The Criterion: An International Journal in English

Volume 17, Issue 5 · October 2026 · ISSN 0976-8165

Paradoxical Space, Blindness, And Mothering in Namita Gokhale’s The Blind Matriarch

Ms. Snehal Sahay, Ranjit Kumar

Digital Object Identifier

https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n5.41

Namita Gokhale’s The Blind Matriarch explores the lives and experiences of Matangi and her family. Matangi, the blind matriarch of the family, is loved and respected, as well as doubted and feared by her family members. Her matriarchal position is both interesting and unique inside a patriarchal society. This paper discusses the novel using the lenses of gender, feminist geography, and space. It argues that Matangi occupies a paradoxical space inside the patriarchal society. Through this, she creates a nuanced domestic space, one where her family members can negotiate their identities and agencies with considerable freedom inside a patriarchal society. It engages with Sara Ahmed’s concept of paradoxical space, and critically uses Tuan’s concepts of space, crowding, and vertical axis, with caution and critique, to delineate the complex space of Matangi’s matriarchal household, and its potential to reconfigure masculinist spaces.

Sahay, Snehal, and Ranjit Kumar. “Paradoxical Space, Blindness, And Mothering in Namita Gokhale’s The Blind Matriarch.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 5, Oct. 2026, pp. 739-55, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n5.41.

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