ABSTRACT
Indira Goswami’s The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker is embedded in gendered spatial practices where space emerges both as symbolic and semiotic category of difference while calibrating strategic positioning of female body in/out of space. Read as the perfect literary rendition of sociocultural spaces of corruption and transgression, the novel negotiates spatially embedded practices contingent upon the inherent nature of the challenges the women face; especially the group of young, widowed outcasts like Durga, Saru Gossainee and Giribala. A reading of how women negotiate, configure, contest, subvert and appropriate space in Goswami’s seminal work is challenging in terms of addressing the question of negotiating the gendered mobility and restrictive use of sociocultural and habitual spaces. The chapter aims to delve into the ways women make sense of the spaces they inhabit, how they interact with the habitative potential of the spaces they inhabit on a daily basis, how spaces are brought alive and speak into and against the normative codes of sociocultural behaviour.
