Women’s Relational Anxieties in Tahmima Anam’s The Good Muslim

In this study, the researcher intends to analyse the women’s relational anxieties in Tahmima Anam’s novel, The Good Muslim (2011). The Good Muslim (2011) showcases the postwar scenario of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. The protagonist of this novel, Maya is a physician who lost her father in a car accident. She used to live with her mother and brother before the liberation war. After the war, she went to a village in Rajshahi Division in Bangladesh. She was full of hope that the reason she and her brother fought during the war, would bring them freedom and independence. However, she started to see the opposites. The change in her brother’s behaviour, appearance, and ideologies was the reason for her to face relational anxieties with her brother and her nephew, Zaid. Above all, she once believed that the change in her brother happened because of his first love, and later wife, Silvi. In this paper, the researcher focuses on the anxieties of these relationships between a brother and a sister, an aunt and a nephew; and a mother and a daughter. John Bowlby’s attachment theory is implemented in this research to analyse the relational anxieties in the women characters found in The Good Muslim (2011).

Keywords: children, war, relations, family, relations