Shashi Deshpande's Novels

WOMEN’S CHAIN HAVE BEEN FORGED BY MEN, NOT BY ANATOMY-SHASHI DESHPANDE’S CHARACTER SARITA IN THE DARK HOLDS NO TERRORS

ABSTRACT

Shashi Deshpande is one of the famous contemporary Indian novelists in English. She writes about the conflict between tradition and modernity in relation to women in middle class society. Shashi Deshpande’s novel deals with the theme of the quest for a female identity. The complexities of man-woman relationship specially in the context of marriage, the trauma of a disturbed adolescence. The Indian woman has for years been a silent sufferer. While she has played different roles-as a wife, mother, sister and daughter, she has never been able to claim her own individuality. Shashi Deshpande has emerged as a writer possessing deep insight into the female psyche. Focusing on the marital relation she seeks to expose the tradition by which a woman is trained to play her subservient role in the family. Her novels reveal the man-made patriarchal traditions and uneasiness of the modern Indian woman in being a part of them. Shashi

I was doing it, throughout in the first. But that’s often a perspective I use in short stories – I wanted to be more objective. So, then I did it in the third. But it wouldn’t work at all, yet I really need not distance myself from the narrative in the present, otherwise it was going to be far too intense. And then I read an American novel by Lisa Alther where she uses this method. And the minute I came across her novel I thought let me admit it freely – Oh god, this is how I am going to do my novel (Prasad 111).

Thus, Deshpande succeeds in the portrayal of Sarita’s mental state with remarkable objectivity. Besides, her art lies amalgamating the past with the present seamlessly through dreams, nightmares, flashback, reminiscences and the simple third person