Embodied Conflict and the Politics of Redemption: Female Subjectivity in P.Sivakami and Malsawmi Jacob's Novel

Abstract

This paper undertakes a comparative study of P. Sivakami’s The Grip of Change and Malsawmi Jacob’s Zorami: A Redemption Song to examine how cultural conflict shapes female subjectivity within marginalised Indian communities. Situating both novels within Dalit and Indigenous (Mizo) contexts, the study argues that cultural conflict is not merely a thematic concern but is constitutive of the protagonists’ ontological formation. Sivakami foregrounds the “double marginalisation” of Dalit women through caste hegemony and internal Dalit patriarchy, while Jacob explores the collective cultural trauma produced by insurgency, state violence, and patriarchal silence in Mizo society. Through sexual violence, both texts inscribe political domination onto the female body, rendering it a primary site of contestation. Yet the novels also articulate modes of resistance and redemption—education, voice, spiritual healing, and cultural memory—through which fractured identities seek recovery. Together, these works assert that liberation demands confronting both external oppression and internal hierarchies.