“Love is Homesickness”: Nostalgia and the Fetishisation of the Female Body in Mae Bia

Abstract

Mae Bia (1987) is a popular novel with the central theme of root-searching by a male protagonist, Chanachon. The search takes him to the rural area of Supanburi province, where he meets Mekhala, the owner of a traditional Thai style house which happens to be Chanachon’s dream home. Their encounter marks the beginning of their story of forbidden desires that ends with the tragic death of Chanachon. The protagonist’s death could be interpreted as the result of his fatal attractions to Mekhala who like the femme fatale lures men to their death with the false promise of forbidden pleasures. However, I argue that what the author portrays through the death of Chanachon is the tragedy of a modern man who suffers from loss and trauma in modern capitalist society. The nostalgia for a lost paradise causes Chanachon to construct Makhala as an object of fetishistic desire. Trapped by his fantasy of unity and wholeness, Chanachon abandons the reality of modern world and reunites with his lost object of desire in death.