Memory Dynamics in Small Acts of Freedom: A Hermannian Approach to Indian Female Sagas

In literature, saga narratives stand out as a genre that closely follows the trajectories of various characters and families, navigating through stories that span ages, generations, and diverse regions. By centering on female protagonists, this genre delves into the lives of women across different generations, skillfully interconnecting their experiences. Most often, memory becomes a key tool to weave together histories of women across generations. Pernille Hermann in Saga Literature, Cultural Memory, and Storage (2013) examines the ways in which sagas narrate, represent and mediate memories. Hermann primarily distinguishes between the memory of literature, memory in literature and literature as a medium of collective memory. This study is an attempt to identify and outline the phases of memory dynamics in the recent Indian English female saga narrative namely, Small Acts of Freedom (2018) by Gurmehar Kaur. The study will substantiate the argument through a critical content analysis of the text through Hermann’s theoretical framework. The present study contends that saga fiction, when viewed from the framework of temporality and collective memory, provides women an avenue to identify, articulate and to reconstruct or reorganise the past within the scope of the present. Further, it widens the scope for the construction of a memory-based female genealogy through the retrieval and sharing of memories.