LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 20:3 March 2020
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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The Conventional and Unconventional Roles of Women Characters in Indian English Fiction with Special Reference to the Select Novels of Shashi Deshpande

Dr. V. Brinda Shree, M.A., Ph.D.

Abstract

Human experience for centuries has been synonymous with the masculine experience. Man’s relationship with woman is most often the bond that exists between a master and a slave. With the result that the collective image of humanity has been defined as a subject in its own right, but merely as an entity that concerns man either in real life or in his fantasy life. There has existed all the same a distinctively female literacy tradition grown out of the anxieties of a woman’s life. Women writers have been drawn more to fiction-writing than to the genres of poetry and drama. Generally, there are two types of roles played by women characters in Indian fiction: the conventional and unconventional. Both types suffer in one way or the other. Shashi Deshpande is a very recent author in Indian writing in English. Her novels deal with the problems of the adjustments and conflicts in the minds of female protagonists who ultimately submit to the traditional rules in the transitional society. This paper as an article seeks to explore the conventional and unconventional Roles of Women Characters in Indian Fiction with Special Reference to the Select Novels of Shashi Deshpande. It is also an attempt to introduce the most acclaimed female Indian writer of Indo- Anglican Literature. The aim of this paper is to introduce two of Deshpande’s novels, Roots and Shadows and The Dark Holds No Terror which presents women who want to go in self-quest and are free from the restrictions imposed by society, culture, nature and are also free from their own fear and guilt. The methodology followed in this article is as per the norms stipulated in M L A Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition, Edited by Judy Goulding. (First East - West Press Edition 2009).

Keywords: Shashi Deshpande, ‘New Woman’, inimitable representation, individualistic women, masculine experience, vestiges of the past, intellect, unconscious dawn.

Indian English Literature in the recent past has attracted a widespread interest, both in India and abroad. It has come to be realized as of great significance in world literature. Indian Women writers like Kamala Markandaya, Anita Desai, Nayantara Sahgal and other writers have documented this female resistance against a patriarchal maintained Indian culture. This writing in English has now reached a new phase, the phase of an inimitable representation of the ‘New Indian Woman’ who is dissatisfied with the inhibiting cultural, natural or sexual roles assigned to her from the unconscious dawn of the patriarchal India.

The term ‘New Woman’ has come to signify the awakening of woman into a new realization of her place and position in family and society, conscious of her individuality. The New Woman has been trying to assert and ascertain her rights as a human being and is determined to fight for equal treatment with men. Ellen E. Jordan observes that “the English feminists endowed the ‘New Woman’ with her hostility to men, her questioning of marriage, her determination to escape from the restrictions of home life and her belief that education could make a woman capable of leading a financially self-sufficient single and yet fulfilling life. There are a number of Indian novels that deal with woman’s problems. But the treatment is often peripheral, and the novels end up glorifying the stereotypical virtues of the Indian woman, like patience, devotion and abject acceptance of whatever is meted out to her.

Man’s relationship with woman is most often the bond that exists between a master and a slave. Woman is an object and she is essential to man because it is seeking to be made whole through her that man hopes to attain self-realization. Women writers writing in English, present with insight and understanding the dilemma which modern women are facing in a traditional society where dual morality is the accepted norm. Self-willed and individualistic women have to face suffering caused by broken relationship. Women who are conscious of their emotional needs are striving for self-fulfillment, rejecting the existing traditions and social set-up and longing for a more liberal and unconventional ways of life.

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


Dr. V. Brinda Shree, M.A., Ph.D.
Head of the Department
Asst. Professor, Department of English
TIPS College of Arts and Science
P. G. Pudur P.O., S. S. Kulam (Via)
Coimbatore – 641107, Tamil Nadu, India
Cell: 9524779899
brindashree@tipstech.org
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