CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
The importance of woman has been recognized in literature on various grounds. For centuries, the human experience has been synonymous with the masculine experience. Gyno-criticism has opened up new vistas of study and research. The feminist philosophy projects the problem of “self” The quest of women's identity is a typical motif of feminist literature and a central task of feminist literary criticism. Accordingly, Sashi Deshpande’s novels reflecting their high critical mind of women's identity seem to reveal the essential and typical theme of feminist literature. Sashi Deshpande’s novels show how the "feminine mystique" deceives women, and that the persona, a wise mother and good wife, is no more women's desirable identity. And it is presented through a heroine who suffers from the inner dissociation and attempts to wander outside the house. . In some respects, Simone de Beauvoir's trenchant observation, "He is the Subject, he is the Absolute — she is the Other," sums up why the self is such an important issue for feminism. To be the Other is to be the non-subject, the non-person, the non-agent — in short, the mere body. Deeming women emotional and unprincipled, these thinkers advocated confining women to the domestic sphere where their vices could be neutralized, even transformed into virtues, in the role of submissive wife and nurturant mother.
The portraiture of women the entire world over have been all-too-myriad in their complexion, as they have been all-too-rich in their composition and ail-too variegated in their character. Picked up from the different times and diverse climes, even a random sample of these images soon reveals the wide spectrum of richness of their code, content and treatment, their colours and contours. There is, however, no denying the fact that the one-time idealized and idolized images of women have undergone some unprecedented metamorphosis all the world over, especially in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.
According to Indian tradition, a woman must defer to her husband in every possible respect. She must make the marital home pleasant for him. She must cook the meals, wash the dishes, and take care of the children. She must never enquire about money and she must acquiesce to her husband's every demand. But what happens when the old customs lose their power and the woman no longer believes her life should be determined in this narrow fashion? This prospect is the underlying theme of Sashi Deshpande’s novel, That Long Silence, in which her lead protagonist, Jaya, undergoes profound changes against the backdrop of an India that is also evolving. There is a shift in values and women have started acknowledging themselves the co-equals of man. Though the high hopes of Feminism have been washed away in the present social milieu, the relationship between man and woman becomes one of structured interdependence. Still the woman has to work for her liberation without resigning herself to her destiny. Gender - equality remains a myth.
A major preoccupation in recent Indian women's writing has been a delineation of inner life and subtle interpersonal relationships. In a culture where individualism and protest have often remained alien ideas, and marital bliss and the woman's role at home is a central focus; it is interesting to see the emergence of not just an essential Indian sensibility but an expression of cultural displacement. Sashi Deshpande has joined the growing number of women writers from India on whom the image of the suffering but stoic woman eventually breaking traditional boundaries has had a significant impact. The finite dimension of the relationship between man and woman has been prescribed by man and not by woman. Man who is ruled by the mastery-motive has imposed her limits on her. She accepts it because of biosocial reasons. Very often, this acceptance is not congruent with the reality that lies underneath. Modern women prefer to exercise—her choice and break away from her traumatic experiences. Women are now portrayed as more assertive, more liberated in their view, and more articulate in their expression than the woman of the past. Instead of downgrading the elements of suffering at the hands of her lover or husband or man, she has started asserting her substantive identity in action, not in words. Whether it is Devi of Githa Hariharan's The Thousand Faces of Night, or Sita of Shashi Deshpande's The Dark Holds No Terrors, or Lucy of J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, the women have established a coherent class structure—one of assertion of identity and defiance of male supremacy, and protest at being subordinated by man.
The male ego has given the woman an inferior status through the ages. Man has relegated her to a second-class citizen. A group of Indian women novelists in their, hybridity of thought and multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-religious social dimensions have conceptualized the women problem in general and middle-class and upper-class women in particular. While the gynocritics think that too many women in too many countries speak the same language of silence, some Indian women novelists like Githa Hariharan, Shashi Deshpande, Arundhati Roy, and Anita Desai have tried with sincerity and honesty to deal with the physical, psychological and emotional stress syndrome of women.
Deshpande began her literary career in 1977 as a short story writer. She is a born storyteller who proved her sustained creativity with the novel form. She is one of the widely read post–independence Indian English writers who write consciously of the issues that concern the educated middle class woman in Indian society. She attempts to closely analyze man-woman relationship within the perimeters of family and the contemporary social set-up. She primarily focuses on the captivating problems and the suffocating environs of her heroines, who struggle hard in this malicious and callous male-dominated world to discover their true identity. Deshpande has thrashed women’s problems and situations in a fast-changing social scenario. We cannot brand her either as typical Western liberated or an orthodox Indian one. She does not let herself be overwhelmed by the Western feminism or its militant concept of liberation. In quest for wholeness of identity, she does not advocate separation from the partner but a diplomatic assertion of one’s identity within marriage.
In spite of the advances in technology and science, society still marginalizes woman, based on gender distinction. In our society, there is a distorted notion that if somebody writes anything about women, that would be a feminist work and it is against masculine supremacy. It is also noted that many of the feminist writers worked out on the exaggerated or fabricated troubles of women and at the end of the story the protagonist quarrels with the male characters and publicly challenges the male domination. Shashi Deshpande differs from other feminist writers on this angle. She does not write as a feminist but she has a woman’s perceptive on her works. She deals with the genuine problems of contemporary Indian woman. With her works she could convey the depths of female psyche. Her protagonists are modern, educated young women, crushed under the weight of a male dominated and tradition bound society. Her attempt to give an honest portrayal of their sufferings, disappointments and frustrations makes her novels ‘feminist texts’. She does not make her women characters stronger than they actually are in their real life. We can see the elements of ‘Deshpandean heroines in every woman of today’s Indian society. They hold the authenticity of flesh and blood. Deshpande has handpicked these characters from real life and readers can equate these characters with themselves or somebody they know. I think this might be the reason behind her popularity.
By describing women characters with a feminist awareness, she reveals her own attitude to the concept of liberation. Her writings therefore lend themselves to a feminist interpretation, which is not necessarily based on Western type feminisms. Her female protagonists redefine the Sati- Savitri image. She tries to re-evaluate the present Indian value system and recommends the importance of equality in man-woman relationship. On this aspect, she has portrayed the ‘bossy’ nature of men and pointed out that women are turned to be mere secretaries after their marriage. A typical Indian husband considers his wife as a machine, which speed up or smoothen his day to day work. For them marriage is a means for their social and personal betterment. After accepting dowry, they use their wives as unpaid servants; Indian husbands gain more from the ‘marriage sale’. Mohan in That Long Silence is that kind of husband because he married the protagonist for his social betterment. Though Deshpande is aware of this fact, she never suggests the female chauvinism as a solution to all the problems of Indian women. This is why her voice is different among the feminist writers in India.
Deshpande generally has the heroine as the narrator, and employs a kind of stream of consciousness technique. All the novels of Deshpande hold the power to deliver the problems of middle class women in a genuine sense. Her novels conceive the elements of personal experiences. Her psychological insight into her characters put her on par with the masters of the genre. Her women have a peculiar authenticity, as they seem to be direct offshoots of their peculiar backgrounds. They don’t speak much but we have ample opportunity to read the workings of even their inner beings. Deshpande has a rare vitality of language to make her portraits striking as well as convincing.
