Cultural Violence and the Infertile Body: A Study of Ableism in Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman

Abstract

This research investigates the intersectional expedition of a stigmatic couple’s domestication as a sterile litany in a heterogeneous existing structure pictured by Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman. It exposes the irrepressible violence of ableism against unproductive individual survival through the phenomena of intersectional disability studies. The study explores the complex play between victims’ existential crisis and dominant ableism beliefs by venturing into the stratification of cultural ideology. Drawing upon the theory of intersectionality and ableism, the research aims to expose the exaggerated adoration of culture within evil-rooted existing structures. Burning with discrimination and humiliation, individuals act as objects to intersubjectivity of terrible sterility stigma in Tamil rural society. The true nature of the infertile scandal is exposed through the distressed cultural sluggishness within underdeveloped horrific traditional barbarism. Trapped in the crouching atmosphere, the wounded individual, especially woman character Ponna, determined to prove her identity emerges as a weapon against sterile prejudices and flaunting violence in the guise of socio-cultural traditional beliefs. The analysis helps to understand the psychological trauma of infertility of both genders and how sterile stigma imprisons the affected individual by exploiting women’s bodily autonomy by prioritizing the social role under the merciless glare structure.