The Role Of Women In Shashi Deshpande's Novels

Shashi Deshpande in most of her novels presents the middle class educated women as they constitute a large segment of contemporary Indian society. She speaks about the clash between tradition and the influence of modernity. In her novels, the Indian middle class woman is engaged in an unconscious struggle to release herself from the stranglehold of a tradition-bound society. She tries to transcend it but fails. She raises a protest against social customs and shows a zeal for an escape. The conflict in her protagonists is resolved through their involuntary submission to traditional roles. Thus despite the impact of globalization, they remain intrinsically Indian in sensibility. The issues regarding subjugation of a woman both by parents and husband are found in bounty in the

Her education makes her see the difference in the treatment of a son and a daughter by the same parents. It makes her see the scorn to which a girl is subjected to; since she has very little to do with the propagation of the family lineage. The male child is considered superior, for he will light the funeral pyre and perform all rites including ‘Shraddha’ to placate the soul of the dead: “who lit the pyre? She had no son to do that for her. Dhruva had been seven when he died” (21). When Saru expresses her wish to stay with her mother all life, her mother says: “you can’t” (45). But her brother Dhruva can stay, for “He is different. He is a boy” (45). This gender difference in her mother’s treatment of her son and daughter enrages Saru. She rebels against her: “If you’re a woman, I don’t want to be one” (63). It is this which makes Saru resent the role of a daughter. She looks forward to the role of a wife with the hope that it will give her relief from the oppression of the mother, it will give her freedom: “I had come away from my parent in a fever of excitement after the last battle. The die was cast, the decision taken, my boats burnt”