NARRATIVE CONTROL AND CONFRONTATION: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF DOMESTIC ABUSE IN A GOOD WIFE: ESCAPING THE LIFE I NEVER CHOSE

Abstract

This study explains the manifestation of abuse and violence against women along with all pros and cons in Samra Zafar's memoir A Good Wife: Escaping the Life I Never Chose. The study is based on Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). It examines critically that how language socially shapes and allows patriarchal power and enables resistance and silence within the marital experience of an adolescent child bride. The paper further investigates that how gender, age, culture, economic status, motherhood and wifehood, education and religion intervene to change and influence different vulnerabilities and allows unjustified actions for a male. This is the main focus of the paper to have a check on the physical, emotional, economic and psychological torture and abuse that shape the spouse’s life. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model guided the study through textual analysis, discursive, and socio-cultural practices. It discloses how socially and culturally ingrained expressions such as “a good and ideal wife” regularize submission and silence. At the same time, the memoir functions as a counter-discourse through the reclamation of agency and selfhood, especially through education and independence. The findings underpin the role of routine casual utterances within the household settings in sustaining gendered violence, highlight the role of cultural and religious discourses in normalizing abuse and violence, and their potential to challenge entrenched patriarchal norms. The study makes a contribution towards understanding the features of Pakistani English, which is a local variety. Moreover, the study indicates the necessity of focused pronunciation training to enhance learners' ability to discriminate the phonemes under discussion.