Nikita Anand

SR University, India

Title: Heteronormative Imperfections: Exploring the Link between Wedding Capitalism, Womb Space and Children’s Vulnerability in Women’s Writings

---

Biography

Nikita Anand is working as an Assistant professor in the Department of English, School of Sciences and Humanities at SR University. She completed her Ph. D in Comparative Literature from Dr. B R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, India. Her research interests include postcolonial feminism, gender and sexuality studies, and queer theory.

Abstract

Heteronormativity is a widespread belief but a feminist backlash against it has consistently pointed to the ways in which gender roles and relationships burdened women. Women’s writing in English across borders is therefore forming resistance through forms of ‘writing back’ to male culture, heteropatriarchal privileges, and institutions. Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman and Anukrti Upadhyay’s The Blue Women are two texts that effectively unveil the imperfect models of gender norms and the practices of heteronormativity within the frameworks of family and marriage. They highlight the couples as social actors who are in continuous dialogue to reproduce heteronormativity as the only lifestyle capable of intersecting wedding, reproduction, and patriarchy. The artistic representations of these texts depict biological and social explanations, including narratives about Live-in-relationship, brain-wiring, and battered women, which are read in the light of the critical discourses formed on heteropatriarchal practices and concepts given by Gargi Bhattacharyya, Monique Wittig, Steve Jackson, and Adrienne Rich. These self-proclaimed heterosexual feminists’ critiques are trying to change the sexual and psychological needs of their readers. They also attempt to show their social actors reaching the stage of life where they are giving up a dependency on the opposite gender, supplying comic relief through separation, preferring a child’s adoption, and seriously addressing homophobic sexual orientation to emphasize the reality of the capitalist structure of society. Liberation is earned only on account of the death of nature. Texts also suggest new earning options for women who wish to come out from the heteronormative family setup and gendered divisions.