REDUCTION OF GENDER ROLE : A STUDY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO SHASHI DESHPANDE’S NOVELS - THE DARK HOLDS NO TERROR AND THAT LON

Shashi Deshpande has emerged on the Indian fictional scene in 1970 s. She has carved a niche for herself in the galaxy of Indian women novelists in English . The present paper entitled “ Reduction of Gender Role ....” tries to explore the issues like gender discrimination and social conditioning of girl child .Woman has to conform to the norms in a patriarchal set up of family. But when she refuses to be , confronts uneasiness in the relationships . Saru and Jaya, reflect an emotional fracture of women on account of gender discrimination and male dominant social set up exist in the family. Women lose their rights, identity and sustainability which culminates in the symbolic reduction of their gendered balance.

Key words : girl child, gender discrimination, reduction, education, independence, identity.

INTRODUCTION :

Shashi Deshpande a well-known woman novelist of the contemporary India was born in Karnataka and educated in Bombay and Banglore. She won the Sahitya Academy Award for the novel That Long Silence in 1990. Shashi Deshpande received a good deal of attention of the critics, scholars and media . She exercises her focus on the plight of social conditioning of woman. Projecting woman as a protagonist, Deshpande tries to reveal the problems of women that is gender discrimination, lack of identity, fruitless rebel against the subordinate position in the family and finally her helpless submission before the male domineer .Woman becomes only the object of love, marriage and sex .Through this age-old oppression she loses her birth right of gender equality . Ultimately the tradition bound family restricts the flowering of