Volume VI Special Issue V June 2026

Name of Author : Mrs. Vaani Jitender Vazirani

Title of the paper : Corporeality, Space and the Construction of Decolonized Identities in Anita Nairs Ladies Coupe

Abstract: Corporeal Studies in the recent decades has brought into focus human bodies in narratives and cultural texts, not merely as biological entities but as locations of lived experiences and as sites of decolonization. This interdisciplinary approach to New Humanities investigates cultural and colonial inscriptions on the body, apart from explaining how body and senses are imperative in identities, experiences and narratives. One of the ideas focused in Corporeal Studies is embodiment that is largely about how individuals use their bodies to experience the world in which they live. Focusing mainly on human somatic states and body politics, Corporeal Studies has brought about a bodily turn in the analysis of literature and film. Bodies also occupy space and hence the physical surroundings through which the bodies move also become significant in such a study. Furthermore, the spaces and places which are marked with gendered and colonial ideologies often limit or define bodily capacities. This paper analyses Anita Nairs novel Ladies Coupe to show how the novelist constructs female corporeal identities in relation to various spatial coordinates and experiences such as confinement, mobility, imperialism, transgression and journey. This paper mobilizes the tenets of Corporeal Studies, Postcolonialism and spatial literary analysis to show how Anita Nair constructs the complex identities of women from various socio-cultural backgrounds who undertake a train journey. Also within the ambit of this paper, is the assessment of the womens compartment of an Indian train as a postcolonial space which reconfigures the identities of Akhila, Prabha Devi, Sheela and Margaret Shanti beyond their confined domestic spaces, as they occupy the borderless space from where they can share their stories.

Keywords : Corporeal Studies, Imperialism, Space, Identity, Mobility, Transgression

DOI :

Page Number : 293-303