Redeeming Bleeding

Abstract

In The Thousand Faces of Night, Githa Hariharan shows how each female character suffers from her own traumatic humiliation, guilt and alienation from her own body and processes which originate in menarche. Through these representations, she not only exposes how women are suppressed but also creates a narrative that challenges the ideology of womanhood, which is tacitly assumed to be celebrated only because it means future motherhood, and thus means nothing for barren women. Hariharan’s depiction of a bleeding community of women allows for the endless multiplication of differences among women, but it is strategically powerful as an image of a communion in which women can share their painful or joyful experiences and understand their bodies, a communion that allows women to rebel against a repressive system and to build on their new empowerment. Devi, the protagonist, struggles for her own story or stories in the process of centering herself in order to act. Her story of selfhood formation is created through her dialogues with other women and mingles with theirs. The subject position as a Brahmin wife allotted to Devi is replaced by her own story of womanhood, which in turn opens the way for other women to create their own redeeming narratives.