Jaydipsinh Dodiya remarks on the style of Deshpande:
Shashi Deshpande writes in a clear, lucid prose. Her articulation of thoughts is done in such a way that the reader feels a bond with her. We feel as if she has stolen our feelings and thoughts and written about them. Her finely honed sensibility reflects the wonderful interplay of relationships and also many facets of isolation. The ambience is the everyday world with its hustle and bustle
The novelist does not indulge in verbal acrobatics. She does not believe in beating round the bush. Technique is very important for her. She hits the nail directly on the head. This clarity of perception is visible when she categorically gives definitions of love and marriage (72,73)
The recent decades have witnessed the emergence of an unprecedented awareness of woman’s situation, which has brought about shift in our appraisal of human condition. Gyno-criticism has opened up new vistas of study and research. The veritable explosion of ‘linguistic sexism’ during the past decade has been hailed as containing ‘an ocean of interest’.10 The politicization of the sexism-in-language issue has insured its future prominence for a systematic study of the complex interaction of language, sex and gender. It is believed that ways of speaking and writing are intimately tied to ways of thinking and patterns of self-and-other evaluation. Scott observes: “The mere fact that there are two sexes give rise inevitably to two ways of perceiving human life: the ‘us’ of one view and the ‘them’ of the other.” The importance of woman has been recognized in literature on various grounds. But she has rarely been defined as a subject in her own right. For centuries, the human experience has been synonymous with the masculine experience. The importance of woman deserves to be seen in the context of what Michel Calls ‘rupture’ of ‘discontinuity’ in history. Alex comfort has asserted the value of the ideology of the whole human being looking at the whole universe.12 Woman is wronged in a society dominated by male-oriented institutions and world-view, although she is the complementing principle to what Carl Jung claims to be the psychic activity, which transcends the limits of consciousness. When in determining the status and role of woman in the society “the ideal man posits opposite himself as the essential other: he feminizes it because the woman is the palpable figure of the other”. The discrimination and woman’s anomalous position have left indelible marks in the sphere of languages also. Linguists like Stanley have posited a theory of ‘negative semantic space for women. When woman move outside their traditional roles of mother and wife, they say, they enter the semantic space already occupied by the male.
Right from the beginning of their life, women are forced to feel dwarfed and acquire a highly circumscribed world-view. To quote Bolinger, “women are taught their place along with other lesser breeds, by the implicit lies that language tells about them.”(15) This unfortunate state of affairs has been responsible for many problems and confusions which women have been condemned to face.
It may be mentioned at the outset that while dealing with her female character, especially their relations with men, their drives and responses and their sexual repressions, Sashi Deshpande has made significant efforts to step out of the main current of narrative devices and linguistic techniques as developed by the masculine approach. She has tried to look at things essentially from the women’s point of view. Although writing for her, is not an act of deliberation, reason and choice and is primarily a matter of instinct, Sashi Deshpande is fully aware of the possibilities of her medium and seems to be making at times strenuous efforts to explore its possibilities. Her earnest attempts to break new grounds have made her linguistically self conscious. She keeps on trying to annex, like a resourceful poet, new verbal domains had integrate varying modes of perception and writing. Whether she succeeds or not in her efforts, one thing that is certain is that she is almost invariably eager to exploit various linguistic resources at her disposal.
Social conformity has always been obligatory for a woman than for a man. Generally, a woman’s identity tends to be defined by others. Due to her sensitive nature, Jaya is very particular about moulding her tastes in order to suit those of the rest even if her superior intellect is not satisfied. In the very beginning of the novel, we see that she tries to reason out with her father as to why she should not listen to the songs broadcast on the radio, but ultimately she keeps silent, sup-pressing her desire. Here, Deshpande has presented the theme of lack of communication. As she herself declares: “The themes of lack of communication may be over-familiar in western fiction, but in extrovert India it is not much analyzed.”
In the novel under study, Shashi Deshpande presents the meanings of silence. As she herself puts it: “You learn a lot of tricks to get by in a relationship. Silence is one of them. . . . You never find a woman criticizing her husband, even playfully, in case it might damage the relationship.”4
The novel is not an autobiography, except for certain parts dealing with the frustrations of an unsuccessful writer. Shashi Deshpande has presented an Indian woman as she is in India of the eighties and not as she should be. Veena Sheshadri says in her review;
Why has the author chosen a “heroine” who only succeeds in evoking waves of irritation in the reader? Perhaps it is because a competent writer like her is never satisfied unless she is tackling new challenges. Also, she believes in presenting life as it is and not as it should be; and there must be thousands of self-centered women like Jaya, perennially griping about their fate, but unwilling to do anything that could result in their being tossed out of their comfortable ruts and into the big, bad world of reality, to fend for themselves.5
To make the story authentic and appealing, Deshpande has used the device of first-person narrative to ensure its credibility by making the protagonist read her inner mind and thus representing the psyche of the modern middle-class learned woman.
Jaya is a modern woman rooted in tradition, whereas her husband, Mohan, is a traditionalist rooted in customs. The difference between their outlooks is so great that they fail, repeatedly, to understand each other. To Mohan, woman sitting before the fire, waiting for her husband to come home and eat hot food is the real “strength” of a woman, but Jaya interprets it as nothing more than despair. The difference in their attitude is the main cause of their failure to understand each other.
Due to differences in attitude, their marital life grows shaky and gloomy. It becomes more of a compromise than love, based on social fear rather than on mutual need of each other. The cause may be rooted in their choice of a partner. For example, from the very beginning, Mohan wanted a wife who was well educated and cultured and never a loving one. He made up his mind to get married to Jaya when he saw her speaking fluently, sounding so much like a girl whom he had seen speaking English fluently. He tells Jaya:
You know, Jaya, the first day I met you at your Kamukaku’s house, you were talking to your brother, Dinkar, and somehow you sounded so much like that girl. I think it was at that moment that I decided I would marry you. (90)
In her stream of thoughts, Jaya, too, looks at her marital relations where there is no conversation left between them. This unhappiness is reflected not only in her conjugal life, but also in social life. Her books, her stories lack anger and emotion. The publishers reject her writings. In addition, when, finally, Mohan angrily walks out of the house, she feels that she has failed in her duty as a wife. She recalls the tradition of act and retribution and compares herself with Kusum: “An act and retribution—they followed each other naturally and inevitably.” (128) When Mohan leaves the house without informing her; she feels that her husband is neglecting her in the same manner as she had done with Kusum.
There grows a silence between the husband and the wife. It creates a gap between them. Mohan keeps on asking questions, but she does not find a word to answer them: “I racked my brains trying to think of an answer.” (31) But her silence on such issues, like her own writings, puts one into doubt. As Veena Sheshadri writes: “One ends up by wondering whether Jaya has imposed the long silence on herself not out of a sense of duty or to emulate the Ideal Hindu woman of the ages gone by, hut in enter to camouflage the streaks of ugliness within her.”‘
Her negative approach coupled with her habit of discerning and analyzing every situation causes havoc in her personal life. She does not like to submit to the male-chauvinistic ideas, for her prudence does not allow her to submit before ignorance. Thus, there ensues a struggle between ignorance and prudence.
Further, her covert superiority complex makes her think not only of herself but also of others which causes a type of irritability in her marital conduct. Thus, all the troubles emerge from their unequal cognitive status.
In order to have a well-balanced sexual life, it is important that husband and wife be at same wavelength. They should supplement and not supplant each other. Further, they should know each other well physically as well as emotionally. It is this harsh reality that Deshpande tries to project through the female protagonist who, at the end, chooses to break her long silence of the past.
CHAPTER II
THAT QUEST FOR IDENTITY
At the very outset the problem of identity crisis comes to the fore in That Long Silence. The dilemma faced by the protagonist is highly intriguing when she says the words come to her freely but “Self revelation is a cruel process”(1). For her “the real ‘you’ never emerges”.
