Question- Shashi Deshpande's craft as a novelist a study with special reference to 'That long Silence'

Or
Shashi Deshpande as a Novelist.

Answer - 

Shashi Deshpande is a well known name in the field of Indian literature. She is one of the prominent contemporary women writers in India writing in English. She has created ripples in the society of male domination by taking women as women seriously in her novels. She takes us inside the consciousness of her women characters to present their plight, fears, dilemmas, contradictions and ambitions.

Shashi Deshpande emerged on the Indian fictional scene in the 1970s. She has nevertheless created a place for herself in the galaxy of Indian women novelist in English. She excels in projecting a realistic picture of the middle class educated woman who, although financially independents, is still facing the problems of adjustment between idealism and pragmatism. She is almost in comparable for her portrayal of Indian middle class women with their turmoil's convulsions, frustrations, endurance, and "That long silence' with has been their lot for many centuries. Her novels are mainly based on the lives of women and their problems particularly in the Indian context for this reason, she has been labelled a "Feminist". She explored the realities behind the silence of women. She raised her voice against torment on women and also created mass awareness in the matter through her writings. Her books are translated into several Indian languages. Her novels are deeply rooted in India, the character settings and the conflicts are inherently Indian.

Shashi Deshpande is a leading women novelist in the Indian Literary Horizon with eight novels, four books for children, over eighty short stories and a screen play to her credit. She has won the prestigious Sahitya Academy Award for her fifth novel "That Long Silence' in 1989, she was awarded Padma Shri in 2009. In the context of the contemporary Indian writing in English. Shashi Deshpande is the confident voice, who explores individual and universal female psyche. She has gained reputation as a serious writer with tremendous potential. Most of her protagonist are women who are educated and exposed to western ideas. Women of the present day society stand on the threshhold of social change in an enviable position. They are intensely aware of the injustice heaped on them. Unlike their counterparts a generation ago. However, Shashi Deshpande does not believe that women are inferior beings who must remain passive and submissive. This awakening of the woman's consciousness as portrayed by Shashi Deshpande in her novels deserves the extent of articulation of a woman's point of view which needs to be assessed from a new perspective.

Shashi Deshpande uses first person narrative to register women's protest against the male dominated society in the novel "That long silence'. She uses double narratives in "The Dark Holds No Terrors' to give a realistic portrayal of Saru's innerself. 'Roots and Shadows', her first novel depicts the agony and suffocation experienced by the protagonist Indu in a male dominated and tradition-bound society "The Dark Holds No Terrors,' her second novel, is all about male ego where in the male refuses to play a second fiddle role in marriage.

"That Long Silence' is about self doubts and fears which Jaya under goes till she affirms herself. "The Binding Vine' deals with the personal tragedy of the protagonist Urmi to focus attention on victims like Kalpana and Mira, victim of man's lust and woman's helplessness. In 'A Matter of Time', Deshpande for the first time enters into the world of metaphysical philosophy. It is about three women from three generations of the same family and the way they cope with the tragedy that overwhelms them.

In "That Long Silence', Jaya under goes great mental trauma because she has refused to go into hiding with her husband as an enquiry against his financial irregularities is on. Like the mythological character Gandhari, she kept her eyes shut to her husband's illegal earning at office. Even her journalistic writings are circumscribed by her husband's likes and dislikes. Finally she is able to evaluate her expectations of life. After having rejected traditional role models. Deshpande's protagonists display great strength and courage in evolving, as their own role models as per the requirement of their social mileau. Her characters go through a process of self examination before they reach self actualization. Thus Shashi Deshpande has been successful in creating strong women protagonists who refuse to get crushed under the weight of their personal tragedies and face life with great courage and strength. Comparatively, they appear to more life- like and more akin to the educated, middle class, urban indian woman of today.

Speaking of the narrative technique in That Long Silence,' Shashi Deshpande avoids the simple technique of straight forward narration in the novel. She employs the flash back method instead to draw her readers attention. The first chapter deals with the present but the later chapters are more anachronic with the final chapter ending in the present. Critic Shama Futehally writes." "It is a device which is useful either when some element of suspense is indeed. For this novel chronologically charity is essential as the reader already has to cope with an abundance of characters and their complex interactions."

"That Long Silence' is very close to real life experience and achieves its credibility from the fact that the protagonist Jaya is well educated person possessing a literary sensitivity corresponding with her fictional role. The Sahitya Academy Award winning novel is about Jaya's hopes, fears, aspirations, frustrations and later triumph in life. Critic Y.S. Sunita Reddy observes; "The narrative with its slow unknotting of memories and unravelling of the soul is like an interior monologue quite similar to the stream of consciousness technique employed by Virginia Woolf."

Shashi Deshpande's best work is "That long Silence'. The narrator Jaya an upper middle-class housewife with two tenage children, is forced to take stock of her life when her husband is suspected of fraud. They move into a small flat in a poorer locality of Bombay, giving up their luxurious house. The novel reveals the hollowness of modern indian life where success is seen as convenient arranged marriage to an upwardly middle husband with the children studying in "good" schools. The repititiveness and sheer drabness of the life of a women with material comforts is vividly represented "the glassware that had to sparkle, the furniture and curious that had to be kept spotless and dust free, and those clothes, God, all these never ending piles of clothes that had to be washed and ironed, so that they could be worn and washed and ironed once again" [That Long Silence] 57"

Though, she is a writer, Jaya has not achieved true self expression. There is something almost suffocating about the narrowness of the narrator's life.

