LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 14:7 July 2014
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Psychological Well-being within Patriarchal Borders:
A Reading of Shashi Despande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors and
Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things

Dr. Jyoti Singh

Abstract

The present paper intends reading Shashi Despande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things with a view to analyse how women are conditioned to acquire femininity in a patriarchal set up and how at times it hinders in attainment of an authentic selfhood. It also proposes to discuss the concept of community as envisaged by the feminist psychologists and to explore if and how the characters in the novels under study react to the community which is associated with the patriarchal discourse and in which women have to perform the role scripted for them.

Sharing Experiences

Women writers have used fiction to explore and share their experiences. They do not write in a vacuum but hold a mirror to the reality. The myriad conflicts, which they face in everyday lives, are woven into the fictional world of their creation. To probe the psychological wellness of women who form half the population of the world I shall choose two novels by Indian women writers namely The Dark Holds No Terrors by Shashi Despande and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy to probe their psychic well-being in a patriarchal set up. The experience of women by virtue of their being women is undeniably universal.

The tenets of the stone centre psychologists based at the Stone Centre Wellesley College, USA would form the tools to probe how women confront the dichotomy/ dilemma of what the community wants them to be and what they want to be. Endeavour would be to analyse whether this tension causes conflicts and crises in their lives or hinders or damages their feeling of well-being.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Dr. Jyoti Singh
Head of the Department
Department of Post Graduate Studies
Regional Institute of English
Chandigarh Administration
Sector 32 C
Chandigarh
India
jyo_sing441@yahoo.in
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