Th That Long Silence By Shashi Deshpande

This paper attempts to examine the fictional projections of Indian girls, to see how they emerge in ideological terms. Their journeys from self-alienation to self-adjustment, their childhood struggles against the hypocrisies and monstrosities of the grown-up world, eventually demolishing the unjust male constructed citadels of power that hinder their progress- are the highlighted issues. The point of comparison between the two novels focused on here is the journey of Rahel in The God of Small Things and Sai in The Inheritance from a lonely childhood to a tragic adulthood passing through a struggle with the complex forces of patriarchal society. Both the novels portray the imaginativeness, inventiveness, independence, rebelliousness, wide-eyed wonder and innocence associated with these young girls.

Deshpande's concern and sympathy are primarily for the woman in whatever circumstances she might be placed or whatever role in the society she might be playing. While revealing the woman's struggle to secure self-respect and self-identity for herself through her protagonists, the author subtly unravels the multiple levels of oppression, including sexual oppression experienced by women in our society thus creating a new social awareness. This stance of Deshpande makes her a potential feminist writer creating a woman's world with loving, care and a soothing touch depicting the nuances of her consciousness while advocating her liberation from the meticulously concocted web of imposed socio-cultural orders that have existed over centuries. From

Using the elements of fiction and truth a mass amount can be gained from understanding how women fit in with the government/patriarchy. From novels comparably, A Passage to India and A Handmaid’s Tale, these two reflect different times: a realistic time of Indian Imperialism and a Utopian fantasy that could indubitably become the future of tomorrow. How do they correspond with the role of women? Both either represent or differ from the true, unseen representation of women amongst the power of the elite, against the suppressors of the minority, and the

Kamala Markandaya published “Nectar in a Sieve” in 1954 in attempts to enlighten the world about how hard it was to live a rural Indian life in that time period. She tells this story through Rukmani, a woman who was given away in marriage at the age of twelve to a poor tenant farmer that she had never met. Rukmani is very obedient to her husband as she helps him work in the unyielding fields and is a wonderful, caring mother to her seven children. The struggles that Markandaya highlights in her book are not only problems known to a peasant villager, but they are also specific to women. Women’s roles in India during the twentieth century is very different from women’s roles in the United States at that time, and because Rukmani was a woman, she played a silent but necessary part in her culture.

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

Many women face discrimination throughout all stages of their life, beginning at (or even before) birth continuing as an infant, child, adolescent, and adult. While in the educated, urban middle class women’s rights continue to improve, there remains a strong bias against gender equality in those societal parts of India, where patriarchal traditions prevail; her self-image was torn into shreds by the patriarchal family which denied her basic freedom. Indian womanhood was mercilessly locked in the echo

Anita Desai undoubtedly holds a prominent position among the Contemporary writers of Indo –Anglican fiction. She is a bold and experimental Novelist with a new sense and vibrant richness. Much attention is given to the emotional crisis of her protagonists who live in a chaotic society. She delves deep to find out the factors responsible for such a despair and attempts to suggest solutions to overcome it. From her novels, it is clear that she, possesses one of the healthiest and psychologically most balanced minds in the realm of Indo – Anglican fiction and the sanity of her tastes and attitudes, is almost exemplary, a point worth emulation for her fellow religionists in the field of writing. As a woman writer she does not profess to be a feminist and yet she voices the fears and concerns, the hopes and aspirations of her characters in her own artistic way. She is deeply fascinated in exploring the social structure through the central characters in her novels. She is a minute observer of the society existing around her, perceiving everything minutely and delicately so that the situations can be presented in a poetic style.

