Chapter 1

Introduction

Indian writing in English, like other new literatures of the world in English, was

the outcome of national unrest. Indian novel in English is gaining ground and has

acquired a special significance in the global context. Indian writers in English have made a

remarkable contribution to fiction. Fiction has become the medium of presenting Indian

culture and thoughts to the world. Indian writing in English has now gained international

repute and standards by the galaxy of Indian writers. Fiction became a powerful form of

literary expression and has acquired a prestigious position in the Indo-English literature.

English language came to India at a time when Indians were prepared to try anything

that helped them explore new realms of thought and adopt new ways of expression. The new

vistas which English education opened to the Indians made them restless. There was a

wave of enthusiasm all around. The Renaissance that followed had a profound impact on

the Indians. The study of English language and literature, to a considerable extent,

revolutionized the thought process of the educated Indians and subsequently changed not only

their outlook on life but also their basic approach to life. Two significant developments took

place in the awake of the Indian Renaissance. First, the emergence of a middle class and

secondly the introduction of new literary forms like the Novel, the Short Story and the

One-act Play to the Indians.

Literature is an embodiment of man’s feelings, thoughts and experiences shaped

into an aesthetic form. It is an expression of society using language as its medium. All over

the world, at all times most of the writers were concerned with the problems of men.
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One of the greatest values of literature is its capacity to acquaint man with the forces

which motivate him to locate his place in the society and ultimately in the universe.

Human feelings, ideas, passions, experiences, joys, sorrows, aspirations and struggles

form the core of all arts and more particularly of literary art. Literature is one of the

infinite expressions of any society or culture, and its varied aspects of life are mirrored in

the works of the writers. India, which is marching ahead in divergent fields, has also seen

the flowering of literary genius.

The Indian writers in English have acquired great significance in recent years.

In the post-independence era, a number of Indian writers have successfully used English

as a medium of expression and have made a great contribution. Indo-Anglican fiction is

totally Indian in theme and treatment, its message being essentially Indian. English is being

used with greater dexterity and has undoubtedly become a powerful instrument for the

delineation and probing of psychological problems and status of mind. Many writers of

fiction have broken fresh grounds and have some compelling close critical examination.

The novel is considered to be the most socially oriented because it depicts human society

in its varied aspects of struggle, chaos and anarchy. Diana T. Lawrenson and

Alan Swingewood in The Sociology of Literature observe:

Thus the novel as the major literary genre of industrial society, can seen

as a faithful attempt to recreate the social world of man’s relation with his

family, with politics, with the state: it delineates too his roles within the

family and other institutions, the conflicts and tensions between groups

and social classes. (97)

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Novels are the art of values and feelings. They reflect the changes occurring in

society and the kind in which individuals become accustomed to the social system.

Martin Price comments:

The purpose of the novel is to reveal life under a certain aspect, to shape it so

as to make sense of a roughly formidable kind-the formulation is its theme.

To do this the writer creates a model, a small scale structure whose

proportions or relationships have some analogy with the realities we

know. (131)

Thus, the novelist penetrated into the life of the people to reproduce it in a novelist

structure, thereby exposing the inner as well as the outer layers. The novel, as a medium

of story-telling and art form, is essentially of the west and represents a tradition that is

totally different from Indian tradition of story-telling. To quote V.S. Naipaul:

The novel is of the west. It is the part of that western concern with the

condition of men, a response to the here and now (…). In India thoughtful

men have preferred to turn their backs on the here and now and to satisfy

what Dr. Radhakrishnan calls “the basic human hunger for the unseen.”

It is not a good qualification for the writing or reading of the novel (…).

It is the part of the mimicry of the west, the Indian self-violation. (221)

The appearance of the novel as a literary form in 19th century India was a social

phenomenon and was associated with social, political and economic conditions. Social

reforms such as abolition of Sati, and prohibition of throwing a child into sea at the

mouth of Ganga in fulfillment of religious vows and infanticide were accepted readily by

the Indian society, despite of these protests from orthodox sections, the moral support
 4

they received from influential Indian personalities like Raja Ram Mohan Roy. India

was also cured by the superstitious ideas and there was a radical transformation in her

religious ideas as well. English education was responsible for the afore-mentioned

transformations. English education became the only passport to higher appointments.

Western education opened the floodgates of western ideas. Raja Ram Mohan Roy with

his liberal and creative use of English expressions ushered in a new era of English

literature.

Some of the writers have taken the craft of fiction seriously and have shown

a good grasp of Indian literary conventions and great concern for the transmission of

genuine Indian thought and feelings. The Indian epics and Upanishads have exerted

considerable influence on the Indian writers of English. Indian women writers have given

a new dimension to the Indian literature. Indian English fiction has developed over a

period of time, and writing in English did not start in a day. It took many years and

several distinguished personalities to bring the present status and distinction to Indian

English Literature. Before the rise of novels, several women writers composed Songs,

Short Stories and Small Plays. It is still believed that women are the upholders of the rich

Indian tradition of fables, storytelling and more.

Fiction writers of thirties wrote about the ordeal of the freedom struggle, East-west

relationship, the communal problems and the plight of the untouchables, the landless

poor, the downtrodden, the economically exploited and the oppressed. Makarand R.

Paranjape says:

The early novelists used their works to promote social reform. They espoused

several liberal causes, campaigning for the education of women, the

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upliftment of depressed classes, widow-remarriage and against

child-marriage, dowry, superstition, Sati and untouchability to list a

few examples. (214)

Novels written before thirties were connected to religious aestheticism. Then the

focus shifted to contemporary socio-political concern. Spiritual and social awareness was

slowly giving place to political consciousness. The intellectuals, philosophers, historians

and literary artists have traditionally played significant roles in all national revolutions of

the world. They reached the mind through their writings. Novelists were most responsive

to the call of equality, freedom and human rights. The literary artists have natural quality

and ability to look beyond their time. A number of novels written during the period portrayed

the British rule and the plight of the people who were determined to get rid of it. Politics

became synonymous with nationalism. Creative writers like Romesh Chander Dutt, Bankim

Chandra, Sri Aurobindo, K.S.Venkataramani, Bharathi Sarabhai, Mulk Raj Anand and

Raja Rao were the champions of the nationalist cause and spokesmen of the natural

culture. K.S.Ramamurthi observes:

Political urgency, reformistic motivation, journalistic impulse and creative

imagination seem to have criss-crossed in the speeches and writings of

the leaders like Surendhranath Banerjee, Gopalakrishna Gokhale,

V.S. Srinivasa Sastry, Sarojini Naidu and Jawaharlal Nehru and created

patterns of writings which carry with them an unmistakable literary

quality. (52)

Naturally, the Indian English novelists were bound to give creative expression

of the new political and social aspirations of the people. The novels that dealt with the
 6

freedom struggle, gave true pictures of the exploitation, the arrogance of the foreign rulers

and the portrayal of an awakened people struggling for their rebirth. The growth of the

historical novel coincided with the ideas of the struggle for Indian freedom after the First

World War. The historical novel popularized by Walter Scott, enjoyed much popularity

in the nineteenth century.

