Narrating Silence, Liminal Subjectivity, and Feminine Selfhood in Won't You Stay, Radhika?

Abstract

Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the study employs an integrated framework of Speech and Thought Presentation (STP), feminist narratology, and Daoist philosophy to explore how this novel portrays narrative consciousness, gendered interiority, liminal subjectivity, and feminine selfhood. The study, based on the stylistic model of Speech and Thought Presentation (STP), is a discussion of how Usha Priyamvada has presented Radhika's inner consciousness and emotional problems, so that the reader can see Radhika's fragmented selfhood. Furthermore, she shows the complexity and multiplicity of a woman's interiority by using Free Indirect Thought (FIT) to display adequate narration of the character's thoughts through the narrator's voice. The Daoist concept of wu wei, which means 'action without action', is used as a framework to rethink Radhika's lack of action, indecision, and emotional isolation as variations of another kind of selfhood, a selfhood that stands outside the social norms and identities. Radhika is located between India and America, tradition and modernity, belonging and estrangement, a place where she finds she is always becoming, as in the Daoist philosophy. The study also illustrates the novel's new distribution of narrative power, giving precedence to women's minds over men's voices, and thus subverting the male-dominated forms of representation. This article presents a new, interdisciplinary critical analysis of Won't You Stay, Radhika? that draws from the fields of stylistics, feminist narratology, and Eastern philosophy, and thus helps to advance the debate about narrative consciousness, gendered interiority, and the politics of silence in contemporary Indian fiction.