Volume I Issue III July 2021

Name of Author : Dr. P. Parthiban

Title of the paper : Embodied Silence: Psychosomatic Self, Melancholia, and the Abject in Shobha Des Second Thoughts

Abstract: Shobha Des Second Thoughts 1996 explores the entangled themes of psychosomatic distress, melancholia, and abjection in Shobha Des novel Second Thoughts, focusing on how the female body becomes a contested site of emotional repression and social regulation. Drawing on Julia Kristevas theory of the abject and her psychoanalytic notion of melancholia, the paper examines the protagonist Mayas gradual psychological disintegration as a form of psychosomatic expression rooted in patriarchal control and emotional neglect. The novel reveals how the female body, under the weight of societal expectations and marital conformity, internalises silence and transforms emotional pain into physical symptoms, manifesting a deeply embodied trauma. Mayas suppressed agency, alienation, and desire are shown to be not merely personal dilemmas, but indicators of a broader politics of the gendered body in postcolonial urban India. Through this interdisciplinary perspective, the article foregrounds Second Thoughts as a vital feminist text that exposes the invisible suffering of women trapped within normative structures of domesticity, where the mind speaks through the body and silence becomes a language of protest.

Keywords : Shobha De, Second Thoughts, silence, psychosomatic self, melancholia, abjection, postcolonial feminism, Indian Literature

DOI :

Page No. : 95-97