In the mid-nineteenth century, more women started to write in the English language.

With the passage of time, English literature has witnessed changes in the writing patterns.

Indian women novelists have incorporated the recurring female experiences in their writings

and it affected the cultural and language patterns of Indian literature. They have brought a

stylized pattern in the whole context of Indian writing. The first novel in India made its

appearance in Bengali and then in a number of other Indian languages and in English.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1864) established novel as a major literary form in India.

He was the first Indian to write a novel in English. Raj Mohan’s Wife was his first and last

novel in English.

With the advent of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the stage had been set for the

emergence of novel as a form of literary expression in India. Srinivasa Iyengar states, “It was

in Bengal that the ‘literary expression’ first manifested itself” (315). Referring to other

novelists like Sarobji and S.B.Banerjee, M.E. Derret observes, “Others who imitated

English forms and expressions admirably could not convey through them the Indian modes

of thought and feeling, so that their works lacked the necessary depth and sincerity and

were imitations” (89). Bankim Chandra Chatterjee filled the foreign mould with Indian

context and legitimately earned the name of “The Father of The Novel” in India. His novel

played a vital role in quickening the literary renaissance all over the country. Krishna Kripalani
 7

has summed up Bankim’s contribution thus, “It was Bankim Chandra who established the

novel as a major literary form in India. He had his limitations. He was romantic, effusive

and…he indulged a little too free in literary flashes and bombast and was no peer of his

great contemporaries Zola and Dickens and much of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky” (31).

The freedom struggle resulted in the revolutionary brand of writing that voiced

sentiments against the British Empire. Several political leaders from different parts of the

country emerged as literary figures such as Bala Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpath Rai,

Kasturi Ranga Iyengar and T. Prakasham. The English language became a sharp and

strong instrument in the hands of Gandhiji, who edited and wrote for papers like ‘Young

India’ and ‘Harijan’. He also wrote his autobiography, ‘My Experiments with Truth’,

which was known for its literary flair. Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) stands out as another

prominent leader who excelled in writing prose. He was particularly remembered for his

Glimpses of World History and Discovery of India. Gandhiji, Nehru and Rajaji proved

through their writings that effective thoughts, even though they changed the destiny of a

nation could be expressed in a simple style. Their prose writings have been landmarks to

reveal the strength of Indian English writing. Tagore, Aurobindo and a host of others

wrote for humanity in general.

K.S.Venkataramani’s Kandan the Patriot (1932) and Murugan the Tiller (1927) are

novels full of politics. Strong echoes of these novels were written by Mulk Raj Anand

and Raja Rao. Anand’s novel occupied the forestage and the Indian novel replaced poetry

as an expression of Indian life and culture. After Anand and Raja Rao, the most significant

talent of R.K.Narayan emerged. After Narayan came Govind Desai, Kushwant Singh and

Manohar Malgonkar. The afore-mentioned social reforms had brought about

 8

emancipation of Indian women and the emergence of women writing in English. Indian

women had to be content with playing only a subordinate role in the social life of the

country. The advent of English education had cast its impact on the status of women in

Indian society. The battle for emancipation which was initiated by western education was

taken over by a few educated women who turned writers in their attempt to lay bare their

own bitter experiences to the world. It is only after the Second World War that women

novelists of quality have begun to emerge.

Rabindranath Tagore has also written novels and it dealt with the minds of the

individuals. His novels mostly were psychological. Again, V.S. Naipaul of Indian origin

has brought glory to the country by winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 2002. Since

1981, the Indian novelists have achieved great success with Salman Rushdie receiving

the “Booker Prize” for his work, Midnight’s Children. This Booker Prize was founded in

1969 in order to rescue the literary novel from feared extinction. R.K.Narayan’s Swami

and Friends (1935) struck a totally different note catching bemusedly the slow pace of

life in Malgudi, a fictional microcosm of India. The Bachelor of Arts is an early novel,

which explored the darker areas of human experience. The Financial Expert incorporated

the order-disorder rhythm perceived ironically even though a note of tragedy lingers.

R.K.Narayan’s comic vision projects in The Guide the attainment of self-knowledge

through diverse misadventures.

Mulk Raj Anand, one of the triumvirates of the established Indian writers, draws

characters from the everyday experiences and presents them as they are. The individual’s

search for identity is the central preoccupation of Mulk Raj Anand in most of his novels.

He believed that man can emerge from the breakdown, the disruption and the decay.
 9

Raja Rao is one of the most talented and innovative Indian-English novelists. He was

specialized in handling the abstract themes and tense situations. He has given full scope

to his characters to establish their identities as social beings and as typical members of

Indian society by involving them in actions, situations and experiences, which are valid

in the Indian context.

Bhabani Bhattacharya, presents a very idealistic portrait of female characters in

his novels. His admiration for Indian women is very high and he keeps them on equal

footing with his male characters. They are not mere fiddles to their male counterparts, but

they are fully independent, self-sufficient, have free spirit and are aware of their rights

and responsibilities. Krishna Kripalani has observed this situation thus:

It was both moral and intellectual and at once inhibitive and liberating.

In so far as it sharpened the writer’s loyalties by narrowing them and

encouraged Puritanism and a horror of sex it was inhibitive and unhealthy

and resulted without meaning to, in an irritating sanctimoniousness.

Gandhi stripped urban life elegance of their pretensions and emphasised

that religion without compassion and cultures without conscience were

worthless. He transfigured the image of India and turned national idealism

from its futile adulation of the past to face the reality of India as she was

poor, starving and helpless but with an untapped potential of unlimited

possibilities. (79)

Literature written at the time of the freedom movement projects a new image of

the Indian woman. The most significant development in the history of Indo-Anglian

literature of the post-Independence period was the emergence of a powerful group of

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women writers. From time to time Indian women novelists in English had discussed the

problems of women. They developed a style and technique of their own. Each writer was

different from another in individual perception, experience and response to the world

around them. All these are displayed by the wide variety of characters portrayed by them

in their novels. Spiritual, mental and psychological alienation has become a powerful

theme for many writers. The vast canvas of the theme helped many Indo-Anglian novelists to

explore the many aspects of the inner life. It soon became a recurring theme, especially

with young writers. Indra Kulshreshtha observes, “After centuries of social stagnation,

the Indian woman was now encouraged to come back to the main stream of social life

and resume her rightful place” (95). The growth of Indian women novelists writing in

English added a new dimension to Indian English novel. It was only after independence

of India that they began enriching Indian English fiction. Usha Bande says:

Liberation, discrimination and injustice are no doubt, some of the

significant issues tackled by women writers but it would be unfair to judge

their writings as regressive or stagnant. A woman may not have written

about actual action in battle, but she has not been blind to its horrors in

writing about her times. She has very often dipped her pen in tears or

blood and recorded her own impressions and experiences. (19)

All women writers are not feminist writers. They wrote about women issues

because, being women, they understood the problems of women which they projected in

their works. Amarnath Prasad says, “Indian women novelists in English and in other

vernaculars try their best to deal with, apart from many other things, the pathetic plight of

forsaken women, who are fated to suffer from birth to death”(2). In Indian society the
 11

ideal woman is personified by Sita who was portrayed in The Ramayana as the quintessence

of wifely devotion. This image of woman has loomed large in the Indian psyche and

women consciously or unconsciously had moulded themselves to conform to this image.

