist arguments to draw attention to women’s existence as ‘series’ in reference to their separate settings. Additionally, it studies the close relation between gender-based violence and female identity through critical feminist discourse analysis and trauma studies. Incorporating a great deal of literary text analysis and interpretation for contextualization, this paper is a critical analysis of women’s individual identity formation outside the repressive social norms.

Keywords: Mahasweta Devi, Draupadi, Gender identity, Women, Feminism, Gender-based violence, Iris Marion Young, Simone De Beauvoir, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Gender normativity, Female identity, Feminist discourse, Trauma.