International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

E-ISSN: 2582-2160     Impact Factor: 9.24

A Widely Indexed Open Access Peer Reviewed Multidisciplinary Bi-monthly Scholarly International Journal

Call for Paper Volume 7, Issue 3 (May-June 2025) Submit your research before last 3 days of June to publish your research paper in the issue of May-June.

A New Materialist Reading of House of Cards by Sudha Murthy

Author(s) Ms. APARNA V
Country India
Abstract Abstract:
The paper offers a New Materialist interpretation of Sudha Murthy’s House of Cards, examining how the novel stages the complex interplay between matter, agency and desire in the context of middle-class Indian domestic life. Drawing upon theoretical insights from Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Bill Brown and Rosi Braidotti, the study explores how material objects, infrastructures and nonhuman forces shape human emotions, ambitions and social relations. The illusion of happiness, as pursued by the novel’s protagonists, is revealed not as a self-contained psychological state but as an emergent product of entangled material-discursive forces. This analysis reframes Murthy’s narrative as a site of ontological and ethical inquiry, highlighting how matter acts not as passive backdrop but as an active participant in shaping subjectivities. The paper challenges reductive readings of House of Cards as a straightforward domestic or moral tale and instead positions it within a broader philosophical framework that reconsiders the politics of things, spaces and bodies in the construction of happiness.
Keywords New Materialism, Material Agency, Sudha Murthy, Domestic Space, Happiness and Subjectivity.
Field Arts
Published In Volume 7, Issue 3, May-June 2025
Published On 2025-05-08
DOI https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i03.44041
Short DOI https://doi.org/g9hsmp

Share this