Deifying, Demonizing, and Diagnosing Female Anger: An Affective Analysis of Yakshi, Bhadrakali, and Nagavalli in Kerala’s Cultural Narrative

Abstract

Female anger is among the profoundly regulated emotional expressions in a patriarchal society. Depending on the context in which it is expressed, feminine rage is either sanctified, demonized, or medicalized, while its counterpart in male anger is normalized as rational and heroic. This paper is an investigation of the affective containment of female anger, focusing on the cultural, religious, and cinematic representations of three prominent figures in Kerala’s narrative landscape: Yakshi, Bhadrakali, and Nagavalli. The paper has the theoretical backing of affect theory, feminist criticism, and biopolitical frameworks, and is structured as a study concerned with how these figures have been subjected to modes of deification, demonization, and diagnosis as a method of neutralizing the threat of feminine rage. The paper critiques the patriarchal mechanisms that reframe women’s wrath into aesthetic, spiritual, or pathological forms, along with interdisciplinary close readings of folklore, ritual performance, and popular media, ultimately rendering their anger unintelligible and non-threatening. The paper is a feminist intervention to reclaim female rage as a legitimate response to injustice and an obstreperous force capable of unsettling dominant structures of power.