It is customary in Maharashtra to change the name of the bride when she gets married, which means a change of identity. One is identified by their name and changing that name means changing the identity. When a magazine asked for the bio-data of Jaya the protagonist, she could give only a few lines as her profile when she omitted what she thought as irrelevant facts.
“Finally when I had sifted out what I had thought were irrelevant facts, only these had remained: I was born. My father died when I was fifteen. I got married to Mohan. I have two children and I did not let a third live.”(2)
Even when she faces the dilemma of being a homemaker devoted to her husband and being a writer, she asserts herself by saying that she was the one who took decision to stop with the two children.
The indifference shown by her husband to her was a recurring process he never bothers to show interest in anything, which is of no concern to him. Though they are married for seventeen years with two children they ought to have been understanding couple for the outsiders. But in reality they were different persons. “A family somewhat like the one caught and preserved for posterity by the advertising visuals I so loved. But the reality was only this. We were two persons. A man. A woman.”(8)
Her frustration at being neglected is reflected when she says, “Reconciled to failure?” But she quickly says, “That seams cruel, but it is true.”(9).
Mohan, the husband of Jaya has least concern for the family. But he poses himself or believes that he is the one ideal husband. He wants to give his children what he did not get as a child. He is clear about himself. “he was a dutiful son, he is a dutiful father, husband, brother”(9). Jaya gets frustrated when he says, “It was for you and the children that I did this. I wanted you to have a good life. I wanted the children to have all those things I never had.”(9).
Jaya is rather honest and she could not persist the hypocrisy shown by her husband. For anything that happens, which is good the credit is taken by him but if some harm happens Jaya is blamed for that. Jaya gets angry.
It is not only her own silence that Deshpande is highlighting but the silence of each and every character in the novel from different Strata of society. Veena Sheshadri further supports this point: “The novel is not only about Jaya’s efforts to obliterate the silence that is suffocating her. It is also about the despair and resignation of women like Mohan’s mother, Jaya’s servant; Jaya has mentally disturbed cousin Kusum. It also deals with Mohan’s silence, which is the silence of a man who speaks but can find no one to listen to him” (7)
Mohan’s character is perhaps deliberately weakened in order to glorify the image of woman as a prudent wife, compromising and adaptable to the situation. Jaya describes the character of her husband thus: “His old air of authority and confidence. Then the old self vanished, leaving behind a sad, bewildered man.” (8) She further company him with Graham Greene’s Scobie, a sad. obsessed man reconciled to the future. Besides all these issues presented by Deshpande there is also depicted a distance in the parent-child relationship. Children are not even aware of where their parents are. They have been sent for picnic and now Jaya, being sensitive to people’s queries regarding the children, wants to get back home soon.
Thus, in the novel, Deshpande has presented not a woman who revolts openly in the beginning and later on reconciles to the situation, but a kind of woman who wants to revolt, ultimately does not. Her inner turmoil are so bitter that she is unable to speak them out and remains silent in order not to be frustrated and disappointed after the disapproval of her action by the society. She is unable to unfold the truth. Her image becomes like that of a bird who has wings and knows that it can fly, but, somehow, does not. In the same way, Jaya is aware of her abilities and she knows that she can expose them openly, but somehow, she does not. She always remains silent, which indicates that the traditional roles of women still have primacy over all the newly acquired professional roles.
Shashi Deshpande has attained reputation as a serious writer with fabulous potential. Her place is among the significant women writers who are concerned with the real problems of women. Her projection of women is also commendable. For the courageous and sensitive treatment of large and significant themes, her works are regarded as outstanding contributions to Indian literature in English.
Deshpande’s stories are authentic, emotional tales of the middle class educated women and of their exploitation in a conventional, male chauvinistic society. Rather than treating them as merely women’s issues, she measures these tribulations of the whole humanity. Because this tradition is what the next generation has to be followed. Thus this handicapped custom will degenerate the next generations. In her stories and novels Deshpande asks, how a healthy minded generation can live in a society where women get little respect.
The traditional patriarchal system has to be changed. Our society demands submissive, docile, fearful,
Dependent and suffering in silence natures from women. But if they overcome these boundaries and liberated from these restrictions, they learn to live in an equal footing with men and develop qualities associated with manliness such as aggressiveness, ambition, independence and courage. Our country and its old stock of values do not allow such liberation and women with bold attitude have to face difficulties to survive in the present society.
Deshpande focuses on the problems of middle class women and portrays the traditional and tabooed Indian society that provides little scope for the independent growth of a woman. In her novels, she discusses the Herculean obstacles in the path of women during their quest for identity. She peeps into the inner world of women and portrays them in a most genuine manner by applying the stream of consciousness method and a narrative technique, which goes back and forth.
The heroine of the novel, Jaya, can be called a mouth piece of Shashi Deshpande herself. The way of thinking and opinions of Jaya is indisputably that of Deshpande. Her fifth novel, That Long Silence teaches the reader that the real empowerment comes from our inner will and the capacity to reach beyond restricted and guarded forts. She successfully makes her readers realize that all path-breaking discoveries are the outcome of faith, which helps, man kind like a ladder to reach the zenith. The journey to wider horizons requires an innovative effort. What she has said in That Long Silence is true of all times in the history of mankind:
To achieve something, to become anything, you’ve got to be hard and ruthless. Yes, even if you want to be a saint, if you want to love the whole world, you’ve got to stop loving individual human beings first. And if they love you, and they bleed when you show them you don’t love them, not specially, well, so much the worse for them! There’s just no other way of being a saint. Or a painter. A writer. (That Long Silence,1)
Male characters do not have any prominent role in Deshpande’s novels. The reader can easily find out resemblance in Deshpande’s heroes and sometimes they even look monotonous. She presents these characters only as dominating male characters and seems to produce them only to trouble the women in her fiction. As Sara Grimke puts it:
Man has subjugated woman to his will used her as a means of selfish gratification, to minister to his sexual pleasure, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill.
Jaya’s husband, Mohan was that sort of a man and he married her for his social betterment. Jaya had lost her father at the age of fifteen and her brother considered her a burden and this lead her to marry Mohan. Before her marriage, Jaya had been taught the importance of the husband in the life of a woman. Vanitamami tells her that a husband is a sheltering tree. Ramukaka reminds her of the thing that the happiness of her husband and home depends entirely on her. When Jaya is leaving her home after her marriage, Dada has advised her to “be good to Mohan”. Jaya’s brother brought Mohan with money and gave him to Jaya and she tried to be good to him. This was the beginning of Jaya’s lifeless kind of married life.
The entire novel brings out the stale married life in a middle class home and Deshpande tells the story from the point of view of a wife. The women in Mohan’s family were so definite about their roles and duties. But Jaya has no clear cut idea about her role in that family. Her life before marriage and after marriage shared little similarity. Her father gave her the name ‘Jaya’ for ‘victory’. But her in-laws gave her a new name ‘Suhasini’ pointed to a docile but efficient housewife.
Concerned only about the tastes and interests of Mohan, Jaya has lost her authenticity as a human being. She has shaped herself to the wishes of Mohan. Mohan kept her away from her likings. She was forced by Mohan to given up the job she wanted to take, the baby she wanted to adopt and the anti-price campaign she had wanted to take part in. Jaya’s journey through the rough road of her nuptial life, she learns at last :“no questions, no retorts: only silence”. In accepting everything mutely, she thinks she resembles Sita or Draupadi. In her view,
The truth is that it was Mohan, who had a clear idea of what he wanted; the kind of life he wanted to lead, the kind of home he would live in, and I went along with him (25)
Deshpande’s Woman- centered novels and short stories give us a psychological insight into the working of a woman’s mind. Ever since Jaya got married, she has done nothing but wait.
Waiting for Mohan to come home, waiting for children to be born, for them to start school, waiting for them to come home, waiting for the milk, the servant, the lunch carrier man… (30)
This mechanical process of waiting fills her life with existential nothingness. Related to the theme of nothingness is the existential theme of death. Her monotonous, boring and isolated days made her to realize this,
And above and beyond this, there had been for me that other waiting… waiting fearfully for disaster, for a catastrophe. I always had the feeling- that if I’ve escaped it today, it’s still there round the corner waiting for me; the locked door, the empty house, the messenger of doom bringing news of death. (30)
Deshpande’s heroines do no give too much importance to sexual encounters unless; it serves an urgent physical need. She feels that ‘love’ is an overworked word, over burdened by the weight one put on it, just another word for human contact. Jaya’s loveless sexual life with Mohan was mechanical and gives her no satisfaction. Jaya’s relationship with Kamath was the result of her search for a human being who can understand, console and support her. Jaya’s judgment about this relation proves it.
Physical touching for me a momentous thing. It was only Appa who hugged me as a child, and after him there was Mohan. We were husband and wife and he could hold me, touch me, caress me. But it was never a casual or light-hearted thing for either of us. And then this man… I can remember how his gift of casual, physical contact had amazed me. His unawareness of my shock the first time he did it had told me what touching meant to him. Nothing. And yet that day his dispassionate tone, his detached touch, had somehow angered me. (15)
The entire novel brings out the stale married life in a middle class home. The married life of Jaya seems to have lost its freshness. As a typical Deshpandean heroine, Jaya does not decide to walk away from marriage or think about a divorce. Instead she has decided to tackle her marital problems in her own way, and make her husband realize that she has to be treated on an equal footing, without destroying the statuesque of her family life.
As she has nothing to do in the Dadar flat, Jaya gets plenty of time for introspection. In the process of analyzing herself, she discovers her true identity. She realizes that her self had been a divided self- one for the world and another for herself. But in a middle class society it is a must for a woman to fulfill the roles of wifehood and motherhood before their own identity. Deshpande’s women break out of their conventional lives and attitudes and seek an identity of their own.
Shashi Deshpande’s novels contain the seed of definite quest for a true and authentic self. By making her heroines undergo stages of self introspection and self reflection Deshpande makes them evolve themselves into more liberated individuals that what their gender of culture have sanctioned.
The self quest of these women is triggered off by some crisis in their lives. These women strive heroically and overcome their cultural conditioning and the barriers created by society in matters of tradition and manners. They finally emerge as free, autonomous individuals, no longer content to be led but desirous of taking a lead. Rather than falling into Western Feminist slot, these strengthened Indian women, work out their own individual paths towards liberation and in the process discover new facets to their selves which had been latent in them. In this discovery of selves and consequent self- fulfillment, these women pave the way for a better understanding of themselves as well as others. In charting the course of such unconventional women, Mrs. Deshpande seems to make an obvious plea that traditional society must re- mould itself in order to accept these emerging new women.
Shashi Deshpande’s achievement lies in the depiction of her central character, the introspective and inward probing Jaya. She is representative of girls brought up in middle-class families in post-Independent India, a time when most parents strove hard to provide their children with English education and exposure to Western modes of living and thinking; parents inculcated in their girls a certain duality, sometimes quite unconsciously: On the one hand an impulsive desire to be temporarily, he has no work to do. And, because he has no work, to do, Jaya too has nothing to do because, as she observes, “Deprived of his routine, his files, his telephone, his appointments, he seemed to be no one at all, certainly not that man, my husband, around whose needs and desires my own life revolved., There was nothing he needed, so there was nothing for me to do, nothing I had to do.” (24) The most trying moment comes in her life when she finds two male accomplices fondling the breasts of a narcotic-smoking well-to-do girl at the bus-stop. This experience shocks all her romantic ideas of “woman as the victim” out of her and she finds “Mohan’s beliefs, when I listed them, were like a pole that pulled me out of a quagmire of doubts.” (127) She realizes that she is secure only with Mohan, the man who provides for all her comforts and her children’s needs. In his absence, which is temporary but full of uncertainty, she becomes rudderless and others are no substitute.
The portrayal of Jaya as an awakened woman, thus, soon fades into that of a middle-class romantic heroine whose courage fails at the first encounter with reality. All her revolutionary ideas sag by the time the challenge presents itself. Her realization that her own children are distanced from her besides her husband’s accusation of having let him down are sufficient to shake her dreams of glory for her. revolutionary ideas. The narcotic-smoking girl’s contemptuous attitude shears her of all her self-assumed importance in a glass-house existence. Jaya, thus, signifies the weakness of the servile mind of the service classes. She is not even a serving woman like Jeeja. She is the wife of a middle-rank government servant whose dreamy castles and aspirations derive sustenance from one sources—the job and whatever it can yield. The whole edifice collapses if the job is taken away or is in danger. Jeeja is more independent and less confused since she is not disposed to either daydreaming or entertaining apprehensions from any quarter. She can accuse her husband and after his death, her stepson with equal facility and with as much vehemence with which she cares for them in trouble. With a remarkable clarity of mind, she seeks Jaya’s good offices in seeking better medical care for her stepson. Under similar circumstances, Jaya could not be moved by her husband to influence his C.E. at Lohanagar. Jaya,- the product of all sorts of protectionism lacks the initial aggressiveness that comes easy to an unrefined and uneducated Jeeja. The novel seems to suggest no escape for the tradition-bound Indian womanhood from her image of abala (helpless) even in the metropolitan setting of Bombay. Deshpande’s despondence is further re-I fleeted in her choice of the message of The Gita “yatthechhasu tatha kuru,” for the narrative. If the conclusion Jaya arrives at is taken as the authorial sanction, then Indian womanhood has no hopes of salvaging her image even with the westernized education. Thus, Deshpande offers an appalling spectre of the modem woman heaving a sigh of relief after realizing, “There was nothing he needed, so there was nothing for me to do, nothing I had to do.”
Another important aspect of the narrative of That Long Silence is that Jaya is heroic in her ideas and perceptions only so long as she stays on the subjective grounds of Churchgate. All her heroism sags when she shifts to the upper-floor flat at Dadar. Now, she reflects upon the ground-realities from some height. She is not involved in them because life has come to a stand still for her. The upper-floor existence signifies the, objective state as against the subjective mode at the Churchgate. No hopes are offered: if Mohan is reinstated, life will start flowing again for Jaya; if not, then she shows no sign of recovery from the shock of realization. There is no vision offered: Jaya can be happy only as a devoted but complacent wife.
CHAPTER III
IS THE PROBLEM A MIRAGE?
Does the protagonist in the novel really face the crisis of identity? From an Indian point of view the question is totally irrelevant. A woman, especially a homemaker finds her security and identity in the company of her husband. Jaya realizes this when she avoids Kamath’s sexual overtures in spite of her body wanting it. The marriage with Mohan might have ended for all practical purposes. However, Jaya cannot but reject the body’s response to Kamat’s desire for her. She felt the power and attraction of her body’s response: it was simple, direct, and irresistible. However, she resisted it and rejected it. She knew that she could not accept it. She refuses to flirt with the doctor in the hospital (an old acquaintance who expected her to) even though she asks for his help for Rajaram.
