Question- Describe Jaya's Quest for self in "That Long Silence' by Shashi Deshpande.

or
Who is the protagonist of the novel 'That Long Silence?

Answer - 

Shashi Deshpande, the Sahitya Akademi Award winner for "That Long Silence' writes women and their quest. Her protagonists are educated middle class women who become hopeless victim of marriage life and its responsibilities. In 'That Long Silence', Jaya is the protagonist of the novel, having got in the current of the traditional role of a woman wife and mother has suppressed her existential self. Though she has a happy home with his well earning husband and two children Rati and Rahul and material comforts, been the boredom of the unchanging pattern, and unending monotony. In her attempt to rediscover her 'true self', she finds herself as an unfulfilled wife, a disappointed mother and a failed writer.

Jaya's husband Mohan is involved in corruption in office at the instigation of Agarwal in contacts, tenders and commissions. When they are not able to do favour for minister's relative, they are forced to face enquiry. Agarwal adviser Mohan to move to from Churchgate house to somewhere to avoid unnecessary publicity and shame. Jaya's family moves to Makarand mama's flat in Dabar. Fortunately their children are away with the neighbour's family Mohan who is disturbed because of the final disgrace which the enquiry will bring, takes excuse by saying that he has engaged in malpractices to keep his wife and children comfortably, "I did it for you, for you and the children." (P.10) This creates a real sense of anger in Jaya. Her stays with Mohan in silent resentment paves the way for self-evolution and self criticism in her re-examination of her married life, she discovers that she is not really happy. Happiness in their married life is only on illusion. Jaya does not enjoy her individuality like my third women Sita following her husband into exile, Savitri dogging death to reclaim her husband, Draupadi stoically sharing her husband's travails Jaya follows Mohan to Dabar flat. She thinks -

"Two bullocks yoked together ......... it is more comfortable for them to move in the same direction. To go in different directions would be painful and what animal would voluntarily choose pain"? (P.12)

She is named 'Jaya' by her father which means 'victory'. Her father has brought up her as an 'individual'. Later Mohan has given her name 'Suhasini' which means a soft smiling, placid, motherly women. Like Bharati Mukherjee's protagonist Jasmine loses her identity by being called by several names, Jaya also loses herself and identity. Her aunt vanitamani's advice is, "a husband is like a sheltering tree" (P.32) Jaya who is curious and shrewd and questions each and everything maintains absolute silence after marriage. She recollects her ajji's words:

"I feel sorry for your husband, Jaya whoever he is". she had said me once.

What for, ajji?

Look at you-for everything a question, for everything a retort. what husband can be comfortable with that?

Though there is no question, there is no comfort in her married life. That silence seemed heavy with uneasiness" (P.27)

Jaya's servant maid jeeja has the opinion:

"Don't forget he keeps the Kumkum on your forehead. What is a woman without that" (P.53) Jaya plays the role of a typical Indian wife at the loss of her real self. Women are prepared to face one thing marriage irrespective of their education, status, and intellect. Mohan's mother and sister also have undergone all the tortures of patriarchal society. Mohan's mother silently bears the insult implicated upon her.

"Silently watched by the children. She pickedup the plate, cleaned the floor and the wall of all the spattered food, and wiped it..... when the boy finally drifted off to sleep, she was still sitting there in front of the five, silent, motionless" (P.36)

Mohan thinks the silence of her mother is her strength. But Jaya feels the silence is the result of despair. "I saw a despair so great that it would not voice, itself. I saw a struggle so bitter than silence was the only weapon. Silence and surrender" (P.36). His mother had died while she gets herself aborted. Mohan's sister who has an ovarian tumour with metastes in the lungs, like her mother silently undergoes suffering and dies at last. Jaya is in no way different from these women. She also cultivate the tradition of silence and plays her role as wife and mother skillfully. When Mohan is deprived of his busy routine life, he becomes restless because he is not used to 'waiting. But Jaya feels always she has been waiting.

