The Fragmented Interceptions of Law with Ethics and Body: A Reading of Jodi Picoult’s Handle with Care from a Psychoanalytic Perspective

J. Linus Jude¹, Dr. J. Praveena²

¹Ph.D. Scholar, Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai.

²Assistant Professor of English, Ethiraj College for Women, Chennai.

Abstract

Jodi Picoult’s Handle with Care is a novel that questions, challenges, and contests with uneasy interrogation of law, ethics, and the vulnerable body. It is an interrogation of the wrongful birth lawsuit that involves a child suffering from Osteogenesis Imperfecta. This article submits a psychoanalytic reading of Handle with Care. This is done in order to examine how the legal relationships affect logical reasonings. This article perceives how legal reasoning fragments, or even ruptures the intimate ethical relationships, that eventually intensify the psychological trauma, rather than resolving moral conflict. The researcher employs the concepts of Sigmund Freud to explore themes of guilt, repression, and maternal ambivalence. This article argues that Charlotte’s legal action is not merely a rational pursuit of justice or financial support, but significantly, an outward manifestation of the inner turmoil surrounding responsibility, fear and love. The courtroom hence becomes a figurative space in which these emotional and ethical tensions are enacted. This article thus examines the traumatised body as evidence constrained within the boundaries of the ethical corpus.

Keywords: Psychoanalytic reading, Ethical dilemma, Trauma, Ethical corpus, Interrogation.