Table of Content

Topic Page no

1 Introduction 2

2 Themes in Shashi Deshpande's Novels 8

3 Shashi Deshpande and her women Protagonists 12

4 Authentic Female characters 15

5 Conclusion 16

6 Reference 17

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Introduction:
A significant contribution to Indian fiction in English is said to have
issued from the hands of women writers who wrote what they experienced.
They basically dealt with female subjectivity, domestic space and personal
suffering. They did significantly succeed in experimenting with various
different things at times, making them all stand out in all respects, thanks to
their skill of storytelling and expressing the modern and traditional linkages in
the best possible way. Their fiction can be the expression of a different way of
looking at the world. Though several distinguished personalities have made
efforts for years to bring literature to its present status, today, women’s writing
is considered as a dominant and influential medium of modernism. The fiction
of novelists like Kamala Markandeya, Anita Desai, NayantaraSahahgal and
Shashi Deshpande has been widely noticed and acclaimed. The fiction of
Shashi Deshpande lays focus on her contribution to Indian English Literature.
Shashi Deshpande was extremely successful in forging her own identity,
leaving her imprint on domestic, detective, and children's fiction, with a focus
on the elements of adventure, mystery, excitement, and playfulness of children.
Her domestic novels are primarily concerned with middle – educated women,
their sufferings and problems in a patriarchal society, whereas her detective
novels deal with Moreover, generally speaking, Shashi Deshpande is one of the
notable Indian Woman Novelists, who brilliantly portrays the psychological
problems and mental traumas suffered by the female protagonists. Because her
novels out and out demonstrate the dilemmas of educated women, identity
crisis, inner struggle and distress, marital dissatisfaction and despair, thereby
revealing her awareness of contemporary reality. Having emerged as a great
literary force in the literary scene, Shashi Deshpande in her writings reflects a
realistic picture of contemporary middle-class women and most of the overt
themes of her novels

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are similar to those of recent European and American women’s fiction,
particularly in the
description of various stages of a woman’s life. One modern scholar of Indian
HatiniNafisca is correct when she says, “Women writers by name.”
“Shashi Deshpande has emerged as one of India's leading female writers,
attracting critical acclaim for her detailed, sensitive, and realistic portrayal of
Indian middle-class women in the domestic sphere” (P 196).
She was born and raised in Dharwar, a small but intellectually vibrant town
in northern Karnataka. Born as a daughter to the renowned dramatist and
Sanskrit scholar named AdyaRangacharya, known as the Bernard Shaw of
Kannada Theatre, Shashi had her early education in Dharwar and then went to
Bombay to graduate in Economics and then moved to Bangalore to obtain a
degree in Law. Her writing career began in earnest only at the beginning of the
1970s, with short stories published in various magazines. Her first collection of
short stories, The Legacy, published in 1972, was used as a text at Columbia
University for a course on Modern Indian Literature. The other short stories
are “It was dark”, “The Miracle” and “It was the Nightingale”. In addition, she
published notable novels such as 1. Roots and Shadows, the first novel to win
the Thirumathi Rangammal Prize for the best Indian novel published between
1982 and 1983.2. The Dark Holds No Terror, getting translated into German
and Russian 3.The Binding Vine 4.A Matter of Time 5. That Long Silence
(1988) comments on her own works as those that have had an impact on
women’s lives. Shashi Deshpande herself says:
I think over the years it has certainly made a difference. And I believe my
books have been very empowering for women, because more and more women
are coming to me and telling me how they felt liberated after reading them, and
I believe they say it gave them courage. And I also had a man who wrote me a
long letter saying that I never knew what women thought of me until

