Silence In English Literature

Writing by women has given another measurement to the Indian writing. In the twentieth century, women’s writing has been viewed as an intense medium of modernism and feminist statements. The last two decades have witnessed phenomenal success in feminist writings of Indian English literature. Women writers comprise a sizeable portion of Indo-English writers. They introduce the age-old issues of Indian womanhood. As Indo-English writing has ingested the new patterns from the western literature, its hypothetical establishment reaches between Greco-Roman speculations of writing and Marxist, existentialist, psycho-explanatory and other cutting edge developments on the world literature. The English language has given the most direct access to the

The neglected women as characters in their novel attempt for better way of life mentally and physically. Today’s Novels act as a mirror reflecting the protest and the outburst of the suppressed feelings of women which has never been taken care for ages. Shashi Despande’s novel That Long Silence begins with the sentence “To achieve anything, you’ve got to be ruthless.” Despande 's That Long Silence revolves around the ongoing problems and predicament of the middle class house hold. Her writings are like case studies of women full of reality. Her women are real flesh and blood characters from whom one cannot take one’s eyes of. One can visualize with clarity, the struggle and trauma they go through in their relationships pertaining to their surroundings, their society, their families, their children and especially with their men. In That Long Silence Despande has depicted the Character of Jaya as an educated typical middle class house wife with lots of love and affection for her children who is dutiful and respectful to her husband and in-laws but neglected when it comes to her feelings and emotions. Her sincerity, honesty and dedication are not recognized by anyone who ultimately sinks her into silence. Her silence is symbolic to most women in the world who are unable to express themselves as an individual. This silence gives her way to search for Identity. She says, “Worse than anything else had been the boredom of the unchanging pattern, the unending monotony"(p.4). She desperately wanted a change and fought for it. Shashi Deshpande is well known for creating her heroine characters as contemporary. Her female heroines portrayed as wounded to the predominant gross of gender discrimination, right from the childhood to the later part