Silence as an Extended Metaphor in the Delineation of Introspective Women

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