Mohan had left home without a word after Jaya uncontrollably laughed at him. His absence unnerves Jaya and she thinks, she would fall apart. She begins to vegetate. Hopelessness and despair thicken with the disappearance of Rahul who had gone with Rupa and Ashok (their family friends) on a holiday trip. Then the situation changes. Rahul comes back. Mohan sends a telegram informing her that all is, well which means that the corruption case involving him has been settled without any harm to him. But on this occasion Jaya recalls with anguish the time when she has got out of the house to walk aimlessly, unconsciously in the streets and alleys of Bombay, because she could not go on with the crushing burden of marriage put on her. But what had been her fate then? “Finally, totally exhausted, I’d gone back home.” (191) Her protest had ended in futility. Her hysterical laughter had also been a gesture of protest, besides being a shield from Mohan’s anger. Earlier, it had been the exhaustion and the feeling of insecurity that had re-tethered her to the millstone of^mar-riage. Now it is despair and hopelessness which are breaking her down. With the “All Well” news from Mohan, and the arrival of Rahul, she finds herself slipping into the grooves of her marital life again. But a change has been wrought in her situation. By penning her story, she has achieved articulation of her predicament, her constraints, her anguish and has thereby broken her silence. Secondly, the process of reflection during the course of articulation has given her an important insight: she realizes that fragmentation of the self is not possible. Earlier she had cut off the bits of her that had refused to be Mohan’s wife; she had denied certain parts of her self. But now she decides to live “whole,” retaining all that did not fit in the straitjacket of “wifehood.” She had decided not to look for clues in Mohan’s face and then give “him the answer I know he wants.” This decision fills her with vigour and buoyancy and the novel ends on the affirmative note of hope as against frustration and despair with which it had begun. The narrator concludes: “life has always to be made possible.” (193)
No act is to be done according to (her) own will by a young girl, a young woman, or even by an old woman, though in (their own) houses. (Manu Dharma)
This tenet of Manu summarizes the plight of Indian woman but the 5truth is the woman yore found fulfillment in being subordinate or submissive to the male member of the family – be it father , husband or son.. Thus was sealed the fate of woman by the ancient Indian sage, Manu. He went on to declare: “In her childhood (a girl) should be under the will of her father; in (her) youth, of (her) husband; her husband being dead, of her sons; a woman should never enjoy her own will.” The plight of Jaya is no different. That Manu’s edicts have formed an essential part of the Indian male psyche from the beginning of the Indian civilization needs no corroboration.
Phenomenal progress has been registered in economic, political, technological and industrial fields, but the social structure of the contemporary Indian remains tattooed with certain taboos when it comes to the woman-question. Acutely conscious of this constricting social milieu, the narrator-writer unfolds her story. The point of view is the first-person narrative, relating the experiences from the inside, and thus, giving them immediacy, urgency and impact. However, for an experience to achieve authenticity and consequently value, it has to be distanced. Shashi Deshpande claims to distance herself from her “own self to make it an objective account. Ostensibly, she relates it as the story of a particular couple, but the power relations in the partriarchal structure, the gender differentiation with all its ramifications, and the typical travails of a woman struggling to define herself, take on the dimension of the condition and place of the Indian woman in society. Some of the abortive attempts of the protagonist towards androgyny pinpoint the factors responsible for thwarting the achievement of this state, resulting in tremendous psychic pressures endangering her sanity. The blank rectangles, preceding each part of the book carry the suggestive connotation of “absence”or “silence” against which the protagonist writer, Jaya, is struggling.
The novel begins with gender differentiation, valorizing “ the male categories. As a child, Jaya, the narrator, nurtured shame because she could not, in spite of her father’s exhortations and admonitions, respond to and admire the classical music. She enjoyed, though furtively, Rafi and Lata, whose songs were played by Radio Ceylon. The shame continued in her adult life, after her marriage, because she secretly enjoyed the snug, maternal and affection-laden “ads” preceding the movies, which her husband, Mohan, dismissed as worthless. Non-cerebral, sentimental and moving get categorized as “mushy” and are associated with the femaleness of the woman.They are branded as inferior to the high- brow classical music of Paluskar and Faiyaz Khan—ihe cerebral aspects of the arts repressing the maleness of the man, the superior being. But why is the emotionalism of the woman to be rated down? Why is it innately worthless? Or is it really so? The given paradigm of the society, both real and fictional, docs not admit of such probings. It has been so. Hence, it shall be so. Another potent example of the gender differentiation is provided by die family tree that is sketched by Ramukaka (Jaya’s paternal uncle): “Look Jaya, this is our branch. This is our grandfather—your great grandfather—and here’s father, and then us—Laxman, Vasu and me. And here are the boys—Shridhar, Jaanu, Diiikar, Ravi...” Jaya exclaims, ‘7’/w not here!” Ramukaka looks up at her with irritation and impatience at her stupidity: “How can you be here? You don’t belong to this family! You’re married, you’re now part of Mohan’s family. You have no place here.” (142-43) But she would not find herself even in Mohan’s family tree, if someone sketched it, for women do not form part of Ramukaka’s family history. Gender differentiation becomes instrumental for the different roles that are to be played by boys and girls. Jaya had gone to stay with her paternal uncle. She noticed that it was the duty of her cousins to clear up the place of the utensils and the leftovers after everybody had eaten. Sujata and Veena, Jaya’s cousins quarrelled over this duty and suggested Jaya do it. But the suggestion was vetoed at which they angrily asked, “Then why can’t the boys do it? Jaanu, or Shridhar? Why does it have to be me and Veena?” (81) But it aroused only a derisive laughter. Jaya’s mother (Ai) gifted the flat in Dadar (left to her by Makrandmarna, her brother) to her son even though he was not very much interested in it. Ai could not think of giving it to her daughter, though it hurt Jaya and made her resentful.
A common Indian practice is to give a new name to the girl on the day of her wedding. This social practice seeks to supercede or supplant the identity of the woman. This is in sharp contrast to the continuity, nay, reinforcing of the same, familiar identity of the male—an identity which is the product of the patriarchal ethos. Mohan gave the protagonist, Jaya, the name Suhasini on the wedding day. But Jaya does not take on the name, Suhasini. She remains Jaya, the name given to her by her father who often repeated “Jaya for victory.” Her not adopting the name Suhasini becomes the manifestation of resistance to the sterotyping that is inflicted on every woman in the Indian society. However, the rejection of the name Suhasini remains only a token victory. She is Jaya and yet she knows she is Suhasini as well—Suhasini “who was distinct from Jaya, a soft, smiling, placid, motherly woman. A woman who lovingly nurtured her family. A woman who coped.” (15-16)
The novel highlights the patriarchal power structure in several man-woman relationships. A forceful example of die power of patriarchy is provided by the episode Mohan relates to Jaya who in turn puts it down in her narrative:
I can see a picture of extraordinary clarity and vividness—the woman [Mohan’s mother] crouching in front of the dying fire, sitting blank and motionless, the huddled bundles of sleeping children [Mohan, his brothers and sisters] on the floor, the utter silence, the loud knock at the door . . .
They had all had their food, except her. Though she always waited for him, their father, however late he was (and he never gave her any indication of when he would be back), she had asserted herself in this, that she would not make the children wait for him. She gave them their dinner, even the older ones, and then she cooked rice for him again, for he would not, he made it clear to her, eat what he called “your children’s disgusting leavings.” He wanted his rice fresh and hot, from a vessel that was untouched. She had just finished this second cooking and was waiting, hoping perhaps that he would not be too late, for it wouldn’t do to let the food get cold, and as for lighting the fire again, that was unthinkable.
He came in and went straight to the bathroom to wash.
