When Abused Women Get Away with Murder: Law, Justice and Truth in three English-language Malaysian Novels by Women

Authors

  • Chuah Guat Eng, Malaysia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31436/asiatic.v7i1.295

Abstract

Although the socially oppressed woman is almost a standard feature in Malaysian English-language fictional narratives, abused-women-turned-murderers are found only in novels by women. Between 1994 and 2000, three women published novels featuring women who kill and confess their crimes but, notably, are not brought to justice. To date, these are the only Malaysian examples of this sub-genre of the crime novel. This paper examines the moral universes depicted in the three novels, and identifies culturally and institutionally determined concepts and perceptions of law, justice and truth that might explain why the women who kill are allowed to go unpunished.

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Author Biography

Chuah Guat Eng, Malaysia

Chuah Guat Eng is a novelist. She received her Ph.D. from the National University of Malaysia (UKM) in 2008 for her thesis, From Conflict to Insight: A Zen-based Reading Procedure for the Analysis of Fiction. From January 2011 to February 2013, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University Putra Malaysia, focusing on developing a sociology-based approach to Malaysian fiction in English.  

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Published

2013-06-15

How to Cite

Eng, Malaysia, C. G. (2013). When Abused Women Get Away with Murder: Law, Justice and Truth in three English-language Malaysian Novels by Women. Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, 7(1), 134–153. https://doi.org/10.31436/asiatic.v7i1.295

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2013): June

Section

Articles

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