Raja Rao gave a holistic picture of woman in The Serpent and the Rope:

Woman is the earth, air, ether, sound; woman is the microcosm of the

mind…. The knowing is Knowledge; woman is fire movement, clear and

rapid as the mountain stream….To Mitra, she is varuna, to Indra, she is

Agni, to Rama, she is Sita; to Krishna, She is Radha. Woman is the

meaning of the word, the breath, touch, act….woman is the kingdom,

solitude, time, woman is growth, woman is death….woman rules, for it is

she, the universe. (357)

As centuries went by, no voice was raised against the indignities heaped on women

in the male- dominated society. They were kept as illiterates and were treated as no more

than a child-bearing machine and an unpaid servant at home. The plight of the widows

was terrible, child marriages, which were in vogue, increased the number of widows.

The harmful custom of dowry increased, the miseries of young women too increased

every day.

In the ancient history of India, women have been deified, glorified and regarded

as myths. Even today, a duality is there in the protection of the image of women in literature.

While portraying deified archetypal images, there are also debased and degraded ones.

Mary Ann Fergusson observes, “… the images of women throughout history is that social

stereotypes have been reinforced by archetypes. Another way of putting this would be to

say that in every age woman has been seen primarily as mother, wife, mistress, sex
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object-their roles in relationship to men”(4-5). The last fifty years of Indian writings,

particularly novels, not only produced a rich harvest, but also an immensed variety and

complexity.

The psychological stand of the new generation writers are the source of the thematic

and conceptual variations that the Indian fiction writers have explored since the 1970s in

feminism, political and social concerns. Indian novel, since its origin more than a hundred

years ago, has dealt with the position of women’s problems. Most of the Indian women

living in an orthodox and conservative family felt inhibited to raise their voice against

aggressive dominance of the male persons of the society. Their ambitions, desires, sense and

sensibility are faithfully expressed in the novels of the women novelists of the twentieth

century. Their novels show such women, in spite of being highly educated, undergo

psychological suffering due to inferiority complex and deep sense of inhibitions. They

depict the image of the new women waiting for emancipation and liberation in a fast

changing world.

In the past, the work of the Indian women authors have been undervalued because

of some patriarchal assumptions. Indian societies gave priorities to the worth of male

experiences. Male authors used to deal with heavy themes. It was assumed that their work

would get more priority and acceptance in the society. Today is the generation of those

women writers who have money and are mostly western educated. Their novels are the

latest burning issues related with women and the society since long. Their books are

completely enjoyed by the masses. Women novelists use bold topics and commercials in

their novels. They paint the whole world of women with stunning frankness. The majority

of these novels trace the psychological suffering of the frustrated housewife.

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In India, the western feminist theories and explorations of female psyche have

been insisted and plagiarized. In western countries women give more importance to

individualism and they believe in rejecting the family and home and hating men in general.

But Indian women are more ‘rational’ in that sense. Feminism in India has changed over

time in relation to historical and cultural realities. Indian women struggled for identity

through different hierarchies. Writing about the recent fiction, K.R.Srinivasa Iyengar

says, “The future of insane fiction has given ample evidence of vitality, variety, humanity

and artistic integrity” (15).

Indian women writers shine luminously like their male counterparts by their

significant contribution to the enrichment of Indian English novels. The women novelists

who have risen to fame and won global recognition in literature are Comelia Sorabji,

Kamala Markandaya, R.P. Jhabvala, Attia Hossian, Nayantara Sahgal, Santha Rama Rao,

Kamala Das and Shoba De. These novelists seem to have derived inspiration and influences

from British novelists in respect of art and device in writing novels. They resemble to a

great extent Jane Austen, George Eliot, Mrs. Gaskell, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia

Woolf in the art of characterization and portrayal of the psychic mind of women.

Like these British women novelists, Indian women writers mute the male novelists both

qualitatively and numerically in exploration of inner mind of women to express their own

identity. The theme of psychological suffering and traumatic experiences of Indian

women was exploited by feminist novelists like Iqbalunnisa Hussain, Anita Desai, Rama

Mehta, Shashi Deshpande and Arundhathi Roy.

These novelists are mainly concerned in their novels with the psychological crisis

in the lives of Indian women who are subjected to physical and psychological torture in a
 14

male dominated society. They have exploited their skill in projecting convincingly the

agonized minds of women characters. Their novels invariably bear authenticity to their

feminist approach, outlook and perspective. Their keen observation of life of Indian women

and their interest in the study of their inner mind are examined by their vivid and panoramic

portrayal of their plight. They dived deep into the inner mind of the repressed women by

virtue of their feminine sensibility and psychological insight and brought to light their

inner issues, which are the outcome of their psychological and emotional imbalances.

Psychological content appears in a wide range of literary forms, from poetry to short

stories, plays and novels. Psychological novels deals with the individual’s inner experiences,

thoughts, feelings, emotions and introspections. The psychological novel is a work of

fiction in which the characters, thoughts, motivations and feelings are of greater interest

than the external action. Psychological novels give importance to values on characters,

their emotional reactions and go deeper into their minds than novels of other genres.

Events may not be presented in a chronological order, but as they occur in the characters’

minds, memories or fantasies.

Psychology is the science, which tries to understand the mental processes and

also it tries to find out what the mind is and how it works. Freud and Jung are the two great

exponents of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic study. They have made a significant

contribution to the interpretation of human motivation. According to Freud, the three

abstractions, Id, Ego and Super-ego are shorthand expressions for highly dynamic and

interrelated process in the life history and the present behavior of the individual. The modern

English novel is extremely psychological in character and deals with conscious regions of

the human. Psychology and literature are interrelated to each other. Most of the
 15

psychological novels in literature have a theme of virtue, emotional feelings and human

destiny. Psychological novels give a statement of what happens in it it goes on to explain

the way of the actions which had happened in it. It helps to analyse the change of behaviour

in the characters and deals with both the character and its action. The social, economic

and political factors play a very important role in the change of behaviour. Stream of

consciousness and close impressions of human mind are the main concepts in the

psychological novels.

