| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In Hindu cosmology and life-worlds, women are described as being Shaktis, personifications of cosmic feminine power or shakti. However, the shakti of Hindu widows of all ages, because it is no longer directed into reproduction, is feared as being rampant, likely to incur disgrace, polluting and dangerous. Hence, widows, deemed culpable of having failed in their primary wifely duty of protecting and preserving the health and lives of their husbands, are often ill-treated in an attempt to weaken and disarm the reservoir of power that they continue to embody. This article focuses on a case study of a young widow, Savitri, who strove to support her children and maintain her self-regard in the face of frequently-violent hostility from her neighbours due to her creative yet subversive circumvention of the religio-cultural prescriptions and proscriptions her widow status demanded. The article explores social and psychological processes through which identification with the great Hindu goddess, Mahadevi, might enable marginalised widows to sustain the self-experience of being imbued with power-shakti-like their goddess is, albeit within the constraints of the wider community.
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