That Long Silence Summary

Silence is an important aspect in women’s writings. It is considered a form or mode of resistance. However, sometimes this excessive silence takes the form of cowardice. The meaning of it is interpreted in terms of the mentality of the person against whom it is casted. ShashiDeshpande’s novel That Long Silence is the understanding of woman’s silence and its suffocation. Jaya internalizes silence as the heritage of her culture. But it continuously sickens her soul. Throughout the novel she tries to calculate the gain and loss of being silent and eventually finds that she always hides her faults behind her relations and responsibilities. Her growing dissatisfaction comes to an end with the sermon of Lord Krishna who gives freedom to every individual to do as they desire. It is the tale of every woman living in a patriarchal setup. This paper tries to illuminate the impact of silence in Indian women’s life and Jaya’s overcoming of it. The study tries to understand what makes a woman to stay silent and what eventually forces her speak up.

Keywords: Silence, Women,

The book is not a simple piece of fiction but has its grounding in the current panorama of Indian society. In her novels, “ShashiDesphande studies the issues and problems of contemporary middle class women. Her heroines are sensitive, intelligent and career-oriented” (Thirunavukkarasu).In today’s middle class families almost every girl is educated and is aware of her rights and duties. However, the question is that what is it which stops a well-educated and learned woman to assert herself? Why a woman has to think a million time before speaking out? And how women should go about it? Thus, “that Long Silence is not an imaginary story. It is a story that happens in every middle class and educated Indian woman’s life”