3
I read your books, hopefully. Certain avenues have been widened. “(Web
source)
Though a widely read person, well acquainted with other literary minds,
she does not wish to belong to any other group of writers, not even to the
Indian Writers in English writing. Nevertheless, to some extent, she was
somewhat influenced by such English writers as Margaret Drabble, Doris
Lessing, Eric Jones, the Bronte Sisters and Jane Austen. Writers such as Simon
'De'
Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf stimulated her writings and, at the same
time, she also enjoyed reading Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy. Her works
generally deal with the turmoil, convulsions, and frustrations of Indian women,
as well as their use of silence as a form of communication. Deeply rooted in
the culture in which she lives, she is gifted with the power of seeing ordinary
experiences, vividly rendering the ordinary with intelligence and insight, since
her fiction is female-centered, and feminine consciousness has become the
core theme of her novels. It is not too far off for this feminine to become
‘feminist’ but not a Marxist feminist or Lesbian feminist because her feminism
is peculiarly Indian in the sense that it is bound to the predicament of women
placed between two poles; tradition and Modernity, between family and
profession, between culture and nature, and she mixes “Humanism” and
“Feminism” in her fictional world.
Feminism has emerged as one of the most powerful social, cultural, and
political movements in contemporary North America, becoming a highly
important issue in contemporary thought and challenging male orthodoxies
about women's capacities and roles. The second wave of feminism came to
light in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Feminism emerged in the 1980s as a thought
system dedicated to the struggle for women's equality. In recent years, the
feminist goal of equality with men has undergone significant change

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of human subordination with the goal of figuring out how to change it,” writes
Linda Garden (sign 8).Feminist criticism emerged as a component of the
women's liberation movement criticism protested against the exclusion of
women and the movement provided the impetus. Elaine puts it this way:
“It was through the women's liberation movement that we began to draw
links between our own work and our own lives, to notice the disparities
between the identifications and ambitions that had drawn us, along with
thousands of other women, to the study and teaching of literature and the
limited and secondary rules granted to fictional heroines, women writers, and
female scholars, as feminism.”
The treatment of women in the feminist phase from 1918 took a new turn
for women. Since 1969, there have been many ways of being a feminist, but
what characterizes current feminism is its polarization of specific objects such
as the body, employment, voice and power. Men’s control over women's
thought domination, the relationship between men and women, sexual
discrimination, sexual harassment, writing of women, women’s financial
autonomy, and the female voice in all affairs are the common issues focused
upon in literature by the so-called feminists. As a critical tool, feminism is a
concept aiming at providing an altogether new awareness of women’s role in
the modern complex world and offering a fresh perspective for critical analysis
linking the study of literature with real life situations and context.
The sexual orientation partiality and the irresolute position of the Indian
lady have dependably been peculiar and stunning, helping us to remember the
circumstances in some silly dramatizations. On one hand, she is a Goddess,
Grih-Lakshmi, Durga, Saraswati, Kalyani and so on. Yet, then again, she is an
instrument of corruption and malice, a vamp, a toy for sexual satisfaction, an
entryway tangle or a housemaid. According to Jayant Mahapatra, in the dark
room, a lady can't see her reflection in the mirror: we are recounting women as
sages, researchers, and driving an autonomous life. Be that as it may, the
equivalent Vedic ages have also disclosed to us the stories of Sita's degrade

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outcast and Draupadi's stripping in a court loaded with sages, researchers and
warriors. Almost certainly, a minor change has occurred in her life, as a small
number of them have been given a life of numerous benefits, numerous
opportunities, and some respect. Here, I might want to cite Dr. A. N. Prasad's
perception: Since the Vedic age, women have been the subject of poisonous
remarks, but they are somewhat eulogistic as well. In the Vedas, the vast
majority of the psalms are ascribed to only children – never to girls. According
to the Atharva Veda, “the introduction of a young lady gives someone else a
child.”In the Koran, a lady is “portrayed as a fitna, one who entices a man and
brings inconvenience.” The Bible sees that God framed a lady out of the ribs of
a man. This resulted in an age-old divide between men and women. gloats and
boasts and attempts to rule and domineer over a lady simply because a lady has
come out of a man - she is one of the ribs of a man. In any case, depreciators of
the female sex mustn't delight in saying that worriedness is an intrinsic part of
a lady. They should remember that if women become cold and remorseless
from time to time, it is simply because they are made of ribs – the crookedness
part of a man's body.
Today, a lady isn't a doll in the hands of a man. She is seen developing her
identity in a variety of settings. Aside from numerous different fields, women
have likewise proclaimed awareness in the domain of literature. Kamala Mark
Andaya, Ruth PrawerJhabvala, SanthaRama Rau, Nay Antara Sahgal, Shashi
Deshpande, Anita Desai Geeta Mehta, Rama Mehta, Arundhati Roy, Shobha
De, Bharati Mukherjee, Mahasweta Devi, ManjuKapur and a lot more have left
their permanent engravings on the readers of Indian fiction in English.
In any case, the life of a regular Indian lady hasn't changed much. Taught
or uneducated, a working lady or a housewife, her status and position have
remained practically unaltered. She is as yet ruled by her dad, spouse and
children in turns, and she needs to move to their tune. Honor-killings in
Northern India clearly explain all the commotion surrounding the Woman's
Emancipation Movement. The Gender Divide continues to govern Indian

