A MOTHER IS A GHOST: METERNAL TRAUMA AND SELF-ALIENATION IN SETHI'S ARE YOU ENJOYING?

Abstract

Meera Sethi's short story "Are You Enjoying?" portrays maternal absence not through physical death but as continuous psychological presence. This article argues that Sethi uses the ghost metaphor to explore maternal trauma as an intergenerational issue that fractures both the mother's identity and the daughter's sense of self. Through close reading informed by trauma theory, postmemory, and feminist psychoanalysis, I demonstrate how the mother's unspoken wounds-rooted in migration, loss, and marital disappointment -render her emotionally absent despite physical presence. The daughter inherits this silence and develops "self-alienation," a fragmented subjectivity in which she cannot distinguish her own emotions from her mother's unresolved pain. Sethi's minimalist form, marked by repetition and narrative gaps, enacts trauma's disruption of language and memory. The article concludes that by naming the ghost, Sethi per forms an act of witnessing that begins the process of healing.