Examining the Notion of Woman as Other through an Archetypal lens in Escape (2008) by Manjula Padmanabhan.

Escape, written by Manjula Padmanabhan, explores the violence perpetuated against women in the dystopian brotherland that resembles much of the Indian landscape. Padmanabhan, through Escape, portrays the unequal sex biases and collective patriarchal ideologies involved in creating a single-sex world, resulting in female genocide, gender discrimination, and the extermination of women in the novel. These collective ideologies of society, as presented by Padmanabhan, contribute to the idea of woman as other and unwanted, pushing their status into extinction and myth. This research paper explores how the notion of the collective unconscious within society contributes to the archetype of the collective shadow, which marginalises the specific sections of the population and rationalises violence against them. Padmanabhan’s portrayal of the idea of a single-sex world, and of women succumbing to the status of other under the collective evil ideologies of men-resembling Indian patriarchal structures-allows for an exploration of the idea and representation of the single-sex world across various myths and cultural beliefs, including Indian ones. These narratives, shaped by a toxic socialization process, rationalise and further contribute to the status of woman as other.