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culture – fo example, males will be males and females will be females. The
one has every one of the rights by birth; alternate gets whatever is conceded to
her. Anyway, before we get into the feminist methodology of Indian writers, it
would be helpful to do a quick review of the historical context of feminism in
literary circles.

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Themes in Shashi Deshpande’s Novels:
Deshpande's lady perceives her organic job yet instruction and
preparing coupled with affection marriage, happens when in doubt, and places
her into cumbersome circumstance of beginning a lifelong just to interrupt
with the appearance of parenthood. The frame of mind for parenthood,
wifehood, and marriage are the fundamental social organizations that make up
the life of a woman in India. According to Swami Vivekananda in 'Women of
India,' the ideal womanhood in India is motherhood, that wonderful, selfless,
all-suffering, consistently sympathetic mother. The spouse strolls behind the
shadow. “ 'I'. The Swami continues his message to the American women: “In
the west, the lady is a wife.” The point of each lady is to become a mother of
children to get respect from the family and from the general public also. “The
mother in the Indian convention is the supplier of gifts, the provider and
defender of life. She is an innovative and defensive goddess, to be regarded
and revered. “The goal of womanhood for a lady is to be a mother of a child.”
Deshpande continues her dedication to the endurance of the ladies in her
writing. She claims to be part of a group of people. “Shashi Deshpande's
novels delineate the anguish, misery, and strife of the advanced, teaching
Indian women to get into man-centered society and conventions from one
perspective and selfarticulation, distinction, and autonomy from the other,”
SumanBala writes. Shashi Deshpande highlights the optional position
occupied by women and their debasement, which is unavoidable in a
patriarchal society. The fundamental theme of her novels is 'human
connections', the lady standing up for herself as a lady, spouse or mother as
well as a person. The constant scan for self, and affirmation of it as a free,
incorporated identity inside the circle that can be called one's own, has been a
stubborn theme. Deshpande goes beyond a minor set of complaints; she
attacks the man-centric request on a broader philosophical level. Her novels
uncover the male overwhelming man-centric conventions and the enduring of

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the cutting-edge Indian lady, just like a piece of them. She utilizes this
perspective to introduce the social reality experienced by women.
In order to present the world of mothers, daughters, and spouses, she also
shows, in a roundabout way, fathers, children, and husbands, as well as the
relationship between people and women. Her “center's mission is to
investigate a common example of human encounters that adhere to the rigid
traditions of sexual orientation jobs. “Deshpande characterizes opportunities
for Indian women within the socio-social esteem framework and establishment
throughout her work. She introduced the Indian lady as confronting the
predicament of picking between customs and advancement.
The procedure of scanning for identity involves an extreme struggle
with custom, culture, innovation, expectations, and wants. All the ten novels of
Shashi Deshpande are connected with intermittent themes, the major one being
the mission of identity. Other minor supporting themes include: -Theme of
human connections, i.e. irritated man and lady, stressed mother and little girl
relationship, distance, depression, embarrassment, mental distress, and the
social theme with respect to male supremacy, and the inconvenience of
conventions, traditions, ceremonies causing turmoil, and assaults on the male
culture in general. The idea of parenthood brought about by the male confines
lady's mission for wholeness. Parenthood is compared with surrender, benefits
and unendingly being destroyed. Deshpande's novels have a strong thematic
and ideological coherence.
Shashi Despande’s female characters are “in-between women” who
fight for their own female psyches. Deshpande perceives the characters from
her own point of view. She places herself in their position to know and observe
them minutely. Their protagonists are “sensitive, self – conscious, brilliant and
creative. They revolt against the stereotyped roles given to them by society”
(Nikam15). Her themes, however, are universally applicable. All of these
novels have a common theme: 'human relationships. 'Not identical or
fictionalized things can be seen in her fiction, but perceived and felt human