The novel contains nothing outside the narrator's narrow abmit. India's tradition and philosophy have no place here, we get a glimpse of Hinduism in the numerous fasts observed by women for the well being of husbands, sons or brothers. Jaya's irritation of such sexist rituals is palpable. It is clear that she feels strongly about the ill-treatment of the girl-child in India. The only reference to India's "glorious" part is in Jaya's comment, that in Sanskrit drama, the women did not speak Sanskrit. They were confined to Prakrit, a .less polished language, imposing a kind of silence on them. In spite of her English education, Jaya is like the other women in the novel, such as the half crazed Kusum, a distant relative, or Jeeja, their poor maid servant. They are all trapped in their own self created silence and are incapable of breaking away from the supportive yet stifling extended family.

In "That Long Silence," Deshpande raises the strong voice of protest against the male dominated Indian Society and against man made rules and conventions 'That long Silence' is a first person narrative; the story is unfolded by Jaya, ironically again symbolizing victory, while in the actual life situation, she is supposed to lead a traditional, passive life like; "Sita following her husband, Draupadi, stoically sharing her husband's travails... [That Long Silence]"11.

She refuses these role models because in modern life these references are simply allusions of the past with no relevance to the present while these legendry women followed their husbands willingly, Jaya is accompanying Mohan everywhere because of compulsion. There is a frank, even brutal, realization of this evil necessity of her conjugal life. "Two bullocks yoked. together it is more comfortable for them to move in the same directions. To go in different directions would be painful and what animal would voluntarily choose pain?" [That Long Silence 12]"

Jaya, the protagonist is the very early life, realizes that 'girl child' is her first problem. The preference shown to the male children is because they are permanent members of the family and are inheritors of the family name. The novel also interrogates the nature of the relationship between the narrator and her husband and the disposition of their married life. Their relationship is affected adversely by their incapability to understand each other. Due to lack of communication the growing 'silence' between them, their marital life grows unsteady and dismal. For the first time, Jaya feels a strange emotion of anger in the unjustified accusation by Mohan that he has taken bribe for her and her children. The very idea of "being a partner in the Crime and ally, when she has no role to play in the whole affair is revolting (That Long Silence 31) But this anger transformed into a 'long silence because for Jaya 'Silence and surrender is the real strength of an Indian woman. Shashi Deshpande has not portrayed Jaya as a feminist character. Jaya hovers between submission and assertion, the former rather a more dominant note in her character. But the repeated allegations and accusations of her husband compel her to react sharply. She (Jaya) ones lells kamat (her neighbour) * .......no women 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* (That Long Silence 147). There are three district phrases of feminism. The early means imitation of role models, Jaya has already crossed that limit. The first phase of imitation is followed by angry and protest, the major thrust of the novel is the depiction of this second phase in the life of Jaya. Whenever she looks back on her life, there is hardly any sense of nostalgia or yearning for the past; it is much more a feeling of suppressed angry which can burst out any time. The last phase of feminism that of articulation and assertain are only hinted in this novel as one of the future possibilities for Jaya.

The whole novel is a preparation for that articulation which will break her long silence. The reader is given sufficient hint that she is going to break her passivity; even Jaya asserts "will have to erase the silence between us, but the actual drama is postponed to the future" (That long silence 192). Having realized her position, Jaya would not accept the earlier image of a pair of bullocks yoked together, signaling a loveless couple. She comes to realize that life can always be made possible. The earlier impulsive Jaya becomes a mature women, and with her realization, shadow that befall between wife and husband tends to disappear.

The novelist tries to establish that it is not only the patriarchal set up which is responsible for the women's condition in the Indian society. The responsibility also lies within the victim to refuse, to raise a voice and to achieve the goal. The novel also traces the growth of the protagonist from a state of weakness, feeling of failure to that of relaxation. She accomplishes this through self assessment and self criticism. Shashi Deshpande told Joel Kuortti in an interview.

The long silence is a hysterical novel in the sense that inside of me I was kind of screaming, but when it came out as you said, one steps back from that screaming self and one says, look Jaya is very analytical, there is no point at which she gives way to her emotions or self pity or anything, Throughout she is analyzing herself, her life her relationship, and I think that is how it has been for me. I think it was really the culmination of the anger and all the repression, every thing came out in that long silence (sharma 55).

Shashi Deshpande's "That Long Silence' is an expression of the silence of the modern indian wife. Although many women writers tried hand at expressing this long silence that had turned woman into non entities, they could only provide psychological depths to their characters. They neither created unreal sentimental romances or finally succumbed to the temptation at mouthing feminist ideology. But Shashi Deshpande success lies in her representation of real life experience. She realistically depicts the inner conflicts of Jaya and her quest for the self or identity. Jaya represents half the humanity. The novel sustains it's credibility from the fact that Jaya is a convent educated English speaking lady with a literary taste. It portrays the conflict raging between the narrator's spilt self; the writer and the housewife. About "That Long Silence'.

"And then I wrote That long silence' almost entirely a woman's novel nevertheless, a book about the silencing of the one half of the humanity. A lifetime of introspection went into this novel, the one closest to me personality; the thinking and ideas in this are closest to my own."[Prasad 58]"

...Prev | Next...