The evolution of every human being – man or woman–starts right from the time a

single cell divides and multiplies, building up trillions of cells around itself to create an

organism endowed with consciousness. Like a man, woman begins her journey of life at

birth and passes through different stages till her span is over. In this journey, she develops

different characteristics, undergoes physical and psychological changes, acquires maturity

and with the advancement of time contributes her share in the progress of society. Unlike

man, most of the time she remains passive in many spheres, activities and decisions and

does not get the credit she deserves. History has recorded the names and achievements of

a large number of men but of only a small number of women.

The situation of women in India today is improved by making constant efforts to

change the female psyche, which has evolved over a period of centuries to become the

single greatest barrier in the path of women’s development. The psychological process of

women changed over time in their perceptions, patterns of thinking, motives, emotions,

conflicts and their strategies of coping with conflicts. This was important since adult

behaviour and personality characteristics are influenced by events that occur during the

early years of life. The birth of a female child evokes many responses from the family
 16

ranging from an overall sense of indifferent acceptance to a sense of contentment and a

feeling of being blessed. It is in this context that a girl develops an emotive map of the

family. The parents’ indifferent acceptance of her makes the female child realize that her

status is secondary and she experiences no space for herself. She learns to accept herself

as unwanted, or as a transient object to be cared for, but never to belong. In this process,

she starts doubting her value as a person. Lucky are those few women who have overcome

these psychological barriers and evolved successful strategies for coping up with hostile

circumstances and force in the personal, familial and social environments.

Women novelists have mostly written about women characters. Some writers

think that it is because women can understand female sensibilities better, they feel more

confident writing about women. Indeed, it requires a Tagore to be able to write about

both male as well as female sensibilities with equal perception. Women writers have

generally written about the problems of women against the background of changing

social, economic, cultural and political patterns.

Efforts are made today to study and analyze the psychology of women at different

stages of life in working and non–working environment. It scientifically studies the strategies

evolved by the successful few who have been able to break the age old myths about women’s

helplessness, incompetence, lack of drive and motivation to reach pinnacles of glory. A great

effort is required to provide women with necessary psychological security, nurturing, support,

guidance and counselling to enable them to understand themselves in more realistic and

progressive terms. The ways and means to break the barriers that stand in the way of

women’s progress is that women alone can break the barriers they have created for

themselves over a period of centuries.

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Even today, woman is regarded as a sex object. Though she is highly educated,

economically independent, she is still considered to be inferior to man. A housewife’s

work is not valued though she is an equal partner. Cooking, house-keeping are supposed

to be her basic works and of primary importance. The society wants that the woman must

think about her career after completion of her primary duties. Though she earns equally

with man, her income is always secondary and considered as extra money. The income of

man is basic or primary income. If a woman tries to escape from the overload of the

responsibilities she is called ‘selfish’. If she complains about her inferior situation, she

becomes a black mark on the ideal womanhood. Even today, society is not ready to give

an equal status to women.

The psychological content takes different forms in literature. It is found in the

structure of the text, the time, the place, the action or even in rhythm in the case of poetry.

Written thousand years ago in Japan, The Tale of Cenji was considered to be the world’s first

psychological novel. In Europe, Boccaccio was the first exponent of literary psychology.

Early psychological content in literary works are found in the texts of Plato and Aristotle.

The beginning of psychological literature as a genre can be traced back to Samuel Richardson’s

Pamella. Psychological novel fully developed in the twentieth century. Sigmund Freud is

well known for his theories regarding the unconscious mind and the mechanism of

repression. He stated that the mind can be divided into two parts. The conscious mind

which includes everything people are aware of and the unconscious mind which includes

people’s feelings, thoughts and memories that influence their behaviour.

The first Indian woman novelist who made a pioneering effort in writing novels

of profound psychological significance was Toru Dutt. Although she was pre-eminently
 18

renowned as a poet for the analysis of a substantial number of poetical works. She was

recognized as a novelist for her fictional work like Le Journal de Mademoiselle d’Arves

written in French and Bianca or The Young Spanish Maiden written in English. These two

novels are self – projection of her own agony and anguish of life. Toru’s typical attitude,

feelings and sentiments, which are characteristically Indian in all respects, manifest in the

character of her heroines.

Kamala Markandaya portrays a clear picture of women, especially the South

Indian women who lived in villages where life has not changed over a long period of

time. Nayantara Sahgal describes the problems and sufferings of women who feels

entrapped, oppressed and doomed to the care of husband and home. Her fiction focuses

attention on Indian woman’s search for sexual freedom and self – realization. Most of

her women are aware of this injustice done to them in marriage. As they go out of their

homes, they go in quest for their freedom. Anita Desai, like James Joyce and Virginia

Woolf, is widely recognized as the pioneer of psychological novelist in modern Indian

English Literature. Her writing attempts to discover truth and to convey it aesthetically.

She tries to go into the depth of the human mind to project a vision of the psychic world

and the trauma faced by womanhood.

Kamala Das projects in her poetry and novels her own inner mind without inhibition

and hesitation. She revolted against the male dominated Indian society and revealed her

feeling in a confessional mood. The other feminist novelist who won the Booker Prize for

literary achievement is Arundhati Roy. She has used the psychoanalytic theory of Freud,

to unveil the agonized minds of her women characters. Another woman novelist of the

pre– independence India was Comelia Sarobji, a feminist and a social reformer. As an
 19

advocate by profession, she championed the causes of Indian women and exposed in her

stories the deep mental agony of the married and unmarried women. Shevanthi Bai Nikambe,

a champion of feminism, advocated the liberty and emancipation of women in order to

extricate them from obsequious servitude and inhuman torture to which they were

subjected to by their husbands, mother-in-law and others.

Iqbalunnisa Hussain, as a feminist writer, has brought to light the tragic life of

Indian women in her fiction. She shows Indian women endure physical and psychological

suffering simply by virtue of their womanliness. Another novelist who travels along the

same path of study of psychic mind is Rama Mehta. She focused on the conflict between

tradition and modernity. Gita Hariharan has become a literary luminary with her first novel

The Thousand Faces of Night which has added a feather in her cap – The Commonwealth

Prize. Her motifs deal with death, pain and loss of self. She debates and analyzes complex

social psychological problems of the day.

Manju Kapur has successfully depicted the inner subtlety of a woman’s mind.

