The New Face of Abuse?: Questioning the Fall of the Father and Assessing the Child Exploitation in Deborah Moggach’s Porky

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Poulomi Modak

Ph.D Scholar (JRF), Department of English, Cooch Behar Panchanan Barma University, West Bengal. Email: poulomimodak1992@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s9n3

Abstract

In contemporaneous world child sexual abuse is possibly the most heinous kind of child exploitation; therefore, continuous dialogue and discourse regarding the child sexual abuse should be given the primordial prominence in order to be well aware about and thereby engage with possible measures against this monster in the closet. It is in this context that the paper attempts through a detailed and critical analysis of Deborah Moggach’s controversial novel Porky to make a reading of the narratives of pain, sufferings, and trauma inflicted upon the ‘abject’ body. Further, the novelist has incorporated the havoc of non-consensual incest which concomitantly attributes the novel as a site for insightful discussion. The proposed article, therefore, interrogates family as a possible locus of sexual exploitation of the children. This reorientation of family as a disintegrated entity eventually brings forth the question of victim’s rehabilitation. Extending this, the paper finally argues any possible healing of the oppressed body.

Keywords: abusive father, body shaming, child molestation, non-consensual incest, psychological trauma