such as her friend , Monika Ghurde , who the poem is dedicated to . Today , we read of too many girls attacked by men who betrayed their trust to twist innocence into pleasure , the ‘ strangers and swimming / coaches , and uncles , especially uncles ’, and we could never localise their evil to a place as small as one house . We cannot name these women witches , else we risk mythologising their suffering as we have seen for centuries , and blurring modern women ’ s individual pain , which we know the monolith is capable of .
Instead , witchcraft and poetry are only active tools for women to achieve agency of expression . Hélène Cixous argued that writing regifts women with their ‘ native strength ’, revealing their ‘ immense bodily territories which have been kept under seal ’. That Cixous discusses reclaiming sexuality immediately before this statement is