Chennai born Tamil writer, translator, and activist Meena Kandasamy is a young voice in dalit literature. Her work centered mainly on the marginalization of dalits and on feminism. The present work When I Hit You was shortlisted for the Womens’s Fiction Prize, the UK’s most prestigious award for women writers. The present novel is semi autobiographical work that deals with abusive marriage life, domestic violence and male chauvinism. This research paper at the outset, aims to study the present text, ‘When I Hit You’ from the point of view of Formalism. Formalism is the study of form that focuses on the analysis and examination of the text’s literariness. The main focus is on the arrangement of words, not on the historical and biographical association of the text. This paper focuses on the theoretical background of formalism and then attempt to apply formalism theory on the text.

To study and analyse the concept of formalism in relation to the novel When I Hit You.

Two theses have been studied for this paper. 1. The Phenomenal Women: a Comparative Study of the Select Poetry of Maya Angelou and Meena Kandasamy" by Jadhav Narayan.

2. Body Politics and Female Subjectivity in Contemporary Indian Writing in English with Reference to selected Works by Anita Nair Sreemoyee Piu Kundu and Meena Kandasamy", by Gunja Patni.

Meena Kandasamy the author of When I Hit You presents several artistic images impactful symbols that we can apply formalism theory on the text. let‘s examine the text from the point of view of formalism.

Russion formalist Victor Shklovsky propounded the term defemiliarization in his most famous work ‘Poetics’ in a chapter ‘Poetic as Art’. According to it a literary text should posses the quality that ordinary and familiar objects appear differently, means a literary text is able to catch the attention of the readers by the special use of symbols and images. Defemiliarization makes the differences between familiar images and poetic language. Metaphor is a good example of defemiliarization. In literature we found two types of metaphors active metaphor and dead metaphor, active metaphor in which the meaning is unknown to us and dead metaphor in which the meaning is already known to us, familiar and unable to make strong impact upon the reader. Meena Kandasamy used active and effective metaphors in When i Hit You that posses novelty and defemiliarizing tendency on familiar words. She used metaphorical language in the novel that caught the attention of the reader for example she used dirty feet for bad reputation, tied hair for dutiful wife, open hair for characterless woman, actress for Indian house wife, lice for depressed mind, lipstick for identity and match stick for physical domination. She seems to highlight the duality of language that is metaphorically and literally speaking.  The concept of defemiliarization can be applied to the narrative style also. Kandasamy tells a simple story in an unusual way. She describes the events from first person singular voice. The narrator or ‘I’ is speaking and exploring her marriage experience in rooted orthodoxy Tamil society. By this experiments it becomes autobiographical i.e. the memoir of Meena Kandasamy.

Let us examine the significance and aptness of the title of the novel ‘When I Hit You’. The title represents stark message of freedom of the narrator. It is a successful attempt of the narrator to put forward her steps from darkness to the light. The title shows the domestic dominated life unbearable to her that she left her husband. ‘When I Hit You’ stands for freedom and start of a new life. The narrator untied her feet from patriarchy and started her writing career. The title is appropriate in its meaning. At the end of the novel the narrator says, “I am the woman sitting down to write her own story. I am the woman preparing to arrest the attention. I am the woman being pooped for worlds inspection “.(P245)

The subtitle of the novel “Portrait of the Artist as A Young Wife” alludes to James joyce “The Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man.” James joyce used epiphany in his novel as the central character Stephan Dedalus experienced spiritual realization many times that changes his life. Kandasamy also used epiphany but in an ironic way. The narrator also went through realization at the end as she realized to establish her own identity. She decided to establish her own language i.e. the language of an independent woman.