By the time he returned, she had his plate ready. Hanging his shirt on a peg on the wall, he sat down, drank a glass of water, poured some into his palm to sprinkle ritually around his plate . . . and then he paused. “Why is there no fresh chutney today?” he asked, not “looking at her.
She mumbled something. The next moment he picked up his heavy brass plate and threw it, not at her, but deliberately at the wall, which it hit with a dull clang. He stood up, and jerking his shirt off the peg walked out of the house.
As soon as he had gone, the two older children, the boy and the girl, sat up.
“Go back to sleep,” the mother said to them. “It’s nothing.”
Silently, watched by the children, she picked up the
plate, cleaned the floor and the wall of all the spattered food, and wiped it. Twice the girl pleaded, “Avva, let me do it.”
“No,” the woman replied. “You go back to sleep.” When it was all done, she came back with the scrubbed plate and said to the boy, “Are you awake? Will you go and get me some chillies from next door?” (35-36)
Mohan’s reaction to the episode, “God . . . She was tough. Women in those days were tough,” (36) is found strange by Jaya, but is actually not so strange, because it is in conformity with the psyche formed by the patriarchal power structure. Women were tough. They could survive the blows of the patriarch. They went on competently with the work. But Jaya discerns the deep-rooted despair in the episode, despair so deep that it could not get articulated. It is a struggle so bitter that “silence and surrender” become the only weapons. Jaya is conscious of the power of the patriarch in the power relations. And it is against this that she occasionally chafes and feels at the end of her tether. There is no dearth of instances which reinforce the inferior status of women. Jija, Jaya’s maid-servant, is the living epitome of the oppressed Indian woman. In spite of the brutal beatings from her good-for-nothing husband »hr hu no anger, no complaint* and no equivocation in her mind as to her approach to life. She has to earn; she has to cater to her husband’s needs which include drinking liquor, and she has to live on. She does all these ungrudgingly, reticently, competently: the ideal woman portrayed in Manu’s Ordinances. She would wipe her vermillion the day her husband died, and be fidel to him even after his death. This is what she actually does when her husband dies. Not only that, she willingly brings up the children of the “other woman,” whom her husband had married (she had also died) because Jija could not give him a child. The story gets repeated after3 Jija’s husband’s deatli—only the actors change. The other woman’s son, Rajaram, steps into his father’s shoes. He beats his wife, Tara, extorts money from her and drinks liquor. Jija would not let Tara even revile or curse Rajaram: “Stop that! Don’t forget, he keeps the kumkum on your forehead. What is a woman without that?” (53) Manu could not have hoped for a more steadfast follower! Yet another instance of the sceptre used by the patriarch is the beating administered by a man to his wife in the building in Dadar where Mohan and Jaya have come to live. There is a sound of a blow, followed by soft moans of the woman. The man hisses, “Open your mouth, you bitch. Tell me where you went. Speak.” There is no answer and, therefore, more blows are inflicted. But the woman continues to cling to her silence, abandoning it only to cry softly “mother, mother, mother.” And the same silence is observed by Vimls*. Mohan’s sister, after she gets married. She does not tell her in-laws about her malady and bleeds herself] to death. When she is taken to the doctor by Mohan and Jaya, the doctor asks them in disbelief: “You mean to say . . . She didn’t tell anyone about her illness? When she was suffering so much?” (39) Vimla knew, even if she had told her in-laws about her illness, it would have been of no avail. Her mother-in-law’s response to her illness confirms this: “God knows what’s wrong with her. She’s been lying there on her bed for over a month now. Yes, take her away if you want to. I never heard of women going to hospitals and doctors for such a thing. As if other women don’t have heavy periods! What a fuss! But these women who’ve never had children are like that.” (39) This is a typically conditioned response in a patriarchal system.
Jaya has her first and the only outburst with Mohan soon after her marriage. But then she was fresh from her “Jaya for victory” past. She was also new to the accepted mores of married life. Nonetheless, she has to make the first reconcili-atory move after days of Mohan’s silence. And then she goes silent, keeping her grouses to herself, withdrawn under the shell of silence. Mohan, steeped in the norms he had learnt in his own family, says to Jaya:”My mother never raised her voice against my father, however badly he behaved to her.” (83) Should this be potent enough reason or argument for Jaya to follow suit? But Jaya does follow suit. She feels hurt and angry at the accusations Mohan flings at her during a later quarrel, but she is struck dumb: “I was full of a sense of angry confusion. What was he charging me with? And, Oh God, why couldn’t I.speak? Why couldn’t I say something? I felt foolishly inadequate, having nothing to offer him in exchange for all the charges he was pouring on to me. ... I could say nothing. I sat in my place, pinned to it by his anger, a monstrously huge spear that went through me, excruciatingly painful, yet leaving me cruelly conscious.” (120-21) When silence fails as a protective cover, hysteria becomes the only shield: ‘*/ must not laugh, I must not laugh,” (122) she keeps telling herself, considering the gravity of the situation (Mohan is involved in a case of bribery and fears prosecution, loss of job and disgrace) and fierceness of Mohan’s anger, but she docs laugh and lands herself in a more hopeless situation.
A woman is besieged with all sons of advice, when she gets married. “Be good to Mohan, Jaya,” (138) Dada had advised Jaya, when she was leaving Ambegaon. Vanitaraami had used an enveloping simile to drive home trie sanctity of a husband: “A husband is like a sheltering tree.” (137) Ramukaka had said, “Remember, Jaya, the happiness of your husband and home depends entirely on you.” (138) But Jaya had not been told a word about what to do when a marriage was over. It had been over for Kusum, Vanitamami’s sister’s daughter. But Kusum had opted for madness. She had escaped into it and later into death. Jaya chooses not to. But then she has to pay the price for it. She experiences a terrible loneliness. And it is only when her marriage is over, she understands what Kamat had meant when he said to her, “Pursuit of happiness,” is “a meaningless, unending exercise, like a puppy chasing its tail.”
The status of women has undergone a giant hike in the recent decades. Education, exposure to the fast growing world, urbanization, increasing number of career women, awareness of own strength and status in society are some of the reasons for it. The change in the status of women has revolutionized the system of family and literature too. This theme of self realization has become a major theme to literary artists, theorists, and sociologists. Though we have overcome many evil practices like child marriage and Sati, the image of Sita and Savitri is still there in the mind of Indian community, this in essence is the theme of Shashi Deshpande’s works. The conflict between the light of education and exposure and the darkness of the old tradition and the values is the essence of her novels.
That Long Silence tells the story of Jaya and the novel expands through various stages of her physical, mental and emotional developments. As every other Indian girl, she had been born and trained according to the conventional practices of the Indian society. Her girlhood was a well protected one and her father was very fond of her. He gave her much freedom with an insight that she was not an ordinary girl. Because of this influence, she failed to find friends in her schools and colleges. After the death of her father, Jaya was always terribly alone. But she could never complain of her loneliness.
In That Long Silence she makes an aesthetic plea to free the female psyche from the clutch of conventional male domineering. In short, almost all the literary ventures of Shashi Deshpande revolve round the pathetic and heart rending condition of women in a male dominated society. For this, she never suggests female domination as a solution to it. She points out the importance of self realization among Indian women. She believes that all the path breaking discoveries are the outcome of our faith, which helps mankind like a ladder to reach the zenith. Fro the very beginning of the novel, That Long Silence, she stresses this
To achieve something, to become anything, you’ve got to be hard and ruthless. Yes, even if you want to be a saint, if you want to love the whole world, you’ve got to stop loving individual human beings first. And if they love you, and they bleed when you show them you don’t love them, not specially, well, so much the worse for them! There’s just no other way of being a saint. Or a painter. A writer. (That Long Silence,1)
The theme of cultural conflict or reconciliation assumes a pivotal place in the recent fiction by Indian writers. It is more than a manifestation of the Indian writer’s constant awareness of the changing traditions. Further, the process of realizing himself creatively in English exposes him to western culture. The protagonist’s awareness of these two civilizations exhilarates her search for her own identity. They are all in search of their true image, tossing between the traditional values, they have absorbed from childhood and the new values, their education and their association with the west has bestowed open them.
