Asserting Male dominance through sexual violence: A study of Manjula Padmanabhan's "Lights Out."

Violence is a cross cutting issue. This paper is about violence against women. A woman has no identity of her own in this society. This is a real life story of sexual harassment of women by a gang of perpetrators. Manjula padmanabhan has given a description of the four criminals in her novel "Lights Out." In this novel Manjula has expressed the helplessness of a woman by her character Leela. Manjula has shown how patriarchal power defeats a woman weather she is right or wrong. The aim of this paper is to focus the attention of the people of our society towards the atrocities on women especially rape. Rape is a heinous act of violence traditionally meted out to women by men who resort to dominating their power through this sexual act.

Keywords: violence, sexual harassment, patriarchal, atrocities, Rape