Queer eyes and gendered violence in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article reads Bapsi Sidhwa’s Partition novel Cracking India in terms of the routine gendered violence that pervades the lives of its female characters. A significant strand of Sidhwa criticism has emphasized the unequal class privileges among the novel’s women. This article shifts the focus onto how Sidhwa establishes solidarity among women across classes by portraying them as common victims, conceptualizing their gendered trauma due to the constant threat of male sexual violence, and it analyses child-protagonist Lenny’s sexual development through observing the sexualized maternal bodies of her caregivers. The article suggests that Lenny’s narrative gaze can be described as “queer”, due to her liminal and disabled condition, and that her way of looking becomes a mode of political discernment and resistance. Lenny’s queer eyes expose the condition of her upper-class mother, godmother and nanny Ayah as victims of sexualized violence.