AN ANALYSIS OF PREETI SHENOY'S THE RULE BREAKERS WITH REGARDS TO NEGOTIATING GENDER AND SEXUALITY
The sociocultural context of gender and sexuality in Preeti Shenoy's novel The Rule Breakers is the focus of this paper. With her masterwork, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler made gender and sexuality concerns more widely known. In addition to concentrating on the issue of homosexuality, Judith Butler places a significant amount of emphasis on performance in order to determine the function that gender plays. While gender is a social construct, sexuality is biological. Other sex refers to sexual orientations that don't fit neatly into either the male or female body types. Yet, only male and feminine roles are defined by culture. These two genders are also denoted in language by phrases such as "he" and "she," among others. There is no one characteristic that can determine a person's sexual orientation just based on their language use. In Shenoy's book The Rule Breakers, the binary gender structure has a significant impact on both the lives of the feminine characters and the lives of the characters of the opposite sex. Similarly, the normative tendency of heterosexuality or the cultural framework of heterosexuality restricts the lives of gay and lesbian and it produces sadness and disillusionment. In spite of the fact that homosexuality is now recognised by the law, there are still some individuals who are unwilling to discuss their sexual orientation for fear that it would cause them to stand out from the crowd. In The Rule Breakers, Shenoy examines the subjection and freedom of her character Veda, as well as the suffering of the homosexual character who is Veda's spouse. Consequently, the purpose of this research is to investigate Veda's feminist perspective as well as her husband's struggle with his sexual orientation.
Feminism, Homosexuality, Gay, Gender Trouble, Shenoy.