Alienation In Jaya Kulkarni's That Long Silence Shashi Deshpande

They are left with nothing but a few belongings which they carry trekking back to India as the historian High Tinker puts, it, ‘it is a forgotten long march.’ Manju throws herself into a river, unable to bear the tragic death of Neel. The baby Jaya born to Neel and Manju, was brought up in Uma’s family with Rajkumar and Dolly were orphans in childhood and orphans in old age. Dolly, true to her Buddhist brought up, recedes to a Buddhist monastery after discovering Dinu and telling to join his father. Dinu rejects her request. Jaya grows up, marries early and loser her husband in an accident. She brings up her son by joining as Lecturer in a college. She sees the photo made by Dinu and enquires about him and the past is narrated to her. She also sees a photo of her great aunt, Uma in a garden against a colonial building. She enquires and finds that the place is Ratnagiri, much rooted in the mind of her elders. On the way to Bombay for a conference she drops in Ratnagiri and pursues the past. She was told about Dinu and how he might be living somewhere in Rangoon. She traces the path and finally finds him as a kind of cultural leader protesting against the dictatorship of General

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel, The Palace of Illusions is the epitome of feminism. It retells the story of Mahabharata from the view point of Draupadi, the daughter of King Drupad. The delicate threads of her life have beautifully been interwoven to bring forth a grasping story. Chitra Banerjee has herself written “I would uncover the story that lay invisible between the lines of the men’s exploits. Better still I would have her one of her tell it herself, with all her joys and doubts, her struggles and her triumphs, her heartbreaks, her achievements, the unique female way in which she sees her world and her place in it.”(XV).

The novel deals with the story of two very different worlds- an extremely orthodox and domineering Indian family and an unusually idiosyncratic family in Massachusetts. Uma, the protagonist of the first part of the book represents the attitude of the author. Through this woman character, Desai endeavours to expose the hypocrisy and male-chauvinism in a particular conservative society or family. She shows how Uma bears the brunt of many insults and abuse flung by her own

Anita Desai’s female characters are ‘highly sensitive and neurotic’. But they are failure and unwilling to adjust with the real world because they live in alienated society and separated from their surroundings. They find indifference in their ideas from others and try to understand their way of life.

On the day of wedding her name was changed from Jaya to “Suhasini”. Two contrary characteristics Jaya means victory and Suhasini means soft and smiling. Again Jaya is at the verge of remaining in silence without raising her voice. She adopted the strategy that silence and surrender should be the main trait of an Indian woman. The tips given by Vanitamami for a good wife became a foundation of Jaya’s silence married life. She accepted Mohan as a sheltering tree and satisfied with her role as Sita and even she compare herself with Gandhari. Silence becomes a symbol of patience and endurance. Her Ajji taught her to wait, the waiting game.

First, this novel showcases acts of caring for family and friends, during a rough time for all the Indians bringing them closer into one community. The protagonist Sabine displays acts of caring among her friends and family. For instance, near the end of the novel, Sabine helps her mother’s friend, Lalita, despite having a sour relationship with her. Sabine saves Lalita from being arrested by lying to a military officer, thus making Sabine a more confident and brave person. Sabine faces her fear of the military and gains the power she

Finally, Jayanti’s first exposure to the world outside her Aunt’s house and the events that lead after, changes who she really is,

The behavior of men towards women in a patriarchal society is described by Manju when she describes society in India by stating, “In Indian society stress is given to create female persona for different stages, docile daughters, chase and obedient wives and sacrificing mothers. The only domain ascribed to female is to fit in this good daughter, good wife and good mother criteria. Husband and wife are considered soul mates. But man assumes himself superior to woman, and he never tries to create emotional bonding with his wife, to understand her wishes or act according to her consent” (234). The rest of this paper will analyze the effects that male dominance had on the women.

