Female Body in Social Incarceration in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian

Abstract

This research paper tires to inspect the brutalities endured by the protagonist, Yeong-hye, through the lens of body politics, when her body does not act in terms of the society’s norms and regulations in Han Kang’s novel, The Vegetarian. Her desire to transform into a tree resists fulfilling the demands of her husband, father, mother, brother-in-law, sister, hospital and many other. Her bizarre steps to enact her desire break every societal norm and solely allot her tortures leading her to the deathbed. As Yeong-hye dares to enact her desire, the patriarchal society stands as a thorny bar. Depending on the theory of body politics, this research paper explores how the body of the protagonist is tormented in order to stop her from accomplishing her goal because vegetarianism makes her desirous to transform into a tree. It expounds how Yeong-hye turns to be the dust in the eyes of the society when her body resists to fulfil its demands. The researcher investigates upon novel, The Vegetarian, with the support of theoretical insights from Susan Bordo’s Unbearable Weight, Feminism, Western Culture and the Body Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Michel Foucault’s Discipline And Punish: The Birth of the Prison and The History Of Sexuality. The paper claims how a society constructs discourse of female body and acts as a powerful organ to control over females.