Self-Assertion and Gendered Violence in When I Hit You: A Feminist Reading.

  • Unique Paper ID: 202801
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: 12
  • PageNo: 7805-7812
  • Abstract:
  • This paper explores the topics of gendered violence and self-assertion by analyzing Meena Kandasamy's When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife via a feminist lens. The painful experience of a young, educated woman stuck in an abusive marriage characterized by physical assault, sexual coercion, emotional brutality, and intellectual suppression is depicted in the novel. The story, which is set against the backdrop of a patriarchal Indian society, shows how marriage may turn into a place of dominance where a woman's autonomy, voice, and bodily integrity are routinely abused. This study contends that the protagonist's writing acts as a kind of self-assertion, allowing her to reclaim subjectivity, oppose silence, and reveal the patriarchal systems that uphold domestic abuse. The protagonist turns personal anguish into a political testament through memory, narration, and resistance. The study also emphasizes how Kandasamy's disjointed narrative style both affirms the possibilities of resistance and survival while reflecting the trauma of violence. In the end, the book is both a powerful feminist literature that emphasizes women's agency in the face of patriarchal oppression and a testament to abuse.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{202801,
        author = {A.Sathya and Dr.B.R.Veeramani},
        title = {Self-Assertion and Gendered Violence in When I Hit You: A Feminist Reading.},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {12},
        pages = {7805-7812},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=202801},
        abstract = {This paper explores the topics of gendered violence and self-assertion by analyzing Meena Kandasamy's When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife via a feminist lens. The painful experience of a young, educated woman stuck in an abusive marriage characterized by physical assault, sexual coercion, emotional brutality, and intellectual suppression is depicted in the novel. The story, which is set against the backdrop of a patriarchal Indian society, shows how marriage may turn into a place of dominance where a woman's autonomy, voice, and bodily integrity are routinely abused. This study contends that the protagonist's writing acts as a kind of self-assertion, allowing her to reclaim subjectivity, oppose silence, and reveal the patriarchal systems that uphold domestic abuse. The protagonist turns personal anguish into a political testament through memory, narration, and resistance. The study also emphasizes how Kandasamy's disjointed narrative style both affirms the possibilities of resistance and survival while reflecting the trauma of violence. In the end, the book is both a powerful feminist literature that emphasizes women's agency in the face of patriarchal oppression and a testament to abuse.},
        keywords = {domestic abuse, feminist reading, gendered violence, patriarchy, self-assertion, women’s agency.},
        month = {May},
        }

Cite This Article

A.Sathya, , & Dr.B.R.Veeramani, (2026). Self-Assertion and Gendered Violence in When I Hit You: A Feminist Reading.. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT). https://doi.org/doi.org/10.64643/IJIRTV12I12-202801-459

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