A prominent living woman novelist, ShashiDeshpande has contributed significantly to the firm establishment of feminist literature in Indian English Writing. She dislikes being called a feminist writer because she considers it aform of patriarchal design to keep feminist writing and female writers on the margin. However,her novels primarily deal with the issues of feminist misery caused by traditional male hegemony and patriarchal norms governing gender relations. She is a prolific writer who has authored eleven novels besides children’s books, short stories, essays and a memoir. The most striking feature of her novels is her protagonists who are middle class urban women of modern India. Though enlightened and to some extent empowered, they too suffer at the hands of patriarchal hegemony. They are educated and economically independent, but they yield to the socially structured roles of a submissive and docile daughter, ideal wife and caring mother preferring these roles to personal aspirations and professional career. As such, they strive for individual identity, freedom of choice and self-fulfilment. They take resort to silence to avoid conflict and unpleasantness, and are given to anguish, isolation, desperation and passive surrender. Deshpande convincingly depicts the clamour for feminine aspirations and clash between tradition and modernity. To unfold Deshpande’s feminist stance pertaining to Indian women in general and urban middle class women of postcolonial India in particular, this paper analyses two of her most representative novels — the SahityaAkademi Award winning novel That Long Silence (1989) and one of her later novels In the Country of Deceit (2008), investigating different aspects of feminine misery and shades of human relationships. It, thus, brings out the tenor of feminist protest and attitudinal change in contemporary India.
Research Scholar, P.G. Dept. of English & Research Centre, Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya
