Question- Describe the portrayal of domestic violence in 'When I Hit You?

Answer - 

Meena Kandasamy is apolemical Dalit Woman writer, whose 'When' I Hit You' is one of the most important books of the decade for its frank and candid depiction of domestic violence. This book is replete with domestic violence but there is no visible marks-no bruises, no blood, no broken bones. Here violence plays like the background scene of a movie, present but not visible. In this novel, she is talking about her own story in first person voice. She is not shy of portraying those ignored and untouched areas which are generally considered taboo in the society. She has openly articulated those forbidden themes which she has experienced in her martial life. Meena's main goal in life it to become a writer which she admits I quit a full time teaching job so that I could write, write, write Writer. Just that, just to myself, Just in front of the mirror. I play wife, But the minute my husband walks out, I'm screaming yes yes yes yes yes yes in my head and I obsess about what I need to be writing..... What propels me forward is my restless urge to tell a story". (When I Hit You)

But in her husband's eyes it is nothing a work and what is more he detests nothing more than her idea of becoming a writer and automatically she becomes a victim of domestic violence. In the beginning she has to put up with abusive words like whore, prostitute. But the more the story progresses the more the degree of torture increases. In one scene of the novel we find that she was asked by the editor of the outlook to write an easy for their annual issue on sex surveys and her positive reply only gets humiliation from her husband: "When I share the details with my husband he says I have been asked to write on sexuality because I have the wild ranging experience of having fucked men who are twenty years old, thirty years old, forty years old, fifty years old, sixty years old, sevety years old."

This is how domestic violence starts in this novel and upto this point she is the victim of verbal violence of shame. Though domestic violence sets its journey by humiliating and ridiculing the victim in this novel 'When I Hit You' but with the progress of the novel the degree of torture escalates and she is no longer a victim of verbal violence but she has to put up with all sorts of physical torture. In the novel the narrator has told that she remained silent, as her father advised her that silence is golden, when her husband accused her of her extramarital affairs or anything else. But her silence does not bring forth fruitful results. Her silence only heightens the degree of torture in one scene of the novel she is accused of being inhabited a world in her mind, a world where she is cohabiting with ex-lovers, a world where she has left him. and asks her to stop leading a double life. but her silence only draws kink from her husband and ultimately she becomes a victim of the extreme form of torture which is evident from the following passage: "He kicks me in the stomach 'Proveit !" he yells as I double over. Prove to me that you are my wife: Prove it to me that you are not thinking of another man. Or I will prove it for you'.

My hair is gathered up in a bunch in his hand now. He is lifting me by my hair alone. All the blood is rushing to my head, my thighs fight to feel the hard wood of the chair. I am in pain. He drags me from the table and into the bedroom. I feel the heavy funeval drumbeals of marriage as he forces my sari up around my waist.

They grow louder and faster, restless in their hurry to drown out everything else. I close my eyes now, afraid, the way I did during wedding ceremony when rice was flung at us and prayers were chanted. The fire that made our union sacred and internal now blazes in the parting of my things.

This is the extreme form of torture that she has to endure. She never expects that she will be raped and tortured brutally even by her own husband. This is how the narrator has experienced domestic violence in her husband's hands. A part from it, her husband also intimidates her of killing her.

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