9
relationships, such as the link between a mother and a girl, a father and a girl,
a husband and

10
a wife, and so on. In all, the central stage is occupied by women and,
significantly, the narration is shifted through her feminine consciousness. This
is more noticeable in the novels The Dark Has No Terrors, Roots and
Shadows, and That Long Silence. Deshpande’s strength lies in portraying the
uncertainties and doubts of women who cannot see themselves as heroic, but
who want to make life possible. She provides her own definition of a human
being's predicament, as follows:

“You keep going despite the pain, suffering, and humiliations.” Getting
involved in the human situation” (Roots and Shadows 120)

In Shashi Despande's fictional world, women represent ever-suffering,

selfeffecting, and selfsacrificing females; she is the ideal woman whose place
is with her husband. Whatever her suffering is, she dies without leaving her
husband, exemplifying typical Indian womanhood.

Roots and shadows explore rather neatly the inner struggle of Indians who
are very much in contact with society, dealing with critical problems like love,
sex, marriage, settlement and individuality. Dealing with a woman’s attempt to
assert her individuality and realize her freedom, it depicts how it brings her
into confrontation with her family, with the male world and with society in
general. In her feminist approach to life, Shashi Deshpande creates Indians. An
Indian comes back to her ancestral place to attend the funeral ceremony of
Akka, the old, rich family tyrant. The large family is on the threshold of
change, though everybody is unaware of it, and the key to their future lies in
the hands of India. India has been a determined girl who has always wanted to
be free and independent. But now she is confronted with a slew of questions
that have her perplexed and befuddled. She is unsure whether she has broken
the strange grip of family and tradition only to be dominated by love for her
husband, which she believes is not true love. She realized she had accepted
Jayant not for love, as she had previously believed, but to demonstrate to her
family that she was successful. She returns to her parents' house in search of

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the roots, but instea finds shadows. It becomes a time of reckoning for her. She
thinks about her own life, her career, her love, the traditional concept of
marriage, her own marriage based on love, etc., After illuminating interactions
with the varied personalities in her family, she works out their futures and also
her own future. She decides to go back to her own home.

Saru, the protagonist of The Dark Holds No Terror, is a modern woman

with her own needs and ambitions. She aspires to be economically
selfsufficient while also studying to compensate for a lack of support in her
life. Education invokes her consciousness and a desire for self – identity,
which was missing in the previous generation. She loves and wants to be
loved. With a very indispensable and normal wish, she, as a child, grows up
but never is not on the grounds of her being a female sufferer. Saru says that
“there is something in the male that is whittled down and ultimately destroyed
by female domination. Does the sword of domination become lethal only
when a woman holds it over a man” (P 77). Though it is a feminist affirmation
of women’s strength, it is also suggestive of the destructive nature of Women.
With a woman as the central figure, Shashi Deshpande probes into the
universally relevant issues of human relationships. Thus, The Dark Holds No
Terrors effectively brings out the psychological problems of a career woman.
Saru represents the middle class of working women in modern India. She tries
to escape reality, but she is forced to compromise with the existing reality. This
is largely due to the fact that she is passing through a transitional era. She is
slowly transforming herself into what we call today's “New Woman” who no
longer withstands suppression.

