Breaking the Silence: The Quest for Self in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terror

Authors:

Sultan, Akash Kumar

Keywords:

middle-class women; silence; subjugation; consciousness; selfhood;

Abstract:

Shashi Deshpande, one of the prominent Indo-Anglian writers, captures the tension, trauma and turmoil of the post-colonial Indian women in her writings. Her novels deal with the struggles, daily battles of the middle- class female characters whose stories remain neglected, unheard and silent in the patriarchal society. Though Deshpande's protagonists remain in subjugated condition, but they attempt to show resistance by breaking silence and learning to speak. She uses consciousness of the protagonists as the site to challenge the repressive forces that subjugate, silence women in the Indian society. Her novels are her attempts to showcase the quest of self-identity. This paper aims to show Saru's, the protagonist of The Dark Holds No Terror, pursuit to attain selfhood and subjectivity showing resistance against gender stereotyping in a male-dominated a society.