‘Wounded-Breast’ Stories: Re-Inking Lactating Woman as an Immutable Abject Self in Select Tribal Folktales

Abstract

The ‘bodies’ in tribal folktales do not adhere to the value system and the hidden boundaries set by society. Verrier Elwin appreciated the fictional quality of such tales from Central India and anthologised them without attempts to moralize. He incorporated tales on vagina dentata, penis, clitoris, naval, and breast motifs in one of those anthologies. This article re-reads the tribal folktales of lactating women and their breasts through the lens of Julia Kristeva’s abjection. It analyzes the female body, traversing from tamed to abject, non-confirmative self, through a close reading of the texts with the breast motif as a literary device.   There are multifaceted breasts with fluid characters: empathetic caregivers, assaulted, wounded, dead, and living corpses, but all oversized. They appear as abject, challenging the notion of naïve and appealing female bodies. Men in these tales fear the existence of breasts and their potential to engulf masculinity. Men try to make breasts desirable by wounding them and chopping them off mercilessly. The breasts surpass the tortures and continue to carry their ‘fluidity,’ milking sour odours and transforming into creations like pumpkins that quench thirst. They do not limit themselves to a sweet, nourishing breast but refashion a fierce, wounded, bleeding, yet lactating one.