“QUEERING THE PITCH”: GENDER SPACE IN SHOBA DE’S STRANGE OBSESSION

Abstract

Queer theory is a branch of gender studies that emerged in the early 1990s. It is a literary or culyural study that rejects the traditional categories of gender and sexuality.  It deals with the social as well as psychological issues associated with the LGBTQ community. Queer theory is not only about the homosexual representations in literature but also traverses the categories of gender as well as sexual orientation.

 Strange Obsession deals with the obsession of a psychotic woman with an attractive young girl. This paper attempts to study the psychoneurotic personality of Minx, the only and spoiled child of an Inspector General of Police, who ends up into a lesbian and lunatic. She had a pathetic childhood as an outcome of her father's transfers and her mother's social work. In this novel Shobha De has preoccupied more on the psychopathological aspect of Minx's personality which has stopped the stabilized development of her nature. Her smart manipulation of her surroundings and her cruel behaviour presume criminal facets. In Strange Obsession, Shobha De points out the ludicrousness of life in a metropolitan city like Bombay. De handles the subject of sex widely; the bestial homosexual tendencies of Minx present the pinnacle of alternative sexuality