Gender Trauma in Preethi Nair's 100 Shades of White

Abstract

The major objective of this research is to portray how women in Nair’s 100 Shades of White are traumatized by plenty of factors like gender difference, traditional gender role, patriarchal domination, deceptive nature of husband, anti-immigrant attitude of English people and other exclusionary practices. In the patriarchal society, women are subordinated and subdued. The use of the perspective of gender trauma yields cause of Nalini’s traumatic sufferings. In the professional outer world, women are dispossessed and deprived of several economic opportunities. Contrary to Nalini’s expectation, her husband betrays her without revealing any previous indication. The sudden betrayal of Nalini by her husband inflicts traumatic attack on her delicate psyche. She feels that her life is shipwrecked totally beyond recovery. Out of her necessity to survive in the hostile metropolitan world of London she goes to several working places. She gets job but could not concentrate on her work due to her inner traumatic torture. Consequently, Nalini plunges into nightmare, depressive sense of constant anxiety and the haunting premonition that any disastrous thing can happen to her at any time. The discrimination of her children in school by school teachers and the fear of being assaulted by sexual predators put further traumatic torture in Nalini.