The Weight of Silence: Tracing Unvoiced Trauma and
Gendered Suffering in Monika Bhati’s Lives
Not Lived
Prem Prakash shukla,
Department of English,
Devi Ahilya University,
Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India.
Abstract: In
solidly patriarchal societies, women’s emotional and psychological pain is
often discounted, dismissed or viewed as simply what life is all about. Monika Bhati’s
Lives Not Lived is an emotional story about the human condition that refuses to
let such struggles remain under wraps. It stretches deep into the silent sense
of loss, unexpressed burdens, secret hurts that women carry through
generations, to give voice to what is often only implicit experience. This
article investigates how Bhati’s work operates as a daring subversion of the
establishment and draws attention to the emotional labor, suppressed grief,
erased identities and forced silence by which the women across the world
breathe. And in running these ideas through the strands of Judith Herman, bell
hooks, and Judith Butler, I say that Lives Not Lived is a kind of literary
rebellion, a means to keep and honor women’s pain as history that was also ours,
personal suffering to a shared demand for dignity and recognition. The novel also confronts the grief
women are forced to bury and the ways their bodies and identities are sidelined
or controlled in patriarchal settings. By naming these realities, Bhati creates
what I call a “counter-archive”—a narrative that collects and validates women’s
experiences, refusing to let them be erased. Drawing on Herman’s insights about
trauma, hooks’ vision of feminist solidarity, and Butler’s ideas about how
gender shapes our sense of self, this paper shows how Lives Not Lived reclaims
the sacredness of women’s suffering, turning pain into a source of strength and
resistance.
Keywords: Feminism, Trauma
theory, Gendered silence, Intersectionality
Lives Not Lived by Monika Bhati is a heart wrenching and
self-searching novel that is not over-the-top in its drops and turns but
settles down to a still, though not less powerful, revelation of resilience and
patience. It examines the inner complexity of the lives of women, as the burden
of the unspeakable of life, emotional labor, silence, passed down the
generations, and the limitation of personal agency, define them. The very title
is an eerie echo of this gendered truth: that of the lives not killed by the
passage of time but inhibited by a set of societal prescriptions denying the
ability to express, distinguish, and self-actualize. This paper investigates
how the narrative of Bhati breaks the silence that seems to cover in a blanket
the suffering of women through the prism of feminist trauma theory and
intersectional critique as a mild, nevertheless toxic, means of erasure. In
providing a voice to the unheard plights of her characters, Bhati battles
against this oppression through formulating a story that expresses that way in
which one is forced to struggle. In fact, a phrase portrayed most eloquently by
bell hooks, The absence of choice is the reality of being oppressed (hooks 5)
can best describe the nature of the people in the book, whose smallest action,
their unspoken words, their limited actions reveal to us the price of living in
a world that requires them to keep quiet. Their stories do not only reveal how
these systemic injustices affect their lives; those stories also testify to the
strength of conviction that women have and the ability to see the life segued
back to them even after they speak in whispers.
I.
The Silent Wound: Gendered
Suffering as Invisible Trauma:
In Lives Not Lived, Bhati does not represent the trauma with the help
of the scenes of definite violence or flashy scenes. Rather the novel sits
within the silent areas of the lives of the women, the kitchen, the prayer
room, the courtyard and in this; another sort of cut is shown. It is a trauma
that does not come as an overnight disaster but a product of reiterations,
anticipations and silences. According to Judith Herman, complex trauma is a
consequence of prolonged repeated trauma whereby the victim has no control or minimal
control of the situation (Herman 133). In this case it is not a battle
situation or a prison, the scenario is the home of the women in Bhati novel. It
is the very place where the society romanticizes as sweet and adequate but
which, in the case of these women, turns into a gradual suffocating process.
