PSYCHOLOGICAL COLLISION AGAINST THE CONSTRUCTED DISCURSIVE PRACTICES: GENDER TRANSFORMATION IN THE NORMAL PEOPLE

Abstract

The article linchpin is the psychological collision of the principal character against the discursive practices of society and aspects of the transformation of her identity in Normal People (2018) as recounted by Judith Butler’s in her concept of gender performativity. It highlights how discursive practices affect the psyche of people and the fact that gender identity is not permanent or constant, but rather fluid. It also reveals how inequality is enforced upon the lives of different characters and how badly they are being victimized by oppression and violence, as a result, they have developed/created their own different gender identity in society. Rooney attempts to show the effects of the discursive and constructed practices on the female characters, particularly, Marianne. Gender-based segregation has been observed in this novel as a result of these discursive practices. The paper shows that there are incidents in Normal People that depict how patriarchal society's constructed practices and regulatory standards on the female body create gender performances. Rooney exponentiates the issue of a woman's place in a patriarchal society through her female protagonists, and the novel examines gender performativity as well as the influence patriarchal culture has on female characters. This research aims to not only establish how gender performativity influences a character's identity but also to show how gender identity is unstable and a matter of construction. However, according to Judith Butler, ideology is imposed on us by social convention or culture. It appears that changes in gender identity can be influenced by many aspects as the social, and economic environment that causes it to occur a change.