Documenting Psychological Tactics as Violence in Meena Kandasamy's ‘When I Hit You Or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife’

Conversations on intimate partner violenceIntimate partner violence focus on visible acts of physical, sexual, and mental abuse. The chapter explores psychological tacticsPsychological tactics such as gaslightingGaslighting, isolationIsolation, intimidation, humiliation, and controlControl as a distinct category of violenceViolence against the backdrop of Meena Kandasamy's ‘When I Hit You Or, a Portrait of the WriterWriter as a Young Wife’. The narrator in the novel recounts her life after marriageMarriage to reveal to the reader the covert psychological tacticsPsychological tactics used by her husband that irrigate intimate spaces for more overt forms of violenceViolence to thrive. In doing so, the narrator draws our attention to the criticality and complexity of the true dimensions of intimate partner violenceIntimate partner violence. The chapter analyses psychological tacticsPsychological tactics as emotional and psychological violenceViolence through the lens of the narrator's experience as a victimVictim to fill critical gaps in the sociological understanding of intimate partner violenceIntimate partner violence. The chapter draws on themes that emerge from the novel to demonstrate the role of genderGender imbalances within the institution of marriageInstitution of marriage that are critical in sustaining violenceViolence. The overarching objective of the analysis is to deepen and widen the ‘intimate violenceIntimate violence framework’ to include psychological tacticsPsychological tactics as a serious form of violenceViolence.