Feminism In Shashi Deshpande's That Long Silence

Indian women in this era are born at a time when there is much awareness about her rights, liberty to express her ideas, freedom to enjoy finance and the chance to stand for a cause. It is the view of the novelist that women generally bear the tyranny of men silently in Indian middle class families and if any of them come to suffer from some ailment, they are callously neglected and left to die unsung. The political scope of feminism has been broadened by the impact of Marxist ideology that has made feminists challenge sexism along with capitalism for both encouraged the patriarchal set-up. Shashi Deshpande 's women characters keeping in mind the various types and phases of the women characters expressed in her six novels are studied here and it tries to link these novels with the various phases of feminism. For this purpose it is necessary to have some discussion of feminism and feminist literature.

Shashi Deshpande has made bold attempts at giving a voice to the disappointments and frustrations of women despite her vehement denial of being a feminist. Shashi Deshpande has exposed the gross gender discrimination and its fall-out in a male dominated society in her first novel Roots and Shadows. In the novel, she depicts the agony and suffocation experienced by the protagonist Indu in a male-dominated and tradition bound society. That Long Silence, is not an imaginary story. It is a story that happens in every middle class and educated Indian woman’s life. This prospect is