Most of the women writers employ a mode of social realism. History rarely gives space to women and get it is woman who keeps history alive by carrying on the burden of the past and samskaras. The institution of marriage, eulogized by male, has been viewed by women writers as something debilitating, restricting and emotionally fragmenting for the female protagonist. Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence has a slight resemblance to Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Both Ibsen and Deshpande could draw the attention of readers on these works and both wrote their works with a sense of social commitment. So these works have a social relevance also. Both the works unveil the trueS condition of women on those particular periods. The heroines Jaya and Nora represent the caged life in a male dominated society. A Doll’s House and That Long Silence develop through the disillusionments of the heroines and their identity crisis which lead them to find out their individuality as a human being. Feminism, the meaning of marriage, theme of isolation, the quest for identity, self-realization etc. are the major themes shared in these works. Both reflect the nature of themes with their titles also.
Indian mythology depicts woman more as an absence than presence. Woman’s sacrifice, surrender and affacement are approved because the heroic failures of the females ensure the victory of the males. Deshpande very interestingly manipulates the Indian myths to create a space for women to challenge the traditions of subservience and circumscription. Her re-vision of the myth Draupadi of Mahabharata uncovers new truths and possibilities related to female psychology. Conventionally, it is believed that a married woman without her husband is unhappy and incomplete. Deshpande through re-orientation of the myth suggests that a married woman may desire to enjoy an independent existence occasionally.
Women’s double marginalization through patriarchy and imperialistic ideologies is a dominant point of reflection and discussions in all fictional works of women writers. In a middle class family, man tries to convince his family that he is the spine of the family which keeps standing it erect. That Long Silence handles this kind of marginalization and the minimizing role of women in their family. Jaya’s husband Mohan was this sort of a person and he cleverly veils his guilt by his repeated self appraisal that he was a dutiful son, he is a dutiful father, husband, brother. But Mohan’s statement breaks Jaya by her description of her nuptial life
A pair of bullocks yoked together… that was how I saw the two of us the day we came here. It was an eerie sensation I had while climbing up the stairs with him, as if there was for that one infinitesimal moment a pause in my being, and I, detached from myself, saw this… a pair of bullocks yoked together. (7)
Deshpande’s primary focus of attention is the world of women -- the struggle of women in the context of modern Indian society. Unable to fully defy traditional, patriarchal norms of society, these women characters attempt to realize and preserve their identity not only as a woman but also as a human being.
Though her novels are set in a limited milieu of Indian society, the heightened sensibility of her protagonists helps them in their attempts to carve out a niche, however small, for themselves. That Long Silence is the story of Jaya’s solitary crusade against the deafening silence that has entrapped the likes of her for generations.
In our tradition there is an old practice of stamping a woman writer, a feminist if she writes about women or their problems. But a male writer is free from this stamping and he has full freedom to write anything even it is vulgar about women. Thus our women writers are restricted by certain discrimination even in the play of creativity. This is the result of our tradition of male domination. Deshpande also had to face this problem and in certain moments, she bursts out of calling her a feminist. She wonders why male writers are never accused of writing male propaganda. She prefers to be called a writer with humanistic concerns than a feminist writer. .
Jaya is forced by events beyond her control to seek refuge at her first home, after marriage. Husband, Mohan, has been accused of misappropriation of office funds and, on the advice of some friends, is in hiding for some time. Jaya was not supported to Mohan’s business malpractices in the company. Away from her children and alone with her husband, Jaya understands dearly many aspects of her life and relationships that she had avoided or failed to realize earlier. Her decision to write as she wishes to is rendered possible only after this home coming.
Well I’ve achieved this. I’m not afraid any more. The panic has gone. I’m 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 a fragmentation is not possible (191)
Deshpande employs withdrawal as a tool for both introspection and self realization for Jaya. She withdraws not into a world of fantasy but into a world away from the suffocating circumstances of their life. Unable to adjust to the social demands on her, she attempts a temporary psychological as well as sociological withdrawal. In the former, she probes into her inner psyche and attempts to understand her personality, her hidden strengths and her potential. In the latter- sociological withdrawal- she acquires freedom and ensures a place for herself in both family and society. Then she is able to view her future more positively only after delving into her past, reliving past experiences and rethinking past ideas and attitudes.
Jaya needs a period of physical and mental withdrawal before she is able to come to terms with her expectations of life. When Mohan walks out of the Dadar flat, she is in a state of turmoil. Alone at home, with only Mukta and Nanda to nurse her back to normalcy out of her delirium and fever, Jaya is physically alienated from her family- temporarily. During the next two days she writes, pouring out all that she had attempted to suppress for years together. This writing, during the period of withdrawal, helps her realize that she alone is responsible for both her achievements and failures. She begins to see the truth of the dictum, “do as you desire” only after this period of withdrawal.
The novel ends with a remarkable outlook of Jaya that:
We don’t change overnight. It’s possible that we may not change even over long periods of time. But we can always hope. Without that, life would be impossible. And if there is anything I know now it is this: life has always to be made possible. (193)
This concept has a world-wide acceptance. Jaya’s expectation for a new life, a better way of living with a better understanding with Mohan is clear in these lines. The most important thing is that it is the ultimate self realization of Jaya. Here Jaya discovers her real problems and finds remedy for that.
The fictional world of women writers today has a wider range than the limited social one presented by their predecessors. Today, the women characters do not merely confirm to male expectations or conflicts with the male world. Jaya attempts to break not only her own silence but that of women, especially women writer, down the ages.
Form the traditional roles of daughter, sister, wife and mother, Deshpande’s protagonists emerge as individuals in their own right. They achieve this not by being brazen feminists or iconoclasts but by a gradual process of introspection and self realization. Jaya is not a rebel or conformist or trail- blazer or a self effacer. Faced with difficulties of life Deshpande’s heroines seek a path that allows them individual freedom and growth even within the constructing environs of a traditional upper- middle class family. In their reaction to role conflict in a patriarchal society, they show the strength to achieve their goals of self realization. From a state of passive acceptance they move to one of active assertion. Without surrendering to societal pressures, and without breaking away from accepted, traditional, social institutions, Deshpande’s protagonists succeed in being individuals.
Deshpande suggests the theme of self realization as a remedy to the suffering of that long silence of women in the middle class educated society than a female domination. This is in result of awareness that the ‘iconoclast’ characters like Seeta, Savitri, Leelavati etc. can nothing to do with the society. They remained helpless and could not save themselves from their dilemma. By presenting understanding, bold and courageous female characters Deshpande asks the relevance of such Sati-Leelavati characters in the social order. The heroines of Deshpande have the quality of ‘humanness’ and the sense to analyze things, which these ‘ideal women’ lack. Deshpande believes that the heroines of her woks are able to be role model for the women in India and only they can re-mould the society in a more perfected and practical way.
