Gender Transgression, Subversive Acts and Discipline in Kavita Kané’s Lanka’s Princess

It is an indubitable consensus that throughout history, women have occupied a marginal territory in cultural and social domains. This peripheral occupation is evident in the vast corpus of mythology that has helped shape the collective consciousness of every civilisation. In India, the two epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are instrumental in laying down certain intransigent standards in terms of morality, dharma, and gender. These metanarratives predominantly emphasise the heroic feats of the male characters and though there are prominent female characters, they have been reduced to submissive, docile, and subservient positions. Kavita Kane ’s Lanka’s Princess is a revision of the narrative of the epic Ramayana from the narrative stance of Surpanakha, the notorious rakshasi. Kane captures an alternative portrayal of this abhorred character, otherwise known as a witch, monster, and ugly old hag in the canonical text. Building on Judith Butler’s seminal “theory of gender performativity”, the paper traces Surpanakha’s evolution from birth to womanhood from a gender-oriented standpoint. The present paper further aims to study how Kane ’s deliberate placement of the marginal character in the centre stage challenges and subverts the authorial position of the epic. Additionally, the paper seeks to underscore Surpanakha’s subversive acts which serve to deconstruct the definite gender boundaries and the reciprocal consequences she faces, and Kane ’s question of whether Surpanakha’s mutilation is a defensive act or a form of punishment for the attempted gender infringement.