Normativity and Suppressed Queer Yearnings in Literature and Cultural perspectives: An Analysis of Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know

Abstract

Primarily the story of a family knitted in secrets, Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know (2015) gives a multi-coloured frame of narratives. This paper explores that how dominant institutions and normative social relationships leads to suppressed intimate longings, because ‘queer’[1] has taken up in public discourse as an indicative of non-normativity. It further attempts to examine gender norms in its different shades and manifestations. Suppressed queer desires, in this context, can be studied by analysing characters who have closeted sexual interests, characters who have same sex attractions and are in heterosexual marriage, characters whose sexual identity is ambiguous.