"Wait until you get married. Wait until your husband comes, wait until you go to your in-laws home. Wait until you have kids. Yes ever since I got married. I have done nothing but wait. Waiting for Mohan to come home waiting for the children to be born, for them to start school, waiting for them to come home......" (P.30).

She becomes feel up with the kind of waiting for something or somebody and expects some disaster which could bring a change in the routine life. Jaya is not a feminist. She plays the traditional role of woman dedicated wife and a dutiful mother Not able to bear his allegation that she fails in her duty to support him at the time of crisis, she begins to laugh without control. Insulted and irritated Mohan leaves the house that leads her to engage in self-introspection. She want's to shout at Mohan, "I didn't mean to laugh, I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at everything marriage, us, this whole absurd exercise we call life." (P. 55).

Jaya's distant cousin Kusum never voices her opinions. Since she has internalised all her anger and maintain silence, she takes rescue in insane world in her madness, she can be gloriously' herself. "Entry into insure world is a kind of escapism". When this sane world is too much for her. She jumps into the well and kills herself. Like Kusum there are so many women in the society who silently swallow their pain.

Kamat, a lonely young widower lives above Jaya's apartment. Jaya's writing receive comments, criticism and encouragement from Kamat. Jaya enjoys her intimate friendship with kamat by sharing her opinions and ideas. about her stories which she could not do with Mohan: She admires him for treating her as his equal and only in his presence. She can be in her own self.

"If had been a revelation to me that two people, a man and a woman, could talk this way: with this man. I had not been a woman I had been just myself." (P.153).

Infact Mohan encourages her to write but the way he expects. Her writing is also a kind of breaking the silence. Rajeswarisunder Rajan argues :

"Deshpande's protagonist breaks her silence at one level through the act of writing itself at another level through renegotiating interpersonal relations with in the family."

One of her stories has won the prize where she has made a mention that a man who could not reach out to his wife except through her body. This hurts Mohan because he is afraid that people would think that the man is Mohan and woman is Jaya. Jaya doesn't want to jeopardize her marriage and thereby she changes her style of writing. As a result, all her stories have been rejected and she stops writing. Even kamat suggests her to give her personal view and skew out her anger. He points out lack of anger in her stories.

This is the problem of all women writers. They tuned their mind and ways of life according the need and expectations of men. Since Mohan thinks for a woman, to be angry is to be unwomanly, Jaya set her mind not to be angry even in writing. She confines her thoughts and defines her role according to the expectation of her husband. Naturally she has lost her 'true self. Anger which has been internalized has tuned her to be nervous and incompenent. She says:

"............no woman can be angry. Have you ever heard of an angry young woman?

A woman can never be angry; she can only be neurotic, hysterical, frustrated" (P. 147)

Jaya has shaped her life according to the desire of Mohan and loses her own self and identity. She admits :
"It hadn't been Mohan's fault at all. And it had been just a coincidence, though it had helped, that just then Mohan had propelled me into that other kind of writing. 'I encouraged you'. he had said to me. He was right. But, I went on with my chest-beating out of penitence. Mohan had not forced me to do that kind of writing. I'd gone into it myself with my eyes wide open" (P.148) This kind of self-realization helps her to find the reason for the unhappy married life. She understands the consequences of suppressed anger. Her silence is nothing but suppressed anger. Silence or lack of communication, is the cause of 'marital incompatibility.' She decides to break her long silence to restore peace and happiness. 'S.P. Swain Observes',

"The tragic predicament of the Deshpande protagonists is the outcome of male domination in a patriarchal culture. Their silent suffering is socio- psychic in nature. In her quest for identity, the Deshpande, protagonist moves from despair to hope, from self negation to self assertion. Her struggle throughout is to attain wholeness, completeness and an authentic selfhood".

She bids good bye to her silence, anger and resentment. She realizes herself-worth and decides to give up the pre-fixed norms of the society.

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