From Individual Witnesses to Collective Bystanders

Sexual abuse against women is ineradicable form of violence in society. The laws support those who attempt to protect the victim but the reluctance to confront such violence to protect the victim remains widespread. Literature is a powerful medium to expose society’s failures. Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights Out depicts the people's tendency to remain silent in the face of injustice. It exposes this moral paralysis by depicting urban middle-class residents who witness nightly sexual assaults but refuse to intervene. This paper examines Padmanabhan’s Lights Out using Bibb Latané and John Darley’s ‘Bystander Effect’ concept to reason out the societal reluctance to confront sexual abuse

Sexual abuse · Sexual assault · Sexual violence · Witness · Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South Asian Studies and Diaspora