Analysis Of Shashi Deshpande 's ' That Long Silence '

In “Surrounded by Sleep” by Akhil Sharma, Ajay has to deal with his new life after his brother Aman’s, accident. Ajay and his family’s lives revolve around Aman’s coma, uprooting their lives from New York to Virginia to be with him. In addition, a big part of their everyday routine is dedicated to Aman, such as constant prayers and visits. However, during a late night visit to Aman, Ajay is inspired by a musician on the television, who shouts at his fans to stop watching him and live their lives. This is a turning point for Ajay, as he realizes he has only been living for Aman, but wants his own life now.

Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande both are the feminist authors. The word Feminism means getting the same rights for women as enjoyed by men. This word originated from the latin word ‘femina’ meaning ‘woman’ that’s mainly focused on women’s rights, status and power at par with men on the grounds of equality of sexes. Feminism was a great movement fights for women’s equal rights. However, there is a difference between Indian feminism and Western feminism in terms of traditions and norms, culture and society, life and living styles. Indian Feminism never tried to change the overall system and never denies religion. It only demands social reformation, the equal treatment and respect,

The dominant idiom of Indian writing today is firmly entrenched in pain, anxiety of displacement, nostalgia, yearning to belong to roots, and so on. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss are two such novels that explore the tragedy of man on several levels using different perspectives. Both the novels are about averted culture-clash tragedies, homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, and about Indian sensibilities.

In the novels of Shashi Despande , Silence is the theme which can easily be felt by the readers throughout her novels. Breaking of silence by her protagonists in different ways makes their voice heard by everyone. So far as women’s work, speech,

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 especially 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

Transnationality is a theme not often brought up in the art world. Many feminist artists use transnational themes to convey their messages. Both Shirin Neshat and Mona Hatoum often show their transnational experiences through their art. Hatoum’s “Doormat II” and “Speechless” by Shirin Neshat convey the transnational experience in different ways but are in conversation with each other. Shirin Neshat plays with western stereotypes that have been thrust upon her by living in the United States. She illustrates the image of the “Muslim woman” and pokes and prods at the expectations of this intersectional persona. Mona Hatoum uses themes of home and borders in her works. These subjects convey her experiences of being a mestiza in a world that doesn’t understand that word.

Her heroines are sensitive, intelligent and career-oriented. Study of her novels reveals how poignantly, she expresses the frustration and disappointments of women who experience social and cultural oppression in the male-dominated society. Shashi Deshpande started her writing career all of a sudden. In her own terms: “There was really nothing. It was very strange. May be it was there waiting inside and suddenly at one moment, it came out. Until then, I was looking around to see what I could do. I was very unhappy not doing anything, just looking after the home and children. It was perhaps a kind of claustrophobic existence. I could feel something building up in me and that caused the outburst. Otherwise, it would have perhaps led to a breakdown.”(“Denying the otherness” II) Her novels are autobiographical in nature depicting her own experiences of the educated middle class Indian women’s predicament and they tend to be gender specific. That Long Silence is a saga of suppressed women prisoned in the room of silence. It is Jaya’s journey in search of one’s true self who confronts the gender oriented traditional

She has won Sahitya Akademi Award in 1990 for her famous novel That long Silence. Her novels include The Dark Holds no Terror (1980), If I Die Today (1982), Come Up and Be Dead (1983), Roots and Shadows (1983), A Matter of Time (1996) and so on. Her novel That Long Silence is the story of Jaya who all her life remained silent and at every stage tried to break through it and express herself. From her childhood she is forced to remain silent and remain submissive first to her father later to her husband. Deshpande used bounty of images to express the inner conflicts and thinking process of Jaya. She time and again tries to express herself. She contemplates; rationalize various situations in her life. The images used by Deshpande can be distinguished in various types but in this paper I have described them in three types on the basis of convenience. These are animate imagery, inanimate imagery and cultural imagery. In animate imagery the images of all living organisms are included. Jaya relates the idea of marriage to, “A pair of bullocks yoked together” (Deshpande 8). This is very apt and impressing image and can be interpreted in various manners. It may be interpreted that Jaya considers that they are forcefully attached to each other not by their own wish. They are imposed on each other in such a manner that they even can’t separate from each other, because that would cause them pain. Thus Jaya is keeping up

People may speak out words in life that may affect themselves and other after losing someone that was significant, which can connect to Indian and Pakistani literature. All parts of a struggle coming back to a character facing the past being alone in life can create emotions overall. Readers must comprehend that people in society today can relate to Indian and Pakistani literature where one feels alone. A reader who looks at Indian and Pakistani literature can understand that people with struggles in India or Pakistan countries can go through a lot with their emotional past. For the most part, the significance of Indian and Pakistani literature is to make a reader acknowledge how going through a tough situation can cause circumstances that get emotional for a character's self and others around them. In today's society, people may associate to this literature to distinguish a relationship with people being alone through the countries India and

In an attempt to defy her parents’ as well as society’s expectations, Jayanthi decided to find her ideal sense of reality by searching for her personal identity. Bell writes, “Jayanthi worked hard to give herself a history that differed from her family’s expectations …prior to her crazy time, she felt herself to be meeting all her parents’ expectations of a good Indian girl” (34).

Thus, to give voice to the suffocated psyche and suppressed desire of woman and lay bare ambitions and frustrations and soothe the aches and pains has been primary focus in Deshpande’s writing. Her works show that compromise is what characterizes the life of the common run of the middle-class women in India. Unable to defy social conventions or traditional morality,

His mother’s silence meant different for Mohan and he regarded it as virtuous and symbol of strength but for Jaya her silence means suffering and despair. The silent suffering of Mohan’s sister, Vimala because of ovarian tumour gives a different meaning to silence. More than her husband her mother-in-law exploited her for this. She has to bear all and at last died.

The paper, titled ‘Revelation of Psychic Wholeness in Shobha De’s Sultry Days’ discusses the powerful site of rebellion and self- assertion in Shobha De’s Sultry Days(1994). The protagonist Nisha is transformed from the ingénue of submissive woman into a thriving complex character by asserting and establishing psychic wholeness. The novel apart from throwing light on the world of advertising, journalism, glamour encased in the hollowness, artificiality and inner fragmentation of the upper class society, also focuses on Nisha’s voyage towards self-realization. The novel also attempts to propagate that female subjectivity can resist male injustice and is capable of sustenance by facing it confidently eventually evolving triumphant.

Kapur has explored the agony of a woman under patriarchal pressure and state of social ostracism. In their search for individual identity, the women characters prove themselves as real women of flesh and blood who have their own emotions and sentiments and urge for new identity in the life. The novelist explores their yearning for intellectual space in the traditional society. Kapur’s novels reveal disintegration in woman’s life, her struggle for basic rights and quest for identity and survival. She portrays how women are suffering from economic and socio-cultural lacunas in the male governed society. They have been still deprived for their basic rights, their aspirations to their search of individuality and self-reliance.

Indian novelist and short story writer, Anita Desai is specially noted for her insightful depiction of the inner life of the female characters in her writings. In most of her novels Anita Desai dwells on the themes incongruity, incertitude and hazards of human relationship particularly the man-woman relationship. D.H. Lawrence points out: