https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.007
Period Stories: Menstrual Narratives and the Limits of Realism
Aradhya Maria David
Research Scholar
St. Xavier’s College for Women (Autonomous), Aluva, India
Email: aradhyamariadavid@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-7217-0605
Abstract: Menstruation has historically occupied a marginal position within literary representation, frequently displaced into euphemism, metaphor, or narrative silence. In contemporary literature, however, menstrual experience increasingly enters textual space as a site of embodied knowledge and formal experimentation. This article examines how contemporary fiction and life writing render menstruation not merely as biological occurrence or thematic reference, but as a recurring structure that shapes narrative temporality, perception, and voice.
Drawing on feminist cultural theory and narratology, the study argues that menstrual narratives exert formal pressure on realism’s conventional investment in progression, climax, and irreversible transformation. Through attention to cyclical return, interruption, and routine maintenance, these texts foreground embodied processes that resist teleological development. Menstrual temporality introduces repetition without culmination and duration without narrative reward, unsettling dominant expectations of productivity, discipline, and bodily containment.
By tracing how menstruation reorganizes narrative pacing and redistributes significance to experiences often deemed minor or excessive, the article demonstrates that menstrual storytelling functions as a subtle mode of cultural resistance. Rather than relying solely on explicit political declaration, these works expand the representational capacities of contemporary realism, making visible forms of embodied recurrence historically relegated to the margins. In doing so, they reshape literary imagination and contribute to ongoing debates about gender, embodiment, and the politics of everyday life.
Keywords: Menstrual narratives, Narrative temporality, Realism, Contemporary fiction, Feminist narratology, Period politics
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