Her body at war: examining the violated bodies of war

Abstract

Countries get made and broken by the various conflicts which are the consequences of political agendas and ideologies. Some of these conflicts have major roles to play in historical fiction. In turn, we understand the human condition of the past by analysing the historical fictions from different regions of the world. Historical fiction elucidates the political, ontological and social plights of those who are caught and trapped in the conflicts – women, bear on their bodies, the consequences of wars fueled and fought by aggressors as imprints. Some women take measures of survival—creating individual narratives in history which are usually buried under the language of valour and defeat of the nations. For my thesis, I will investigate women’s positions during and after wars, the language around women’s violation and how they are represented. Representation of these women (violated bodies of wars), constructed by societies, pave the way to form historical and political ideologies – weaving an acceptable collective memory of nation building. The language around these women leaves out silences that can be, in turn, analysed further to establish their political plights. This thesis looks into the position of women in wars by analysing three texts of historical fiction. There are three chapters, each dealing with one of the texts – the first is a short story about a woman from occupied France during the second world war; the second is on women from the Partition of India in 1947; and the last is on women from Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971.