Metaphors of womanhood emerging in hysterectomy narratives

Abstract

This chapter aims to examine the metaphors of womanhood that emerged during four in-depth interviews conducted with women who had undergone hysterectomy in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. These interviewees had had the surgery in their late thirties after birthing at least two children. The interviews divulged three facets of social reality: (1) the way the interviewees had bequeathed the definition of womanhood in their respective families, (2) the factors that influenced their decision to undergo a hysterectomy in the wake of gynecological complications, and (3) their respective socioeconomic positionality within the familial organization that lent them the agency of undergoing hysterectomy against the wishes of their family members. Thus, set against the backdrop of the family structure’s social reality, and the positionality of the interviewees therein, this analytical piece investigates the metaphors employed by them to express their perception of womanhood after the surgery. The interviews orchestrate that hysterectomy, a seemingly harmless medical procedure, prescribed as a cure for gynecological ailments, marks a cut not only on the ailing women’s bodies but also on their social identity. It is in this context that a medical operation becomes a social operation. A woman’s physical body gets sutured in the operation theater in about 1 or 2 h; however, her ruptured social self keeps battling against the stereotypical social definition of womanhood imposed on her by the family for a long time.