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Sashi Deshpande and her women Protagonists:
Shashi Deshpande has uncovered the novel and desolate state of Indian
women, whose rights as people are cut out by conventional society.
Conventional society anticipates that women should be vassals. In this manner,
their self-identity and uniqueness are constantly sidelined. Shashi Deshpande’s
feminism discusses the liberation of women, lawfully as well as socially as
well. Women are not going to recuperate from their denied state until the point
when they are socially recognized as people. Indeed, even financially
autonomous women discover their lives torn by conventionalism and
advancement. Being an Indian, Shashi Deshpande has carefully and piercingly
uncovered the Indian social framework and the regular standards intended for
its women.
She has portrayed advanced, educated, white-collar class Indian women
who need to find their identity while also reestablishing family ties. Every one
of her novels portrays female protagonists trapped in various complexities of
conjugal life and the connections they seek out. There is a determined
inclination for them to comprehend the maze of their lives in a powerful way.
Shashi Deshpande has depicted various types of women. Her initial novels had
tame, aloof, agreeable and feeble women, like Saru in the Dark Holds No
Terros, Sunitha, Cynthia, Shantha and Meera in If I Die Today. Shashi
Deshpande states about her female characters in a meeting with
VanamalaViswanatha: “My characters have their own specific manners. I've
heard it said that we need strong female characters. Be that as it may, my
writing has to do with women as they seem to be. A large portion of the
women I've known resemble that-their choices are made for them. Due to
being over secure, they are individuals who think one way and do another.
“(235). Shashi Deshpande highlights in her novels that cutting-edge women
are increasingly self-assured and sure, yet they can't free themselves from the
constraints related to every job doled out to them.
Deshpande is not a formal feminist, but her novel is both a genuine
feminine work and a potential feminist work. It is plainly the work of a lady

13
about the life of a lady in India. It is additionally an endeavor flashback to
psychoanalyze the lady, till she achieves the selfinformation important to
empower her to answer the inquiry the novel articulates. Numerous female
writers, for example, George Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, Doris
Lessing, Anitha Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Dalip Kaur Tiwana, Bharati
Mukherjee, Shobhaa De and numerous others, and a couple of male writers
like Thomas Hardy, Mulk Raj Anand and R.k. Narayan, in their numerous
writings, have dissected the female mind, the inward unrest of women, the
way of life and context-specific issues of women and have communicated the
requirement for a change in the age – old negative frame of mind of the
general public towards women.
Shashi Deshpande's novels are concerned with a woman's journey of self-
discovery; an investigation into the female mind and a comprehension of life's
and the protagonist's secrets. Shashi Deshpande's novels are concerned with a
woman's mission to herself; an investigation into the female mind and an
understanding of life's riddles and the protagonist's place in them. Shashi
Deshpande's first full-length novel is Roots and Shadows (1983). Indus, the
struggler, speaks to informed, working class women. The account of the novel
is about the struggle of the hero, who has a great number of hindrances to
overcome and accomplish opportunities. Being covered by a severe male- and
custom – bound society, she endeavors to investigate her internal identity to
affirm her uniqueness. “...As a dissident, Indus frequently wishes to be free
and excessive. In this way, she is introduced as a role model for women of a
more mature age.”
That Long Silence (1988) tells the story of Jaya, who takes on the role of
a spouse and mother despite her loss, and finds herself desolate and offended.
The hero understands that she has been out of line with herself and in her
profession as a writer. The journey to an authentic selfhood by the hero finds
an aesthetic articulation through her insubordination to the mancentric strength

14
in the general public. Jaya is an unsuccessful writer. Her inventive desire and
imaginative selfhood of the hero find a masterful articulation through he
resistance to the malecentric strength in the general public. Jaya is an
unsuccessful writer. Her innovative inclination and aesthetic enthusiasm free
her from her confined local and societal jobs. She took steps to declare her
distinction by ending that long silence on paper which she had suppressed for
a long time.

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Authentic Female characters:
Shashi Deshpande, on a basic level, is a pragmatist. She has made
authentic female characters— fragile living creatures and full-blood characters
with conspicuous qualifications. She exhibits a conceivable story of authentic
characters and not shadowy deliberations. She has confidence in showing life
for what it's worth and not as it ought to be. There are a number of Indian
novels that deal with women's issues. Be that as it may, the treatment is
regularly unfair and the novels wind up lauding the cliché ethics of the Indian
lady, similar to tolerance, commitment and servile acknowledgment of
whatever is distributed to her. The heroines of Shashi Deshpande are entirely
unexpected as they detonate the fantasy of man's superiority and the legend of
the lady being the paragon, all things considered. Each novel begins with an
individual. Female characters play an important role in her novels. She makes
living characters out of day-to-day life and cautiously abstains from making
wooden characters to satisfy her fantasies. The novelist exceeds expectations
in the depiction of female characters. Yet, she is against the character of
superwoman or glorifying them. She added to a questioner, “My characters
have their own distinct manners.”I've heard that we should have tough female
characters. Be that as it may, my writing has to do with women as they seem to
be. “Deshpande's female characters have a quality of their own, and,
regardless of the difficulties and threats, they remain uncrushed. Each
courageous woman in her novel rejects the customs that are the remnants of
the past. In their dismissal, they dispose of pointless customs like
circumambulating the tulsi plant. Both Indus (Roots and Shadows) and Saru
(The Dark Holds No Terror) decline to attempt such ceremonies, which are
intended to build up the life length of their spouses. The dismissal is a sign of
their self-governance and their ability to see their lives autonomously. She
advocates that a woman isn't only an aggregate of such capacities. She must
decide whether or not to live with her male partner based on her potential.