The trauma is much gendered. It is based on the responsibility that women are
supposed to do and the selves they are supposed to push aside. We are served
with such characters of Bhati, as Haree and Naina, whose life depends
completely on other people’s decisions. It is not that they break completely,
or blow up, or rebel--it is that gradually they withdraw, until they are more a
memory in their families than a living person. No name is ever given to that suffering
as it cannot be viewed (as) exceptional. It is nothing more that women are
supposed to take. A very useful lens in interpreting this type of harm is
provided by feminist psychologist Laura Brown. She would define insidious
trauma as the trauma that would not originate in acute cases, but in continuous
experiences of marginalization, silencing, and devaluation (Brown 107). This
structure helps to comprehend the story of Bhati. Brown claims that in
patriarchal society’s women are socialized to assume that pains are honorable,
sufferings are feminine, and speaking is threatening. These doctrines are not
simply social norms in Lives Not Lived, and they are not simply truths
individuals believe in mind but the exterior truths. Such internalizations are what
define the nature of world perception in the female characters as well as their
value. Naina silently cooperates and Haree accepts abuse without signs of being
weak, but it is because of the social conditioning they had, that makes silence
a virtue.
The genius about Bhati is
the fact that she does not dramatize these experiences. It has no rescue, no
major transformation. Rather, she provides a description of trauma, which is
more devastating because of its silence. The reader is not invited to feel sorry
about the women but rather to experience them, to observe how the gendered
expectations make their lives something passive, obedient, and that we will
never live. Even the title, Lives Not
Lived is a brutal reminder that there is nothing close to survival,
although the book does not want you to believe it. These women breathe, cook,
raise children, care for elders yet their needs, their imagination, their
personalities are silently crushed to the side because they have been told not
to want. The reason why this type of trauma is so haunting is that it is
invisible. It cannot be readily quantified in the numbers or the titles. It
does not cause any visible scars. But psychologically its effect is enormous.
The silence, the self-effacement, the lifelong feeling of undeservingness-
these mark bygone a wound that society does not want to call by its name. Both
Herman and Brown are adamant in stating that trauma is not only concerned with
what happens to a body but what happens to a self. The self does not break in
an instant, as in Lives Not Lived, but is gnawed away, day after day, by a kind
of violence that does not break or even accidentally exist, but that is
inflicted through the eyes of dismissal, blindness and silence.
The novel by Bhati does not
attempt to provide easy solutions or pleasing conclusions. Rather it drives the
readers to confront the quite, everyday manners in which women lose their voice
and power. This trauma is not a result of single terrific day- this trauma is
accumulative and transfers over time between mothers and daughters, generation
by generation. By seeing its mother shrinks, the daughters develop the
knowledge of doing the same. It is this non-verbal inheritance that Monika
Bhati describes in painful yet understandable terms- a type of affliction that
happens to be so jaded and thus so pathetic.
II.
The Silenced Body: Gender,
Control, and Cultural Shame:
The situation is different as Judith Butler
explains the issue of gender performativity in her work saying that we are not
born with gender but we are trained how to perform it since it becomes
something we are instructed to act in due to repetitive cultural lines (Butler
8). Butler states that gender identity is constructed and made stronger by
repetition of social and cultural behaviour, languages and expectation that are
socially constructed instead of born. By this perspective, femininity is not an
innate characteristic of a woman, but rather an action, a form of acting that
the woman performs due to the society look. The latter notion becomes even more
applicable on the example of Lives Not
Lived when Bhati depicts the female body not as a force of power or
liberation, but as a field of conflict in which social norms instill the sense
of control and submission. As early as when the first signs of puberty are
noticed, including menstruation, the female body is already claimed by the
societal requirements, including childbirth and finally becoming a widow. Such
transitions, rather than quality stages of life, come to be sites of the female
body being examined, disciplined and humiliated simply because of being present
in own physical reality.