Shashi Deshpande stressed the idea of self realization in all her novels and demands a position for women in the society, without the support of their masculine part. But she could not escape herself from the label of ‘the daughter of a renowned dramatist Shriranga’. But this is not the problem of Deshpande only, almost all the women writers used to write the name of their father or husband after their name. This shows a kind of insecurity lay on the deeper portions of feminine mind. As their works indicate, this has to be changed; they have to have a self realization of their own.
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
Our women writers have succeeded in writing about the real problems of Indian women and their lives inside the four walls of their house. The life of Indian women is different when compared to the women of other nations. Our country is famous for educated and successful people but there is an old stock of traditional norms, which pulls back the social betterment of Indian female community such as the identity of women being incomplete, if lacking the name of their husbands or fathers along with their names. And it is also believed that woman has no independent existence even if she is educated or employed. Our women writers have graphically depicted this narrow-mindedness in many novels and other literary forms.
Like Virginia Woolf or Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande is a prose rhapsodist of feelings, sentiments and emotions passing through human consciousness. Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande specialise in depicting undulations of the female ego or self under the pressure of cn:ical human situations and emotional relationships. Their attention is also focused on feminine suffering in the complex culture stresses and strains in Indian society having strong past moorings. Shashi Deshpande explore human relationship modern Indian society particularly in husband-wife relationship, Shashi Deshpande’s women, like those of her predecessor, are tolerant, obedient and submissive. But a feminist awakening and upsurge is all along notable in their feelings and conduct The theme of the novel That Long Silence implies a belated rebellion, a postponement of aggressive behaviour for long till postponement cannot be made any more. The dam of silence and tolerance is broken and the result is flood of egotistical assertions and emotional explosion.
The wisdom that Jaya derives in this situation is to follow her will and act accordingly. If we focus our attention on the propriety or justifiability of her will or ego. the result may be mixed. Her conduct is not the model of righteousness or even right; she may be wrong or very wrong, but she is human and her reaction has a feminine modernist quality, making her a modern or new woman without abjuring the totality of the obligations of the typically traditional woman in India. As the title of the novel indicates, Jaya for very long in her past life tried to play the role of traditional woman, the embodiment of tolerance, suffering and courage. However, her courage deserts her and she becomes the modern egotistical self-assertive rebellious woman — all these being marks of modern feminist awakening. However, the desertion of the traditional submissive role and adoption of the new role do not leave the psyche of Jaya unstinted and intact. She is in great emotional turmoil. It is this emotional turmoil and suffering that the novelist depicts with rare skill.
When the human ego sinks into the flood of sufferings and its. power of toleration reaches the brink of negation, freedom to act becomes an existential necessity. Otherwise freedom to act at will may lead to perfect libertinism and disorder in social and human relationship She is torn between love and hate, liking and disliking for her own husband and life situations. Such a creature is the least entitled for the right of free action. She must follow rules and customs and should continue as an obedient and submissive wife as part of the Hindu Culture and righteous path for a married woman. Bui this would be another extreme of tyranny and mechanical subservience to a husband as if he were a god to his wife. The novelist Shashi Deshpande has chosen a humanistic bye-line, a psychological solution to Jaya’s problem. She is allowed indulgence in her own egotistical feelings. The smouldering fire of suppressed feelings, the maintenance of self-control the pursuit of the mechanical role of mother and son, the need to cater to the physical and emotional needs of husband and children must remain suspended for a while, or be forgotten and her real feminine soul, her pent up sufferings and feelings must find an outlet. The lid of self-control must be opened and left open for a while to allow the smouldering feelings an outlet.
The element of tiredness and disgust the bearing of many types of burdens while playing the role of ideal Hindu wife, the discard of her selfhood and identity as a writer and subordinating everything to the wifely role accumulate and tell upon her nerves and weaken her emotional equipoise, effort fully maintained all along. But Mohan, under the pressure of his suspension and social complications -arising from it and nervous irritations caused by humiliation and the need of hiding facts from family and friends, accuses Java of changed behaviour in the days of adversity. The undesirable and untimely accusation puts her into an aggressive and almost sadistic posture, almost unnatural and insane. A mood of aggressiveness and revenge, anger and irritation, overpower her. Jaya, like every wife, had fed Mohan and her. The smouldering firewood of bitterness, waiting. accumulated hurts and injuries, disgust with the role of a wife and mother — primarily a feminine role — and undesirable feelings of every type tolerated so far but intolerable from now onwards, go up in flames: Jaya’s disgusted laughter is a cathartic act Jaya’s laughter is a purgative act for her but a stimulant to the misery of Mohan, her husband, whose miseries are increased manifold and who in humiliation deserts the house and runs away in disgust from society because of the accusation of accepting bribe.
This is a moment of crisis in the development of the plot of the novel. It is followed by a denouncement which is very short and which is based on implication. The hint is that Mohan will come back again as he tried to bring and the phone ran times in the empty house. Jaya also visualises the future lifetime family and children for her. This is also the acme in the growth of the characters of Jaya and Mohan. The earlier revelation of the character of the hero and the heroine was only a preparation for this moment. Jaya is positively in a state of remorse and a mood of reconciliation.
Java’s preparations and training should have made her more stout and mentally and emotionally strong lady; forbearance and toleration are supposed to be the strong traits in her character and in fact they are. Had her emotional balances continued and not failed, perhaps the novel would have been different. In her failure Java is a weak woman, m her failure she is a modern woman who is weaker than the traditional woman of Hindu society. This is the new feminist element in the novel, as well as in Shashi Deshpande; The depiction of such intense feelings of toe female ego gives a sharp focus to the psychological insights of Shashi Deshpande. Ail incidents are presented psychologically. Like the female protagonists m Jane Austen’s novels, Jaya is in pursuit of self-knowledge : “Self-revelation is a cruel process. The real picture, the real you never emerges. Looking for it is as bewildering as trying to know how you really look. Ten different mirrors show you ten different faces” (p. 1). So we have Jaya trying to know herself, the narrator heroine painting her own picture of life.
Deshpande focuses on male-female rivalry as felt by Java. The egocentric vein in her temperament does not strive for the total fusion of identity with Mohan; she keeps intact a little bit of her own identity, her own individuality. As a married lady she has become dependent on Mohan and this she considers derogatory; she feels she is reduced to “the stereotype of a woman; nervous, incompetent needing male help and support” (p. 77). In married life she wishes to maintain her separate identity. Her desire for self-knowledge makes her realise her “awesome power over him” (p. 82). Dada reveals humorously another strain of her character as a child and calls her a “pampered, bad-tempered only daughter” (p. 92)
Shashi Deshpande has made the revelation of Jaya’s real nature the very core of the novel. Java is in conscious pursuit of self-knowledge. Thus, various discordant notes meet and unite her complex nature. She is a model of patience, endurance-, devotion, integrity, rebellion, defiance and disobedience at the same tune. She is all along pursuing the idea of a separate female identity. She finds it difficult to put together the different discordant acts of her personality. Thus, the young bride Suhasini is at loggerheads with the mature and seasoned Jaya who is both restrictive and destructive. The tradition-bound docile woman in Jaya is irreconcilable with the modernist individuality seeking Jaya. The loyal, loving Java — the devoted wife of Mohan — is irreconcilable with the epicurean Jaya relishing a momentary embrace with Kamat. So, the novelist is able to impart a complex identity to Jaya, focusing at the same time on the egoistic and the altruistic aspects of womanhood-
WORKS CITED
PRIMARY SOURCE
Deshpande, Sashi, That Long Silence, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 1988.
SECONDARY SOURCES
K.K. Sharma. Ed., Feminism and Literature : New Points of View (Delhi : K..K. Publications. 1996), pp. 80-89.
