“Silence, Trauma, and Female Resistance: A Comparative Content Analysis of Indian and Korean Women’s Literature”

Abstract

The present research study explores the relationship between silence, trauma, and female 
resistance in selected Indian and Korean women’s literary texts, with particular reference to That 
Long Silence and The Vegetarian. The study investigates how patriarchal social structures shape 
women’s emotional lives through silence, domestic control, social expectation, and psychological 
pressure. Rather than treating silence only as passivity, the paper examines how it gradually 
becomes a form of survival, emotional withdrawal, and resistance within oppressive social 
environments. The research is based on qualitative comparative textual analysis using feminist 
literary criticism and trauma theory. Through close reading of the selected texts, the study 
analyses emotional suppression, psychological fragmentation, bodily alienation, domestic 
isolation, and subtle forms of female resistance. Comparative analysis has been used to 
understand both the shared and culturally distinct experiences represented in Indian and Korean 
women’s writing. The findings reveal that trauma in these literary works is largely psychological 
and develops through continuous emotional control, neglect, adjustment, and social pressure 
rather than through isolated acts of violence alone. Indian women’s literature mainly portrays 
emotional suffering within family-centred structures shaped by marriage, duty, and social honour, 
whereas Korean women’s literature more directly presents psychological alienation, bodily 
resistance, emotional detachment, and the pressure of social conformity. The study further finds 
that female resistance in these texts rarely appears through open rebellion; instead, it emerges 
quietly through silence, refusal, self-awareness, withdrawal, and narrative expression. This 
research study concludes that silence in women’s literature functions as a complex emotional and 
symbolic space where suffering and resistance exist together. Although the cultural contexts differ, 
both Indian and Korean women’s texts reveal how women negotiate patriarchal control while 
attempting to reclaim identity, emotional agency, and selfhood