Meena Kandasamy presents only four characters in the novel i.e. The Father, Mother, Husband and the Narrator. By these characters Kandasamy explore the differences of language between genders. The language of male i.e. Father and Husband is patriarchal and abusive and the language of Mother and the Narrator is submissive and suppressed. Meena Kandasamy wrote short sentences but they are to the point with detail explanation. Tamil writer mostly believed that dalit literature ignore the aedthetic aspect because it explore pangs and predicaments of marginalised class of India . so the tone of meena Kandasamy in this novel is depressing. With this tone she explore the reality that the main character is depressed and bored. For example the opening sentence, “My mother has not stopped talking about it.”  These four characters represents traditional Indian society. These four characters are symbolic in its interpretation. The unnamed narrator represent dutiful Indian woman in general who is sometimes subjugated and sometimes revolutionary when she comes to know about her rights. The husband in novel symbolises male chauvinism.  In Indian patriarchal society no woman can ever tame the male chauvinism. The Father and the Mother symbolises traditional and orthodoxy rules towards woman.  If we study the text from thematic concern we find love, domestic violence, and abusive marriage as the main themes. The language and tone of Meena Kandasamy is not plain her language infused with anger. She is bold in her thoughts. The tone of Meena Kandasamy is harsh and radical towards Indian patriarchal system.

The structure of Meena Kandasamy‘s novel ‘When I Hit You’ generated a good deal of discussion. Critics argued whether ‘When I Hit You’ is a novel or a memoir as it represent specific time period i.e. time after her marriage life and it is not lengthy like a novel.  But few along with author herself called it a novel as it is not dealing with the single event but representing a journey of the narrator from a housewife to a successful writer. It is not a memoir, according to Meena Kandasamy, “A memoir for me means a person‘s life story; i was going to write my actual life story, i would condense this marriage into footnote.”  The entire novel is divided into fifteen chapters and each chapters started with an epigraph that has been taken from various authors. These epigraphs indicate different themes that is followed by the chapters. For example chapter one stared with this epigraph, “this is about the future of the daughter, really the only thing that matters to herlife, the only reason for her late nights, and efforts, in her short her only hope, her only consolation, and she is not going to sit on her hands watching her throw her life in the garbage.”

These lines have been taken from a work COLECTIONISTA DE POLVOS RAROS by PILAR QUINTANA. All epigraphs intended to explore the message of the author. And it is clear from the very first epigraph of the novel. The opening chapters deals with the author‘s escape from marriage and the dismissive behaviour of her parents. The subject matter of the novel is not very much new it centered on universal subject matter of a dutiful housewife. But Meena Kandasamy represent it in a different manner by the use of symbolic and figurative language. Meena Kandasamy is a dalit writer. She always like to speak for marginalized people of India. The language i.e. Tamil English is a tool of Meena Kandasamy which she used to defend woman as well as to attack on orthodoxy society.

Formalists exclusively focuses on the features of the literary text, its grammatical patterns and the use of literary devices, and how a writer use the language to make it differ from an ordinary language.the language used by meena Kandasamy is simple and impectfull. Dalit writers mainly wrote in their vernacular languages like Marathi, Gujrati,Malyalam and in Hindi but meena Kandasamy chooses English and attempted praiseworthy contribution in Indian writing in English. Meena Kandasamy expresses the emotional and personal feelings of her mother tongue i.e. Malyalam in Indian English. So we found influence of Hindi and Tamil in When I Hit You. We found Indianess in her writing as she used Hindi words like chutney and dupatta. Being a Tamil writer meena Kandasamy wrote Tamil words and phrases from daily life. For example she wrote Tamil words like painseepu,porumai, sahipputhanmai,thevediyaor, tamil phjrases like koodhi kizhiya paati shurukku pai pala iruppadi, although the words are not understandable for normal reade but it increases the charm and strong sense when we know the meaning. She used this tamil English as a power for marginalised and people of lower class people. She becomes a voice for these people.

To conclude formalism ignore the emotional, historical, and biographical perspective of the text. It emphasises that analysis of a text should be done objectively and scientifically. After analyzing ‘When I Hit You’ with formalistic point of view we can say that the formalist approach can applies well to the novel. It has been studied defemiliarization. Titlr significance, themes, symbolism, narration and use of language and diction. With the application of formalism the present study uncover various hidden meanings of the text. The study opens the door for future research to take into account various research gap to be filled. Plethora of aspect can be highlighted with the help of present research.

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