SUBVERTING SUBJUGATION ON WOMEN OPPRESSION: A POST-MODERN FEMINIST ANALYSIS IN RAO'S GIRLS BURN BRIGHTER

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the female resistance towards subjugation in the novel Girls Burn Brighter (2018) by Shobha Rao. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the existing patriarchal principles that exploit women. This study offers a postmodern feminist analysis grounded in the theoretical framework of Judith Butler. Researchers have examined the complex web  of  social and cultural norms that construct and regulate the role of women in the postmodern world. In Girls Burn Brighter, Shobha Rao portrays female characters who are caught in a relentless cycle of poverty, marginalization and powerlessness conditions that are socially produced and discursively maintained. In line with Butler’s concept of gender as performative rather than innate, the novel illustrates how the identities of women are shaped by external norms that define femininity as passive and subordinate. However, the protagonists challenge these imposed roles through acts of resistance and self-assertion. The only path to freedom, Rao suggests, lies in rebelling against the very structures that seek to confine and erase female agency. Through this lens, the novel becomes powerful narrative of defiance, illustrating have gendered oppression can be disturbed by subversive performances of identity and will.