She displays a mature understanding of the female psyche and manages to blend the

personal with the external. Shoba De, an essential modern novelist and journalist, has

focused the marginalization of women in Indian society. As a female writer, she has a

genuine understanding of the psyche of woman. Her female protagonists struggled hard

in their lives to break patriarchal order and protect against male dominance. At last they

come out in flying colours in their quest for self – identity. She specifically explores the

world of urban women. Ruth Prawer Jhabavala was concerned with the psychological

state of mind of Indian women who undergo inexpressible sufferings in their marital life.
 20

The novels of these authors reflect the present age women who have realized

that they are not helpless and dependent. Today, woman has also become a direct money

earner and she is not simply confined to household works. The women of modern era

think of different lines and that is what is depicted in the novels of the Indian women

authors. With the spread of education and the influence of western thought, the women of

India today are evolving from their traditional image of ‘wife and mother’ to more

independent human beings, capable of spiritual depth, moral vision and intellectual

flights. This change in the thought process is well marked in the novels of the Indian

writers in English, especially those of the women writers of the post-independence era.

The women in these novels no longer occupy secondary positions but occupy the central

stage. They are the protagonists. They are presented as doctors, lawyers, artists and even

as scientists. The Indian women novelists, with their dominant role in the field of fiction,

have dealt with high seriousness the changing ethos of womanhood.

The main cause for the dissatisfaction of the women in today’s society is the superior

attitude of the men throughout. The women have suffered in silence and the Indian English

novelists frankly highlighted this concept. Sarah Grimke observes:

Man has subjugated women to his will, used her as a means to promote his

selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasure, to be instrumental

in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that

rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could do to debase and

enslave her mind. (10)

The protagonists of these novelists suffer from the changing reality on one side

and are affected by the society on the other. They experience and undergo bitter traumas
 21

and psychic problems. While many women writers of the modern times are concerned

with the political, socio-economic, scientific and cultural fields, Shashi Deshpande pictures

the psychological problems affecting middle – class Indian women and their changing

attitudes and abilities in confronting these problems.

Shashi Deshpande portrays the new Indian woman and her dilemma. She concerns

herself with the plight of the modern Indian woman trying to understand herself and to

preserve her identity as daughter, wife, mother and above all as a human being. Shashi

Deshpande is one of the few Indian English writers, who has portrayed the girl child

with deliberation. Shashi Deshpande unveils the subtle process of oppression and gender

differentiation at work in the family and in the male oriented society. Shashi Deshpande’s

protagonists occupy a pivotal position in her fiction. Her characters are not wooden ones.

They are modern ones. They are written in a psychoanalytical way. They have strength

of their own, and in spite of challengers and hostilities remain uncrushed. They are sensitive,

self-conscious, brilliant and creative. They revolt against the traditional parental family and

run away from the suffocated atmosphere of the narrow minded society.

As a living writer in India, Shashi Deshpande reflects a realistic picture of the

contemporary middle class family life. She focuses on women’s issues. Shashi Deshpande

began her writing career with short stories and then moved on to writing novels. Shashi

Deshpande was born in 1938 and brought up in Dharwad in Karnataka. She is the second

daughter of the renowned Kannada dramatist and Sanskrit scholar Sriranga. At the age of

fifteen, she went to Bombay, where she was graduated in Economics. Then she moved to

Bangalore where she gained a Degree in Law. After getting married, she settled in

Banglore with her husband and two children. During her stay in Mumbai, she decided to
 22

pursue a course in journalism. She got herself enrolled in the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

She took up a job as a journalist in the magazine “Onlooker”. She worked there for a

couple of months. While working in the magazine one of the sub – editors suggested to

her to write a short story.

Shashi Deshpande began writing and she published the first collection of short

stories, The Legacy and other stories in 1970. It was a textbook in Columbia University

for a course in modern literature. The primary focus of attention in her short stories is

woman, her frustration, pain and anguish. Her stories circle around middle – class woman

in India who are unable to challenge social convention and seek a compromise as a way

out of dilemma. Shashi Deshpande says that her father shaped her life and influenced

her mind. She says about her father, “He was dominant, never domineering. On the

contrary, if I should criticize him, I would say he was somewhat detached from us…,

may be if he had directed us at an early age, I could’ve done better” (232). Shashi

Deshpande’s father never allowed his children to mention their casts even though they

come from a Brahmin family. Her father is free from these gender identities :

He never allowed us to state that we were Brahmins. There were no elders

in the family who could’ve introduced us to the rituals and rites of a

Brahmin upbringing. so we had a very free and uncluttered childhood, a

good up bringing….we started reading and thinking very early ….Another

thing about my father was that he never made us feel conscious that we

were daughters. He never barred us from doing anything we wanted. (232)

Shashi Deshpande has written four children’s books and twelve novels. Her novel

The Dark Holds No Terrors (1980) won the Nanjagud Thirumalamba Award. In 1984 she
 23

was given the Thirumathi Rangammal Prize for her novel Roots and Shadows (1983)

which is her first novel but published after her novel The Dark Holds No Terrors (1980).

The novel That Long Silence (1998) won the Shahitya Akademi Award which is India’s

highest literary honour. The Binding Vine (1993), A Matter of Time (1996) Small Remedies

(2000) and two crime novels If I Die Today (1982) and Come and be Dead (1983), and

her latest Moving on (2004), In the Country of Deceit (2008), Ship that Pass (2012,)

Shadow Play ( 2013), are the other novels. The novelist portrays in – depth the meaning

of being a woman in modern India. Over the years, Shashi Deshpande has published about

a 100 stories in literary journals, magazines and newspapers, in between writing her

immensely popular novels which are now read all over the world, and taught in

universities wherever Indian writing has an audience. Shashi Deshpande wrote screen

play for the Hindi film “Drishti”. Her short stories were collected in five volumes.

She identifies herself as a wife, mother and a human being. She values ‘human

relationship’ and her writings mostly revolve around middle – class Indian families.

Her novels start with characters and end with characters. Like Jane Austen, her novels

have a narrow range in dealing with theme and characters. She mentions Somerset

Maugham, Jane Austen, Doris Lessing, Simone de Beauvior and Tolstoy as the personalities

who influenced her. Shashi Deshpande is essentially a self-taught writer. She never

thought of becoming a writer. She told the interviewer that after their return from

England her husband persuaded her to write about the trip:

My husband was a commonwealth scholar and we went to England.

We were there for a year. I thought it would be a pity if I forget all our

experiences there, so I started writing them down and gave them to my

 24

father. He gave them to ‘Deccan Herald’ which published them promptly.

So it began very accidently. (14)

The short stories and novels of Shashi Deshpande portray women’s struggle for

life and survival in contemporary India. She outlines the critical human predicament and

emotional affinities, of women. Her novels reveal woman’s quest for self, enlightenment,

exploration into the female psyche and an awareness of the mysteries of life in which

women are placed. G.S.Amur aptly remarks:

The operative sensibility in Deshpande’s stories is distinctly female and

modern…she is at her best when she works out her themes in terms of

intimate human relationships, generally within the family. She uses the

story as a medium of moral and psychological analysis and her focus is

almost invariably on the inner life. (112)

In the context of the contemporary Indian writing in English, Shashi Deshpande is

the confident voice which explores individual and universal female psyche. Her fictional

work is a long journey through the psyche of the educated middle – class Indian woman.

Most of her protagonists are women who are educated and exposed to western ideas.

She excels in painting a realistic picture of an educated woman who, although financially

independent is still facing the problems of adjustment between the old and the new,

between tradition and modernity, between idealism and pragmatism. She portrays the

protagonist’s turmoils, convulsions, frustrations and that long silence which has been

there for many centuries. Shashi Deshpande gives her personal view:

When I look back at this point of time, to the beginning of my own

writing, I can see that it came out of both anger and confusion. Something,
 25

I felt, was not right with the world, with my world. It was hard to get a

clear sense of what was wrong; there was only this confusion and anger.

It was only much later that I was able to connect my anger to the sense of

denigration I was made to feel about being a female, about the roles that

my gender Identity seemed to have locked me into, roles which I often

chafed against. Worst of all was the idea that this gender identity and the

roles that came with it, seemed to deny my intellectual self, a self that was

as important to me as my emotional self. It was out of this turmoil and

disturbance that my writing was born. (22-24)

Shashi Deshpande presents the sufferings of sensitive women characters, who

find it very difficult to adjust themselves to the present urbanized set up. She has been

labelled as a great feminist writer of international acclaim for having presented the plight

of sensitive women characters trapped between tradition and modernity. Shashi Deshpande

feels embarrassed to be called a woman writer and she is not very enthusiastic about the

label ‘feminist’. She considers herself as a feminist in personal life but not a feminist

writer. When interviewed by Prasanna Sree, she asserts that she is a feminist and further

elaborates on this:

I am a feminist; I am a very staunch feminist in my personal life… My

idea of feminism is like what I told you. A woman is also an individual

like a man with lot of capabilities and potentials. She has every right to

develop all that. She should not be oppressed just because she is a female.

Like a man she also has her own qualities she has every right to live her

life, to develop her qualities, to take her decisions, to be independent and

 26

to take charge of her own destiny. So all these things to me are part of

myself being a feminist. I don’t mean by that this false idea of liberation

that you don’t need a family. You don’t need parents. We are all part of

the society and we need some ties…. I am not a feminist writer. If you call

me a feminist writer, you are wronging me, because I see people as human

beings. In my novels you will not see bad men and good women. All of us

have both qualities in ourselves, some good and some bad and you know it

is all there is my novels and in my characters. (154-155)

Shashi Deshpande makes no attempt to find solutions to their various problems,

for her view is that the solution of the problem lies not in constantly finding fault with the

husband’s behavior but in having a positive attitude. Vanamala Viswanatha points out

that the author has presented in her work, “A typical middle class house – wife’s life.

The urge to find one self, to create space for oneself to grow on one’s own seems to be

the major pre – occupation, personally I think that’s every woman’s problems. Well, that’s

where you have touched a chord, I think” (48).

Shashi Deshpande’s heroines are sensitive, intelligent and career-oriented. She is

one with Anita Desai and Nayantara Sahgal in not merely describing the pathetic life styles

of Indian women but in trying to understand and suggest measure for their problems. She

captured and captivated her readers by presenting the subtle psychological complexities

of the individual mind. Her characters are real and alive. Though in one of her interviews

she has remarked that she does not possess any specific mission as a writer and has

resisted the tag of a woman writer, her themes and concepts are based on the lives and

problems of women. According to Shashi Deshpande, the writer writes not to achieve
 27

something but she is on the quest that allows her to an unknown way. In “Writing and

Activism” Shashi Deshpande explains the role of a writer. She says:

“How do we Live?” This is the question, which, above and beyond all

questions, has plagued the human mind….A writer is different from all

others in that at the moment of writing, she steps out of the room, so to

say, stands at a distance, a little away from her own humanity and sees the

world from this vantage point of view. This gives a unique perspective, the

larger picture, which is closer to the truth, than anything else…. It also lets

us see, clearly our strengths and weakness, our flaws and follies, our dreams

and nightmares. This is what the writer has to offer a reader. This, perhaps, is

truly the writer’s role. (6)

Shashi Deshpande deals with the inner world of the Indian women in her novels.

In her novels The Dark Holds No Terrors, Roots and Shadows, That Long Silence,

A Matter of Time, The Binding Vine, and Small Remedies women are supportive to men

in dealing with the contrary world.

Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Hold No Terrors (1980) which is her favourite

novel, seeks to discuss the enlightenment and the harrowing experience of the protagonist

Saru. It also deals with the psychological and traumatic experience of a career woman.

Shashi Deshpande discusses the gender discrimination shown by parents towards their

daughters and their desire to have a male child, and it portrays the sexual sadism of a

frustrated husband’s victimization of his wife. Shashi Deshpande also makes the readers

aware of society’s reaction to the superior status of the wife in a marriage, which leads

the husband to develop an inferiority complex.

 28

Shashi Deshpande’s first novel Roots and Shadows (1983), presents the image of

a woman. This novel explores the inner struggle of the protagonist Indu. She tries to learn

the truth about her, deserting all the shadows that she had thought to be her real self.

The novel projects the enlightenment of an educated women who are unable to enfranchise

the world in which they are reared. Shashi Dehpande seems to suggest through Roots and

Shadows that a change in the upbringing of girl-child is required. Since her childhood, the

psyche of a girl child is conditioned in a particular fashion to inculcate in her all types of

feminine qualities.

Shashi Deshpande’s third novel, That Long Silence (1989) won the Sahitya Akademi

Award in 1990. She received “Padma Shri” Award for the same novel in the year 2009.

It deals with the story of an Indian woman who maintains silence throughout her life in the

face of hardships that threatened to break it. The novel shows how the male dominated society

tortures the Indian women. The protagonist Jaya stands for the woman who tolerates all

sorts of inhuman behaviour, cruelty of her husband and never speaks a word against him.

Like Kamala Markandaya and Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande has presented a slice of

Indian life with its up and downs, tears and turmoils and restoration of self through crisis.

In her novel A Matter of Time (1996) Shashi Deshpande frees herself from the

narrow confines of women and their problems and enters into the metaphysical world of

philosophy. The novel is essentially the story of three women from three generations from

the same family and how they manage with the tragedy that overwhelms them. The novel

particularly deals with the theme of the Awakening of the oneself for a female identity.

It is only through a process of self – examination and self – searching, through courage
 29

and resilience that one can change one’s situation from despair to hope. The story is revealed

through the inner consciousness of one central character, Madhu Saptarishi.

Binding Vine (1993) touches a chord in every woman as she responds to it with

recognition of her own doubts, complexes, fears, desires and suffering being mirrored in

the narration of Urmila, the protagonist. It pictures the restoration of self through crisis

and the personal tragedy of Urmila. Three stories are merged in the plot of Binding Vine.

As Urmila walks through the labyrinth of relationships, she witnesses, experiences and

analyses the confusion and guilt, the pain and anger, the joy and suffering and an entire

emotional whirpool surfacing. Her one year old daughter dies and she is unable to forget

her because her memories haunt her. So, she gets involved with a young rape victim

Kalpana and her own long dead mother-in-law Mira’s poetry.

Shashi Deshpande’s Small Remedies (2000) is the most confident assertion of

her strength as a novelist. It is a novel about several feelings – love, courage, honesty,

truth, death and the pain associated with death. It tells the story of Madhu Saptarishi

whose awakening self is linked with the search for identity of two other women–Savitri Bai

Indorekar and Leela. It is through their struggle for identity that Madhu comes to know

her own self. She has led the normal life and undergoes a great mental trauma due to the

opposition of a society that practices a double standard. Even as a child, she is a victim of

gross gender discrimination. The novel presents Madhu’s struggle with her feeble family

life. She is a lonely, sensitive and capable woman faced with the terrible shock caused by

the death of her only son Adit, and sets out on a long and lonely journey of life.

Come Up and Be Dead (1983) is a psychological thriller novel by Shashi Deshpande.

This novel marks her literary skill. School and Headmistress play an important role in
 30

this novel. The story relates with the suicide of a girl in the school. Headmistress Devayani

could not find the reason why it has happened. Devi is the storyteller of this novel.

Following the two deaths, the reason for the death is revealed. In a unique manner, Shashi

Deshpande made it a good example for crime novel. The novel mainly deals with human

philosophy with the help of crime and suspense. Even though the story carries suspense

the characters seem to be quite and simple.

Shashi Deshpande’s detective novel If I Die Today (1982), is full of crime and

suspense. The young college lecturer, the narrator of the story, is married to a doctor.

They live inside the medical college campus. A cancer patient Guru plays an important

role in this novel. After his arrival the family starts to collapsing. Mriga, an important

character, plays another vital role. Her father leaves her alone because of his westernized

and modernized habit of living. Her growth in the novel narrows down her to the central

character of the novel. The story mainly concentrates on the patriarchal society in a

delicate way.

The novel Moving On (2004) reveals the secret passions of men and women like

love, plot, hate and debate. This novel also deals with the Indian women and their inner

world. Manjari a chief character starts the story by discovering some truths in her father’s

diary. In that she finds a lot of old memories, responses, love and hate. It makes her feel

something new in the world. She comes to know lots of new things from the diary. This

helps to expose the new ways of storytelling. Thus, Shashi Deshpande has proved her

own innovative methods of storytelling in this novel.

Like Jane Austen, all her novels are obviously considered with human relationships.

In the Country of Deceit (2008), is about love between an adult man and an adult woman.
 31

Devayani, the protagonist of the novel, falls deeply and passionately in love with Ashok

Chinnapa. It is very difficult to judge if adult love is good or bad. Human beings always

care for love – even in death a dying man wants to hold some one’s hands. It is very

difficult to distinguish love according to the level of mental maturity. A sixty –year – old

man or a woman can fall in love and behave like a child. People realize the true meaning

of love only when they fall in love.

Shis that Pass (2012) tells the story of Tara and Shaan, mere strangers to each

other even after fourteen years of married life. Tara’s sister Radhika engaged almost on a

whim, to someone she barely knows. Radhika tries to understand how a once ideal marriage

has come undone and struggle with her own feelings for an older man. Tara dies in

mysterious circumstances and Shaan is arrested for murder. In the aftermath, Radhika

realizes that while life may seldom turn out as expected, the only hope lies in finding the

courage to take one’s changes.

Shadow Play (2003) is a story about ordinary people going about their lives, in a

city in Karnataka. They go to work, come home, eat, sleep, and deal with each other.

There are births, deaths, silences, irrational acts, talk, and more than their share of

tragedy, with which they seem to cope rather well. The story deals with three generations

of the family, and how even when one generation has passed on, they continue to throw

shadows on the lives of those still living. Shadow Play was shortlisted for The Hindu

Literary Prize in 2014.

The protagonists of Shahi Deshpande’s novels are modern, educated and independent

women, roughly between the age of thirty and thirty-five. Their search for freedom and

self – identity within marriage is a recurring theme. She brings the issues of sex and
 32

exploitation of women and portrays a woman’s inner conflicts and her struggles to achieve

her identity. Her heroines try to change their lives and fight their own battles of life.

As Rani Dharkar comments, “they begin in ignorance and grow into self-knowledge

through suffering” (56). In an interview with Prasanna Sree, she remarks:

It is not my idea of replacing one model with another. I am just de- constructing

these myths ….All of us are trying to adapt ourselves to the society as it is,

and in that process we are discovering ourselves, new ways of living and

new ways of functioning. I don’t really subscribe to this theory that one is

destroying the role models totally. These role models were imposed on us

by men. It was they who wrote the stories. They who told us about these

Pativratas, “they told us what we should be”. So we want to find out for

ourselves, now what we are and how we are going to function in our

relationships in our different ties with the whole world. It is a too simplistic

idea that women writers are destroying the role models and what are the

role models? This is a liberated woman and this is not a liberated woman.

I think literature has to be approached differently. Literature is as complex

as life itself. (157-158)

Women are now treated in equal terms by law as far as inheritance of property

and opportunities of job are concerned. But on the social level, these women who have

been struggling since ages to assert themselves, are still being challenged by their male

counterparts and forced to remain silent. Shashi Deshpande says:

I am a feminist in the sense that, I think, we need to have a world, which

we should recognize as a place for all of us human being. There is no

 33

superior and inferior, we are two halves of one species. I fully agree with

Simon de Beauvoir that “the fact that we are human, is much more important

than our being man and women.” I think that’s my idea of feminism

….women have been quite oppressed. We, middle class people with

education are quite lucky. But a large section of Indian women are

suffering even today….It is this absmal difference that I want to do away

with, as a feminist. (254)

Shashi Deshpande novels based on surrender and sufferings of women do not

necessarily end with their rejection of family and marriage. The tension created by the

husband-wife relationship due the lack of understanding and mutual respect affects the

family relationship. Family is the main theme in the fictional world of Shashi Deshpande.

In an interview with Vanamala Viswanatha, she says:

Undoubtedly my novels are all about family relationships. But I…. go

beyond that because, the relationships which exist within the family are, to

an extent, parallel to the relationships which exist between human beings

outside…. When I am writing about the family, it is not just about the

family, it definitely does not limit my canvas. On the contrary, that is

where everything begins. (13)

Shashi Deshpande takes us inside the consciousness of her women characters to

present their plight, fears, dilemmas, contradictions and ambitions. Her bold and balanced

heroines often face the challenges of life confidently. Mostly, they return to their husbands

with Enlightenment, Awakening of oneself and Restoration of their self through crisis.

She examines the realities behind the silence of women.

 34

While Anita Desai’s heroines succumb to their weakness and find solution in homicide

or suicide, Nayantara Sahgal shows her woman defy traditional roles in search of

emancipation. They fail to find a positive solution without defying traditional norms.

Only Shashi Deshpande through her works, shows women willing to take their share of

the blame of their sufferings and bravely face the situation. J.P.Tripathi opines, “Anita

Desai or Shoba De who present disintegrated individualistic pictures of Indian social

ethos show the crumbling of familial bonds under modern egotistical selfish social

scenario. Shashi Deshpande’s pictures are still integrational and cohensive even under

pressures of modernity” (150). In Indian fiction, women characters suffer in both

conventional or unconventional way. Bala Kothandaraman remarks:

The unconventional are seen to suffer for their violation of accepted norms

of society, or for questioning them – death is the way out for them, unless

their experience teaches them to subdue their individuality and rebelliousness

and realize the wisdom of the traditional ways. The conventional women

suffer too, but their suffering is sanctified by the norms of Indian culture and

particularly by that of a patriarchal culture. (57)

Shashi Deshpande’s concerns are with the people and their inner fears and doubts

rather than with the externals of life and living. Her characters are always engaged in

questioning and evaluating the meaning of ideals, attitudes, actions and reactions of

people in personal interactions and relationships. Shashi Deshpande presents human

feelings, which were forgotten from the pages of human history. She makes them come alive

as characters that seem real though belonging to an own neighbourhood. Her powerful
 35

protagonists come out of the bedrooms, kitchens and attics to articulate and reconstitute

their lives through their ‘feminist awareness’ and introspection.

In her six novels, homecomings, mothers, traditions and families, appear to be

made clearly into a single corpus that it is quite often very difficult to disentangle one

from the other. This is ingeniously one of the major distinctive traits in the fiction of

Shashi Deshpande. The theme of homecoming becomes a symbolic instrument and a

crucial process for Shashi Deshpande’s protagonists to regain inner balance, to declare

their independence and to stake out their own identity. She portrays her women as seeking

anchorage in marriage. Her protagonists rebel and marry the men of their choice, but

ultimately submit to traditions of their husbands. As Carl Gustav Jung opines, “Middle

life is the moment of greatest unfolding, when a man still gives himself to his work with

his whole strength and whole will. But in this very moment, evening is born and the

second half of life begins” (45). Shashi Deshpande’s women compromise with their lot in

life, though not before asserting their individuality. In an interview to Chandra Holm,

Shashi Deshpande remarks:

…you bring them to question everything. And it is through this

questioning, through this thinking that you move on, pick up your life

once again. But you are never the same after this. This is true of all human

beings, not just women….In this thinking process, humans do discover

their own potential. So do the women I have written about. (9)

Her writing reflects an ongoing process of problematizing life’s conflicts and

compromises, resolutions and irresolution, ironies and affirmations, triumphs and tragedies,

and so on. G.s.Balarama Gupta found her women, “Creatures of conventional morality:
 36

they are the ones who are unfairly abused, misused and ill-used. But they believe in

conformity and compromise for the sake of retention of domestic harmony rather than

revolt which might result in the disruption of familial concord” (39).

The novels of Shashi Deshpande keep ‘Woman’ at the centre and the story roll

around the experiences of the protagonists who are women. The demands that society

makes an individual self in two different cultures of the West and the East and the struggle

of the protagonists to achieve the self– realization, is portrayed in Shashi Deshpande’s

six novels.

The six novels The Dark Holds No Terrors, Roots and Shadows, That Long Silence,

A Matter of Time, Binding Vine and Small Remedies which are the main contributions of

Shashi Deshpande are the select novels for this research. As most of the novels of Shashi

Deshpande concentrated on the women who play the vital role, this research has concentrated

on a psychological study of the heroines. Being a part of man’s life, a woman plays a

different role from birth till her death. With a gift for sharp psychological insight into the

subtleties of human mind and society and aided by a richly evocative, unassuming and

unpretentious style, Shashi Deshpande is perhaps ideally suited to tread the labyrinthine

tracts of human psyche and creditable respect in fiction. Her six novels are a lesson to the

psyche of people who lose their capacity for rational thought on being subjected to

traumatic experience.

The following brief analysis of Shashi Deshpande’s novels presents a clear idea

about the problems of women and the solutions taken by them for these problems. It also

presents Sashi Deshpande as one of the foremost Indian women novelists. Though there is

no overt feminism in her work, she tries to achieve a texture of individuality and in it, one
 37

can trace the pattern of women’s roles in the changing matrix of Indian society. In the

context of the contemporary Indian writing in English, Shashi Deshpande is the confident

voice who explores individual and universal female psyche. Her fictional work is a long

journey through the psyche of the educated middle-class Indian woman. In her novels

The Dark Holds No Terrors, Roots and Shadows, That Long Silence, A Matter of time,

The Binding Vine and Small Remedies women are supportive to men dealing with the

hostile world.

Though much link has been spilled on the most reputed and widely read modern

Indian novelist Shashi Deshpande, this research work aims at liberating the suppressed

Indian women from all sorts of suppressions. Voluminous critical works and research

papers have been carried out on Shashi Deshpande and her works. Various aspects in her

novels like traditional, cultural, social, moral, feminine feministic, modern, etc. have

meticulously been worked on by numerous writers as below:

"A Bond or a Burden" in The Binding Vine by S.Indra

"Woman’s Inner Life" in A Matter of Time by N.B. Misal

"The Theme of Marriage and Selfhood" in Roots and Shadows by Ujwala Patil

"Breaking Silence" in That Long Silence by Sarala Palkar

The Fiction of Shashi Deshpande by M.D. Soundkar. Ph.D. thesis.

Shashi Deshpande has hardly been touched on from the psychological point of

view. Thus, in this aspect, this thesis proves a novel effort, as it aims at a psychological

analysis of the select novels of Shashi Deshpande such as The Dark Holds No Terrors,
 38

Roots and Shadows, That Long Silence, A Matter of Time, The Binding Vine, and Small

remedies.

This psychological study is carried out with a view to:

1. Eradicate fear of all storts from the mind of Indian women,

2. Induce self confidence and self awareness,

3. Liberate from all social taboos,

4. Break the shackles of tradition, and

5. Empower women with new found self awareness and glorify womanhood.