16
Conclusions:
Through her novels, Shashi Deshpande attempts to portray feminine
reasonableness. Women, like male counters, require freedom in all aspects of
their methodology and acknowledgment in life. They fight for equality in
women's rights on a broad and political scale. They emphasize the importance
of the general public's perception of women. Shashi Deshpande's novels depict
the current Indian women's search for these definitions of themselves and
society, as well as the fundamental relationships that women have. Shashi
Deshpande's novel arrangements are based on the theme of a female identity's
journey. The Indian lady has, for a considerable length of time, been a quiet
sufferer. While she has assumed diverse jobs as a spouse, mother, sister and
little girl, she has never possessed the capacity to guarantee her very own
independence. Shashi Deshpande's novels deal with women from the Indian
working class. She manages the internal universe of the Indian women in her
novels. She depicts her heroines in a practical way.
The above selection from one of the expositions by the creator herself
really depicts Shashi Deshpande, a name understood in literary circles for
portraying the quotidian life of a normal Indian woman. Deshpande is very
certain that for her discovering her own voice implied not a women's voice but
rather her very own literary voice. No enchantment of authenticity, no
concessions to “Attractiveness,” no themes or circumstances that cater to a
presumed western audience, no adjusting her style to what an objective
readership may prefer, without the demeanor of intriguing components
fermented in her style that are distinguished by the absence of flashiness or
literary completion. She'd spent the previous three decades quietly writing
about human pickles. She has achieved the synthesis between tradition and
modernity, bringing home the point that “Modernism is not a negation of
tradition; true modernism is only an enrichment of tradition, and an extension

17
of its frontiers” (Chand 99). In a word, Shashi Deshpande thus stands at the
crossing of the roads, caught between tradition and modernity.

REFERENES:
Deshpande Shashi, Roots and Shadows, Disha books, New Delhi: P-179
Orient Longman Ltd.
 Deshpande Shashi, That Long Silence: Penguin Books 1988.
 Deshpande Shashi, The Dark Holds No Terrors, Penguin, 1990.
 Deshpande Shashi, A Matter of Time. New Delhi: Penguin, 1996.
 Joshi.P.G, “A Study in women Empowerment and Post Colonial Discourse”
Shashi Deshpande‟s
 Fiction; Prestige Books, New Delhi, 2003.

Primary Sources:
Novels by Shashi Deshpande The Dark Holds no Terror: A Novel, New Delhi:
Penguin Books, Ltd. 1980
 If I Die Today, New Delhi: Penguin Books, Ltd. 1982
 Roots and Shadows, New Delhi: Penguin Books, Ltd. 1983
 Small Remedies, New Delhi: Penguin Books, Ltd. 2000
 Moving On, New Delhi: Penguin Books, Ltd. 2000

Secondary Sources:
Friedan , Betty, The Feminine Mystique, A Laurel Book: New York,
1984
 Jhabwala. Ruth Pawar, To Whom She Will, Great Britain: Penguin Books,
1958
 Pathak, R.S. (ed). The Fictions of Shashi Deshpande. New Delhi: Creative
Books, 1997

18
 Sebastian, Mrinalini. The Novels of Shashi Deshpande In Post Colonial
Arguments. New Delhi:
 Prestige Books, 2000 Tambe, Usha. “Shashi Deshpande as a Feminist and a
Novelist,” in Sarang and Bharucha (Ed)
 Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1994. Print. Bhabha, Homi. The Postcolonial
and the Postmosern: The Location of Culture. Oxford: Blackwell
 Publishers, P.168. Print

Web Site
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