LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:6 June 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Journey From Silent-Suffering To Self-Assertion:
A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s A Matter Of Time

Ms. B. Jeyapushpa, M.A., M.Phil.

Abstract

Shashi Deshpande occupies a unique position among the contemporary Indian women novelists in English. She deals with the struggles and adjustments of the middle class Indian woman who represents most Indian women. Her novels are about women especially in the context of marriage. Shashi Deshpande’s chief thematic concern is with a woman’s struggle in the contemporary Indian society, her efforts to find and preserve her identity as wife, mother, and most of all as a human being. Women characters play an important role in all her novels. Her protagonists find themselves enmeshed in desire and despair, love and hate, withdrawal, and alienation, suppression, and oppression and above all discord and male chauvinism. In the novel A Matter of Time, the major characters are Kalyani, Sumi and Aru. The novel’s main focus is on the women of the three generations of the same family who are the victims of male chauvinism. In this novel, Shashi Deshpande gives a detailed description of the male chauvinism prevalent in the society. The women characters Kalyani and her daughter Sumi suffer a lot because of the desertion of their husbands. The story focuses on how Sumi developed as a successful woman by shouldering the responsibility of the family after her husband Gopal deserts her and her three teen-age daughters. The novel is split into three parts ‘The House’, ‘The Family’ and ‘The River’. The three parts of the novel trace particularly Sumi’s emergence as a successful mother of three daughters, her identity as a woman, and as a creative writer. Shashi Deshpande has brilliantly spun the novel by inter-mingling the third person narrative and the flash back technique as a tool of her narration. The technique helps her successfully in depicting her protagonist’s journey from silent-suffering to self-assertion.

Introduction

In the fourth United Nations Conference on Women held in Beijing, Mrs. Hilary Clinton, External Affairs Minister of USA, stated, ‘‘For too long the history of women, has been a history of silence. However, it is now no longer acceptable for the world to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights’’ (Jandial 49). Violence against women whether physical, mental, or emotional, is an issue that crosses all boarders and all classes of women. Right from the ancient days, India is a patriarchal society. Indian woman has been a silent sufferer for years. She has been covered with thick layers of prejudice, convention, ignorance, and reticence in her life. She is considered as an inanimate object, she is expected to be gentle, patience, gracious and forgiving.

Gender based inequality has been there in our country for many ages. Unfortunately, gender discrimination has assumed a systematic form in our patriarchal society. The words, we generally associate with the concept of an ideal woman are self-denial, sacrifice, patience, devotion, and silent-suffering. A woman is expected to depend upon someone- father, husband, son- throughout her life. With the influence of western education and culture, the Indian woman has re-emerged as new being.

It has been noticed that women writers mostly focus on women characters, their lives and experiences in their writing. A great deal of feminist literature has condemned the patriarchal ideology. It examines the ways in which the subordination of women is naturalised. All feminists are indignant at the sufferings inflicted upon them.

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

Ms. B. Jeyapushpa, M.A., M.Phil.
Assistant Professor/English
P.S.R. Engineering College
Srivilliputtur 626125
Virudhunagar District
Tamilnadu
jeyasweetipie@gmail.com
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