Abstract:
Shashi Deshpande, a leading novelist of the feminist genre shows
women as practical beings, possessing an urge to excel in their lives.
Amidst the group of other writers, she stands out because of her adept
handling of the intellectual aloofness experienced by the working woman
during the course of her struggle to maintain her individuality. In her
fiction, she has dealt with almost every issue raised by the women's
movement in India regarding the subordination of women like rape, child
abuse, son preference, denial of self expression, deep inequality, deep
seated prejudice, violence both mental and physical, binds of domesticity,
etc. In the words of Rani Dharker, “Deshpande, on the other hand,
perhaps because she is writing from the periphery of India sounds more
authentic, portraying as she does the middleclass Indian woman waging
her ordinary life battles