About the Author:
Shashi Deshpande is an award winning Indian Novelist. She is the second daughter of famous Kannada dramatist and writer Shriranga. She was born in 1938 Karnataka and educated in Mumbai and Bengaluru. She published her first collection, of short stories in 1978, and her first novel, “The Dark Holds No Terrors” in 1980. She is a winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award, for the novel “ That Long Silence”. Her novels reveal the man-made patriarchal traditions and uneasiness of the modern Indian woman in being a part of them. Shashi Deshpande uses this point of view of present social reality as at is experienced by women. As she said in one of the interviews, she is not a feminist but has brought out the women’s position in the Indian context.
Feminism: Feminism is an expression of resentment at the unjust treatment meted out to any woman. In literature, it refers to any mode that approaches a text with foremost concern for the nature of female experience. The inequalities against which the feminist have raised their voice of protest-legal, economics and social restriction on the basic rights of woman can be traced throughout history. The term 'feminism' has its origin from the Latin word lemina' meaning 'woman' (through French leminisme'). It refers to the advocacy of women's rights, status and power at par with men on the grounds of 'equality of sexes'. In other words, it relates to the belief that women should have the same social, economic and political rights as men.
Feminism in Indian Context:
The feminist prospects and the feminist movements in the west have had some influence on the women’s movements in developing countries like India. Unlike the western feminist movements, India’s movement was initiated by men and later joined by women. The efforts of this men included abolishing sati, abolishing the disfiguring of widows, banning the marriage of upper caste Hindu widows, the custom of child marriage, promoting women’s education, obtaining legal rights for women to own property and regulating the law to acknowledge women’s status by granting their basis rights.
Shashi Deshpande's Views on Feminism:
As an author of the '70s and 80s', Deshpande mirrors a realistic picture of the contemporary middle-class, educated, urban Indian woman. Her novels portray the miserable plight of the contemporary middle-class, urban Indian woman and also analyze how their lot has not changed much even in the twentieth century. She has made bold attempts at giving a voice to the disappointments and frustrations of women despite her vehement denial of being a feminist. A look at her novels reveals her treatment of major women characters to show how they are related to women's problems.
Shashi Deshpande has exposed the gross gender discrimination and its fall-out in a male dominated society in her first novel “Roots and Shadows”. “The Dark Holds No Terrors”, her second novel, is about the traumatic experience the protagonist Saru undergoes as her husband refuses to play a second-fiddle role. In this novel, Deshpande also discusses the blatant gender discrimination shown by parents towards their daughters and their desire to have a male child.
“That Long Silence”, the third novel, is about Jaya who, despite having played the role of a wife and mother to perfection, finds herself lonely and estranged. Jaya realizes that she has been unjust to herself and her career as a writer. Her fear even discourages her from acknowledging her friendship with another man.
These three novels belong to her early phase and portray a mild form of feminism. “The Binding Vine”, her fourth novel, deals with the personal tragedy of the protagonist Urmi to focus attention on the victims like Kalpana. Urmi narrates the pathetic tale of Mira, her mother-in-law, who is a victim of marital rape.
“Small Remedies” is about Savitribai Indorekar, an ageing Hindustani music, who avoids marriage and a home to pursue her musical genius. She has led the most unconventional of lives, and undergoes great mental trauma due to the opposition by a society that practices double standards — one for men and the other for women.
Unlike the early feminist authors who chose to portray the subjugation of women in ordinary life, Shashi Deshpande moved a step further and made educated women as the subject of her writing and voiced the inner agony of such women who have to depend on their male counterparts for the choices and decisions of their life.
I Am Not a Feminist:
“I am not a feminist, i am a human being and i write about other human beings who happen to be women," Deshpande said on sunday to attend a public meeting on `Gender and Censorship', organised by Asmita - the organizer of Resource Centre for Women. In an interview with the Times of India, Deshpande spoke about her works, issues concerning women and various other subjects. Most of her characters are true to life and deal with problems most women would not want to talk about - rape in marriages, lust and breaking free from traditions and stereotypes. In fact the subject matters spoken by Deshpande’s women were not spoken by women even the educated and privileged women thirty years ago. But today more and more women are talking about such issues freely. It is difficult for women to break away from stereotypes, more so in the lower strata of society. She said, "When women have money, it definitely becomes easier, money makes things work easily”. The sensitivity towards women, their problems and issues are changing. "It is a slow change, but there has definitely been a change," she said. The change is percolating from the urban society to the rural society. “A woman has to do twice as much to prove herself half as good as a man”, Deshpande said. When asked if books help in changing mindsets, she said, "books do not have an immediate influence and change conditions like lightning which burns things in a flash, but they do work as catalysts.". "The writing on women's issues has changed perceptions, brought issues to the forefront," she has added. Perhaps, her work has helped break the silence on a number of issues, which were once a taboo to talk about.
Conclusion:
Shashi Deshpande’s novel deals with the theme of the quest for a female identity. Deshpande’s feminism is certainly not cynical or nihilistic. She analyses the universal significance of the woman’s problem, thereby transcending the feminist perspective. She believes that feminism is “…. very much an individual working out her problem.” The woman’s increasing involvement rather than detachment in her predicament as expressed in her novels reveals the positive, humanistic side of Deshpande’s feminism. Hence it can be concluded that ‘Deshpande is not a feminist, but a woman who spoke on women’s problems and their importance in family and society.’
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