Jayanthi subconsciously decided to follow the “bad girl” attitude because she wanted to control her own personal identity and not have it control herself. Specifically, she said “I’m liberating myself…I’ve been repressed for so long and I’m just going to let it out, I don’t care” (Bell, 34). Her identity would be created because she would feel that as Leslie Bell’s explained “…could feel herself to be different from these stereotypes” (Bell, 35). This demonstrates how Jayanthi created her personality as a rebel and went against her culture to form her own identity. Going against one’s culture is splitting in that it splits someones upbringing and a definition of who they are supposed to be by set by their families rules versus as an adult, what they get to decide as an individual. This split in her personality manifested depending on how she feels. Meaning, she could go from following her parents’ advice to vice versa depending upon her emotional status. Specifically, when she got confused, she would say “I need to settle down. I need to find a partner and I’m not seeing anybody now, so I better do it my parents’ way…” (Bell, 33). So depending on her emotional state that decided what type of personality, she had so when she felt like she didn’t have an identity, she acted as the “bad girl” in order to have that identity

Women characters, Aai, Vahini, Anjali and Ranju are shown at the receiving end. Hearth and child is what they have to look after. Prabha, the daughter in the family, is the tragic sufferer of male dominance. She is denied education because she is a woman. However, she rises as a rebel and rejects the proposal of marriages brought to her. She wants an educated husband; wants to learn; wishes to earn on her own. Prabha, thus, represents an urge of Indian woman for emancipation challenging the male orthodoxy. Her appeal to her mother in private arouses sympathy for her. She says, “Let me get out of here, Aai. This wada will devour me. I feel so stifled in this darkness. Let me go to Amravati” (Elkunchwar 56). Ranju is not allowed to go outside for taking her English tuitions because “Deshpande girls don’t run around to people’s houses” (Elkunchwar 32). Top of all, Aai is shown to have borne the brunt of patriarchy. First, her husband muted her voice; afterwards she became dependent on her sons. It refers to the very common situation for women in

Family construction in India is different. Dattani shows power of male dominant in the Indian society. Here in India, importance of male and female is different. Women’s place is in the kitchen and home affairs and men’s place is in the outside world. It means men are free to do whatever he likes. But women can’t do anything without permission of her husband. It means, Dattani shows discrimination of gender and construction of society. Gender discrimination is when people of either gender are treated unfairly within society because of their gender Dattani’s themes reflect and comment on the ordinary and everyday conflicts of so many urban people who may be living in transitional periods of history, caught between the firm under tow of tradition and

Lakshmi is a young girl that grew up in Nepal. She lost her father at a very young age and she and her mother begin to struggle. Her mother eventually married again, but her family still struggled. Lakshmi’s stepfather was no good because he had no job and all he did was bet at the coffee shop. Because Lakshmi’s family struggled, she was sent away to work as a “maid” and thought it would provide for her family. When Lakshmi realized what she would be doing for work, she hoped and prayed every day that she would soon be back home.

The culture in India has changed dramatically throughout the history of India. Women who were once put on pedestals, worshipped for their ‘Motherly” ways. Now they have a status that hardly holds them above the fine line, a line that decides if you hold your basic human rights or not. Women are a trade in this country. Young women, who are taking the foremost brunt of this brutality, are forced into marriages to uphold status in a community, raped, and stripped of their rights, this including education. With no respect for women in this country, it is easy to see how men would think that a women is a commodity, not a person.

So, naturally this contradiction needs to be reflected in her characters as well. Anita Nair portrays about the fragility of the modern Indian marriage and the overwhelming challenges of raising their children in a milieu. This is an ambitious layered novel.

The chief attraction for Virgil is of Jaya because she is the only person in that house capable of procreation and genuine emotion. There is a passing reference to a seer’s prediction that she would never become a mother. As prophecies are often equivocal, the curse on Jaya may be in fact indicative of her husband’s impotence. The illicit relationship with her brother-in-law must be seen as the manifestation of her irrepressible yearning to become a mother. Though her mother-in-law always finds fault with her sexual transgressions, she is the only character in the play who is true to herself. She desperately protests against the encroachment of colonial coercion and urban mechanization that enter in the form of the Guards and Agents. Her thirst for motherhood remains unquenched by the sham finger-play of her pitying brother-in-law. She is the only person who stands her ground in spite of the devious argumentations and warnings of Virgil. And she alone is fully conscious of the present condition: “It is not really a life any more. We’re just spare parts in someone else’s garage –” (34T).