Unlike other women novelists, Anita Desai concentrates on the exploration of sensibility, that too feminine sensibility by probing deep into the inner life of a woman. Desai reigns supreme in her fictional world by focusing attention towards “the quest inward” and concentrating on the still grimmer and more harrowing presentation of Indian life. In fact all her characters are sensitive, solitary and hyper- introspective. Her fiction balances itself delicately on the fringes between things and awareness of things, between chaos and order of mind. Her primary interest lies in exploring the disturbed depths of the female psyche. . The most prominent feature of her fiction is her mode of individualizing the character. She is preoccupied primarily with the portrayal of women protagonists as living in a

Anita Desai is recognized as the first Indian author writing in English who delineates feminist themes seriously, focusing on the conditions of women in India. The conflict of her characters is noted to be as one, between reason and instinct, the will and reality, involvement and detachment. She is deep rootedin her native culture that is evident from herthemes, style, landscape, images and of course, in her successful experimentation with English novel. Her novels raise many issues of universal relevance and its beauty lies in the fact that it can be interpreted from various angles.

Shashi Despande is an Indian women novelist who is famous for her novels portraying the piteous plight and presentation of women under the patriarchal domination. She believes that men and women are the two wheels of the same chariot. She has depicted women in many roles like mother, wife, daughter, and an individual. Like typical new women Despande’s protagonists are modern, educated and career oriented middle class women who are sensitive to the changing scenario and are in search for their roots and identity. They fight against the traditional convention of slavery and suppression. Being the archetypal of the new generation of self-accomplished women, they come out with new ways of handling their problems, rather than running away from them, they realize that the solution lie within themselves. She creates new spaces within the old discourses thereby recreating new worlds in which women are no longer

The present article depicted how far Githa Hariharan had succeeded in picturizing the concept of womanhood and describing the relevance of this concept in the modern Indian society. It attempted to delineate how women dealt with the sanction of space in Indian society. Her novels presented the efforts of patriarchy on women of different social classes and ages particularly the varied responses to the restrictive institution of marriage especially in The Thousand Faces of Night. Through her novels Hariharan contrasted the role and position of women in our society. Gita Hariharan delineated the concepts of woman in a traditional society and the responsibilities and services expected from women.

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

Anita Desai stands apart from other female Indian writers due to her involvement with the life of young men and women in Indian cities. She discards all social concerns and asserts that she is interested in individual and not in social issues. She is concerned with psychic life of her characters. Her concern is the ‘why’ and the wherefore of the external action rather than the action itself. Her forte is the exploration of mind and soul and not the body. While dealing with the psychic problems of her characters, she finds longing her freedom in them. Desai stands apart from other women novelists for she throws light on the inner mental conflict which her characters undergo. Narrating the mental agony

As an artist Kamala Markandaya’s fiction is concerned with change in feminine sensibility brought about by the social, economic and cultural forces, whereas Anita Desai’s major concern is about exploration of the psychological condition of the oppressed hyper-sensitive women. The synoptic views of Anita Desai and Kamala Markandaya’s portray the women protagonists in terms of the shifting sensibilities and changing attitudes of married Indian women. It also tries to analyze the portrayal of women characters that belong to rural and urban upper classes of Indian society. As an artist Kamala Markandaya’s fiction is concerned with

People are neither inferior nor superior and should have the freedom to express their authentic selves without fear of being negatively judged.These rules are violated only when powerful elite believe that they can rule over the masses. 1984 is a work of fiction, providing a stark view of the thriving culture of totalitarianism, symbolizing as a reflection of modern fact in the USA and the world today. The Freedom of Speech has become so restricted that the only one source of news is operated by the governing body; whereas Kamala Markandaya writes about changing economic and political situations in her country, her novel which was published in 1954 - seven years after India gained its independence from the British Imperialism. Industrial revolution lured Indians away from their traditional roles to participate in the new economy. She emphasis on issues like the importance of Freedom of Rights alongside the importance of goodness and spirituality.The poor suffer at the hands of the strong but some of them understand that knowledge is a powerful tool for change, and redefine the dishonor, repudiates their caste and crosses their skin color difference. In both novels, people struggle for their rights. Whether it’s a patriarchal society in which the right to property and right to make important decisions rests with the eldest male members of the society as in Nectar in a Sieve or in 1984 where woman are defined in a role of nurturer, procreate and espionage. Although 1984