This paper examines the feminist perspective of Shashi Deshpande's "That Long Silence" (1988). This novel won the Sahitya Akademi award in the year 1990. In this novel, the soul protagonist is Jaya, whose complete control was taken over by her husband Mohan, after their marriage. Deshpande realistically depicts the inner conflicts of Jaya and her quest for the self or identity. This novel is about gender discrimination and inequality prevalent in society.
God created men and women equally, but the women’s rights were limited to small. Feminism as a movement might have originated in the West, but with the deterioration in the status of women in India and the subsequent efforts made during the freedom struggle to pave the way for equal access to education and equal status, there arose a need for feminist studies. The feminist movement advocates equal rights and equal opportunities for women. Feminism was portrayed by many writers of English literature and one among them is Shashi Deshpandae (1938).
ABSTRACT
God created men and women equally, but the women's rights were limited to small. Feminism as a movement might have originated in the West, but with the deterioration in the status of women in India and the subsequent efforts made during the freedom struggle to pave the way for equal access to education and equal status, there arose a need for feminist studies. The feminist movement advocates equal rights and equal opportunities for women. Feminism was portrayed by many writers of English literature and one among them is Shashi Deshpandae (1938). This paper examines the feminist perspective of Shashi Deshpande's That Long Silence (1988). This novel won the Sahitya Akademi award in the year 1990. In this novel, the soul protagonist is 'Jaya', whose complete control was taken over by her husband Mohan, after their marriage. Deshpande realistically depicts the inner conflicts of Jaya and her quest for the self or identity. This novel is about gender discrimination and inequality prevalent in society.
KEYWORDS: Feminism, Women, Identity, Indian customs
INTRODUCTION
Feminism is always meant for independence of mind, spirit, and body. Its theory is that both men and women should be equal politically, economically, and socially. Shashi Deshpande derives the title of her novel “ That long silence" from the classic understatement by Elizabeth Robins in her speech to a world body. This novel “ That Long Silence" comes relatively close to the real-life experience. Simon De Beauvoir says, “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. It is civilization as a whole that produces this creature which is described as feminine” (The Second Sex: 295).
FEMINISM IN THE NOVEL "THAT LONG SILENCE"
In this novel, Deshpande deals with the burning issues regarding women's position in the family and the society. The prime character ofthe novel 'Jaya' is the perfect representation of the modern women of today. She can be intercepted as a present time women of indecision who waves between family and self-assertion. She is an intelligent woman with graduation in English, a writer, and a columnist who had a bright career. Unfortunately, none of these attributes would provide her a respectable position in the eyes of her husband Mohan, who had socialization in a typical traditional environment. Jaya always recollects her days before and after marriage, and her lovable memories of childhood.
Before marriage Jaya has optimistic views on life as her father always encourages her by saying “'I named you Jaya' he said, 'Jaya means victory' “(15). But after the death of her father, 'Ai' her mother does not support her. This makes Jaya feebler and more vulnerable. Her mother always prefers her son and she even gifts their ancestral property i.e. the Dadar flat to her son rather than her daughter Jaya.
And after marriage, Jaya lives in the family life thinking about her family and her husband Mohan. On their wedding, Mohan renamed his wife Jaya as “Suhasini” as he wanted her to be 'Soft, smiling, placid, motherly woman' (16). Her period of marriage life comprises of confrontation between two phrases of her personality where the later had to be triumphant to appease her husband's ego and to save her marriage. And in the end, she comes out to be a decided and determined woman who now knows how to strike a balance between her family and her identity in the family.
Deshpande beautifully described Jaya's married life as, “A pair of bullock yoked together. It is more comfortable for them to move in the same direction. To go in different directions would be painful and what animals would voluntarily choose pain?” (11-12).
Without any attachment or love between them, the bullocks yoke together and share the burden between them. Likewise, the monotony, solution, and loneliness enter the marriage life where there is no love but only compromise. Whenever Mohan finds Jaya's behaviour to be odd towards him and his family, he tells, “My mother never spoke against my father, however badly he behaved to her” (83). Thus, he gradually pushes her into the traditional world and reveals his expectations from her. Jaya regretfully accepts the fact that she had accepted everything about Mohan by blinding herself to the consequences like Gandari and was also ashamed of her ignorance and inaction.
“If Gandari who bandaged her eyes to become blind like her husband could be called an ideal wife, I had bandaged my eyes tightly. I didn't want to know anything.” (61) Deshpande through the image of Jaya depicts the one who is unprotected and unshelled. She describes, “Distance from real life, scared of writing, scared of failing on God I had thought, I cannot take anymore. Even a worm has it can crawl into” (148). She compares herself to a worm that has its shelter, whereas she has not hers. This feeling of Jaya reminds of Virginia Woolf's fiction “A Room of One's Own", in which she presents her demand for a room for her creative work. The narrator believes that with money and a room she could have been a writer as living condition always affects one's creativity. Jaya also wishes to keep on writing. She breaks her silence of seventeen years in her writings, with which she expressed the thrust of craving identity of herself. She writes the responsibilities and social bondage in her view has been a failed writer and the universal voice is not heard in her works.
For her writing pieces, she is unanswerable to Mohan, which means that she does not have freedom and liberty both in her personal and her professional life. The creative and artistic zeal free her from her dubbed domestic roles. When she realizes this, she makes her mind to be silent no more, she has the right to reveal her genuine feelings and emotions. So, she resolves to break her silence by putting down on paper that entire she has suppressed in her seventeen-year silence. Finally, she expounds:
“The panic has gone. I am Mohan's wife I had thought, and cut off the bits of me that had refused to be Mohan's wife. Now I know that kind of fragmentation is not possible. The child hands in pocket, has been with me through the years.” (191)
Shashi Deshpande effectively expounds the aim of individual happiness in marriage. From the beginning Jaya developed fear of speech for fear of reticulate from males Appa, her father, who always prevents her from doing any task of her taste. Her father and brother criticized whenever she got opportunities to rebuke. Due to all these she jumps into silence which becomes easier to her. Later she maintains the silence with Mohan also and the reason behind this was liberty and freedom shown in threads. The inability to find words loads Jaya to embark upon a long silent journey. Finally she holds silence, the utter silence “But the words remained unsaid. I know his mood was best met with silence” (78).
Her traditional upbringing makes her to sacrifice herself on the altar of marriage. Through the characters of Jaya, Asha, Mukta, Kusum, etc., Deshpande depicts the complexities of Indian women of the modern age. Marriage plays a pivotal role in the life of Indian women and it changes their entire life. The husbands rejoice in their life carrying no sign of being married. Jaya meditates why women plunge into the marital life and keeps burning silently. The reason that she finds to her is, “We're all frightened of the dark, frightened of being alone” (102). For women in the Indian society, it is both a personal weakness as well as a social fate.
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- Quote paper
- Krishna Priya J. (Author), 2020, The Quest for Identity in Shashi Deshpande's "That Long Silence" (1988), Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/942013