This is shown rather graphically in one
scene: a young lady is cut off, not because of expressing her opinion or
breaking rules, but because she happened to have the uncontrollable natural act
of bleeding as part of her menstrual cycle. The conventional working of her body
is labeled a moral lapse, an instance with which the excessive cultural
stigmatization of the female physical presence is exposed. This anything but
silent shame, which is internalized and unspoken, reminds me of the notion of
“Tyranny of Slenderness” by Susan Bordo. It is a term which is used to denote
the pressure which is merciless and unseen, more particularly on women to be
thin- not to be healthy but to fit in a particular ideal concept of culture and
patriarchy. The term tyranny plays an important factor here- it demonstrates
how this ideal governs the life of women in strong and subtle ways. The
stereotypes of purity, obedience, and restraint shape the bodies of women in
such a system (Bordo 185).It is a form of social control passing as the beauty
ideals. What is even more dangerous is that it is so normal. Girls are brought
up believing that, in order to be a good woman, it is important to reduce the
size of their bodies. It also shows the wisdom of bell hooks since according to
her patriarchy trains women that the vocation that is highest is suffering and
service (hooks 45). The female characters in Bhati are constantly taught, in
one way or the other, that they do not own their bodies. They are raised to
learn how to act as burdens. Their body turns into some spaces of obligation,
as opposed to appetite; designed to be used, as opposed to represent. What is
taken away is agency, not because this is done as the result of violence but
because expectations are so well learned that they seem unchangeable, true.
These women are not silenced, they are taught to think that when they are
quiet, this is safety, and when they become smaller, this is survival. Via
these depictions, Bhati reveals the new violence of a culture that requires
women to look small and feel small in order to shape themselves into sterile
paradigms.
III.
Storytelling as Rebellion:
Breaking the Chains of Silence:
Art does not simply reflect what is real in
life as bell hooks so strongly points out but it also dreams of what could be
(hooks 61). Bhati in her novel grabs this power of transformation through
narrative to speak the voice of the type of pain that the society tends to
cover under the carpet. Her narrative does not depend on the sensational turns
of events and the violent showdowns to create its appeal. It does provide
something much more important recognition. It is this silent practice of
observing and acknowledging pain that is central to the feminist healing
process because it is there that words have been silenced.
The narratives as told by
Bhati do not follow the tidy unidirectional courses of traditional stories. She
narrates her tale bit by bit--by bits of recollection, breaks pregnant with
meaning, and pauses that scream louder than words. This framework bears the
irregular, uncontrollable manner in which trauma establishes itself in the life
of a person, and in which it manifests itself in the form of flashes rather
than a systematic order. In such a manner, the work proposed by Bhati follows
the ideas of Judith Herman according to which healing is possible when the
survivors can state their truth and feel they have been heard (Herman 135).
With Lives Not Lived, Bhati offers
that safe haven, where one can speak out at least, where the unheard stories
can now be told.
IV.
Intersectional Silence:
Class, Caste, and the disappearance of Grief:
Even though the novel by
Bhati is predominantly based on the concept of gender and the manner in which
women perceive pain, the part played by other aspects, like class, caste, and
rural marginalization are clearly demonstrated in a well-documented measure to
further enhance how women are subjugated through pain. This silence is not just
the lack of speaking; this phenomenon is caused by the deep systems that make
certain lives invisible. For example, mainstream feminism, and in particular,
feminism that is centered on white and privileged experience has tended to
equate all women as struggling the same way as pointed out critically by bell
hooks. By doing this, it does not pay attention to the fact that there is
particular and stratified pain followed by women that are poor, lower caste, or
are not Westernized (hooks 15).
The facts that guide the
characters created by Bhati are those that lack the provision of mental health
resources, including therapy, either because of poverty, unavailability, or
stigma. To them the trauma (deep emotional pain) is not something they can name
and write about. The silence that they exist with, is not merely personal
suffering and it is also, sanctioned on them by the social structures which are
unable recognize their humanity.
One of the incidents in the
novel is about a widow (Haree) belonging to the lower caste who is ridiculed by
her townsfolk of grieving over much--as though grief were finite. In a
different situation, one can see a young girl (Naina) who has the audacity to
ask a question about what her place is in her family, being easily swept aside.
It is not that these women are suffering because they are women. They hurt
because they are poor and because they are locked out of the environments,
whether intellectual or institutional, within which some type of recognition
can be extended.
V.
Toward
a Feminist Archive of Feeling:
Lives Not Lived by Monika Bhati is not just a novel - it is
a kind of feminist record of the emotions and memories, a zone in which the
painless encounters of pain, loss and perseverance are well-nurtured. Instead
of letting these sentiments flounder deep inside or are swept by the passage of
history, Bhati presents them to the fore; she does not want them to be
forgotten because of history or apathy of social life. It is what she does with
her work bringing together the pain, suffering, sacrifice of the women and
transforming these deeply personal sufferings into a communal one: a memory
that can make the truth of lived experience. In this context the novel does not
only narrate a story, it celebrates the act of surviving as sacrosanct. It puts
voice to wounds that have long been established as unavoidable or inevitable.
These struggles are not personal, but social and political history on the body.
Trauma researcher Judith
Herman explains that during healing, it is critical to be seen. Describing what
a group does, she says, Trauma is isolating; through the group the survivor can
re-establish his or her psychological world (Herman 215). The writing of Bhati
captures that act of witness in common. With her literary understatement, she
is able to create a place and time in which these experiences are at last given
a voice and not as a tragedy long passed but a reality that must become a part
of the historical record of what life is like to survive.
Conclusion:
Monika Bhati is building
more than a story in Lives Not Lived;
she builds a very moving description of silence, its age, and unrecognized
pain. By writing about women who have become the victims of the cultural,
social and historical forces making their lives to be left silent, Bhati shows
how the unspoken trauma does not just disappear, but remains, simmers and
eventually becomes generational. This silence is not a gift of nature; it is
artificially produced by mechanisms that have a lot to gain by the silence of
women.
The work of Bhati directly
opposes the patriarchal culture in the perception of endurance of women not as
depression, but as virtue. This detrimental framing makes its way through the
novel, which addresses the emotional work that women are supposedly expected to
do- always enduring the hurt, helping others, and getting by without being
prompted with questions about the process of how it feels. Instead of this
being touted as resilience, Bhati criticizes the cultural contexts, which
contend women who have to bear such emotional burden in silence. Using the
theories of feminist trauma (the analysis of how gender affects the experience
and expression of trauma) the novel helps to understand that the crisis
occurring is not only the suffering of a person, but the issue that goes far
beyond an individual in its politics. It also uses intersectionality in
demonstrating that women cannot traumatize in similar ways. Caste, and class as
well as geography are factors that define who speaks, who listens, and whose
agony is unacknowledged. A rural widow who mourns loudly is denigrated in the
world of Bhati whereas the wondering of a little girl on where she belongs in
the family is snubbed. These are not exceptional cases- they are signs of
larger structures that still silence marginalized women.
Under this light, Lives Not Lived turns much more than a
work of literature, it becomes a political gesture. It employs the idea of
narrative to articulate what is not said in the dominant histories books and
institutions. It will provide a voice to the voiceless and give room to those
whose accounts were never documented and were never heeded. By doing that,
Bhati is actually not simply writing about a trauma but she also contributes to
retrieving the narratives, restoring the narratives that patriarchy and the
social hierarchies have tried to keep silent on the other side. With the voices
of women whose lives were led in the margins, between the lines of the official
history, beyond the walls of official acclaim, Lives Not Lived turns into a virtual performance of remembrance,
protest, as well as healing. It is literature that has a point: a silent yet
persistent rejection that people should never be forgotten who never had an
opportunity to speak.
Works Cited
Bhati, Monika. Lives Not Lived. Authorspress, 2023.
Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western
Culture, and the Body. University of California Press, 1993.
Brown, Laura S. “Not
Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited
by Cathy Caruth, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, pp. 100–112.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion
of Identity. Routledge, 1990.
Herman, Judith Lewis. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of
Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books, 1992.
hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center.
South End Press, 1984.