Refusal as Form: How Indian Women's Narratives Resist Closure, Virtue, and Redemption

Abstract This paper theorises refusal in Indian women’s literature in such a manner that it is not conceived of in purely thematic terms, but rather in narrative ones that inform feminist discourse with an intervention in patriarchal constructs of closure, virtue, or redemption. Arguing counter to dominant literary and cultural constructs of feminist texts in India, where dominant narratives of female suffering arguably require it to end in healing, reconciliation, or enhanced moral character, refusal is conceived of in this paper as an feminist construct or approach that is an approach towards an ethic of refusal, one that insists that women’s texts cannot or should not be made to adhere in such manners towards empowerment or any other dominant reading of feminist narratives. Conceived of in such a manner, refusal becomes an approach towards feminist texts in India that refuses compulsory care, compulsory forgiveness, or compulsory closure. At the same time, the study claims, narrative refusal also subverts the patriarchal model used for reading, which requires self-identification and catharsis, to assert the value of ethical ambiguity as a form of feminism. By addressing the concept of refusal as an aesthetic strategy, this article broadens the field of Indian feminist theories of the empowered female beyond the paradigms established through empowerment and positions the present text as a work of feminism. At the heart of the work is the argument that narrative acts of refusal are an act of political resistance to the patriarchal and the cultural longing for a successful conclusion to a work. Keywords: Feminist refusal, Narrative form, Feminist realism, Non-closure, Silence, Ethical opacity, Indian women’s writing.