PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL READING OF FEMALE CHARACTERS IN TAHMIMA ANAM’S A GOLDEN AGE

Abstract

The Liberation War of Bangladesh is deeply submerged in the pool of gender-based politics, Bengali genocide, sexual violence, mass killings, rapes or forced impregnation, trauma, and extreme torture on women by the Pakistani army. The wartime circumstances depict that sexual violence, genocide rapes and atrocities on women are silently approved by the Government and Armed forces. It is a clever play of institutionalised patriarchal models of society and power politics to prove their supremacy over the others. Moreover, sexual violence proves to be an authoritative misogynist march by men to topple down women’s honour and self-identity. While reading the situations and narratives of the Bangladesh war, the accounts of women’s experiences are missing. Women’s struggles are often kept away from the social platforms and historical records so that they feel their irrelevance and adopt permanent silence.The present paper is based on the novel ‘A Golden Age’ by Tahmima Anamin the year 2007 that highlights the condition of women in a male-dominated society. It also analyses the hardships they went through, before and during the Bangladesh’s Liberation War in the year 1971.Tahmima Anam is a British-Bangladeshi with a debut novel A Golden Age (2007).The novel represents a mother-daughter tale of the War of Independence of Bangladesh and is set during an exceptional martial law’s period. A Golden Age is a resistance story told from the margins, from a domestic space known as “Shona.” Through the women characters in the novel, Anam depicts the struggles, gender violence, and traumatic incidents women endure while still supporting the cause of the liberation movements in the country. But their contribution to nation-building and independence is neglected on personal, as well as, public platforms. Anam’s writings have impactful characters who give a voice to the voiceless women of Bangladesh.