RECALLING THE SUICIDE: Affective Storytelling and the Ethics of “Good” Womanhood

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Delhi, this article examines middle-class married women's stories about the suicides of their female neighbors. Paying attention to “what moves” women emotionally and “what matters” to them in recounting their stories of life and willful death, these stories are ethical commentaries on what constitutes “good” womanhood, specifically “Hindu” womanhood. Anthropological scholarship in South Asia has established that supposedly good womanhood hinges on how successful middle-class women are in pursuing a modern, globalized “good life” while being rooted in traditional, predominantly Hindu, cultural norms and values. This analysis of suicide storytelling demonstrates that women are not passive subjects of this binary; instead, they actively adjudicate the ethical validity of mainstream constructs of good Hindu womanhood, in the process questioning middle-class understandings of what constitutes a life worth living and whose suffering matters. Such ethical questioning allows the narrators to make political claims for recognition and rights while performing a subtle critique of the prevailing gender politics within Modi's India.