Women’s Resistance to Subjectification in The Guide by Narayan (1958) and “Sunset Coast” by Sakkarawarthi (2022)

The bind between women and the nation they belong to has historically revealed a dynamic and contentious nexus. Bound within a dialectical relationship, women are deemed the nation embodied and subjected to its attendant sufferings, whilst simultaneously being burdened with the task of reproducing the nationalist rhetoric that they themselves have no hand in penning. In such a context, this study undertakes a discussion on the configuration of female subjectivity through The Guide by R.K. Narayan and “Sunset Coast ‘’ by Sakkarawarthi, situated in postcolonial India and Tamil separatist war era Sri Lanka, respectively. Moreover, it examines and evinces the differing ways in which women overtly and covertly assert agency within the circumscriptive bounds of patriarchal nationalism. In elucidating the narratives of women striving for autonomy, this essay contends that these two texts function as discourses of resistance to androcentric nationalism. Keywords: Nationalism; Female Subjectivity; Resistance