WOMEN’S PREDICAMENT IN SHASHI DESHPANDE’S “ROOTS AND SHADOWS”

 M.KAVITHA1, Dr.PADMINI BERNARD FENN2

1Asst.Prof. In.English,SreeSakthiEngineering College,Karamadai.
2Asso.Prof. of English,G.R.D. College of ScienceCommerce,Coimbatore
doi: https://doi.org/10.33329/rjelal.7119.83

Abstract

In modern India, the status of women has been raised in the eyes of law, but they are still far from equal to men in every sphere of life. In practice, they continue to suffer discrimination, harassment, humiliation and exploitation in and outside home. During recent decades, a galaxy of Indian women novelists has started writing about Indian women, their conflicts and predicaments against the background of contemporary India. Such women novelists writing in India are Kamala Markandaya , Anita Desai, Nayandara Sahgal, Attia Hossain, Shashi Deshpande, P.P.Jabuala, Namita Gokhale . Above all Shashi Deshpande shows a vision of feminity in her novel. She has dealt graphically with problems that confront a middle class educated woman in the patriarchal Hindu society. But hers is not the radical and militant kind of feminism which sees the male as the matrix of all menace. Shashi Deshpande explored the realities behind the silence of women. She raised her voice against torment on women and also created mass awareness in the matter through her writings. The novels of Shashi Deshpande are about women’s self-quest and struggle to free themselves from the restrictions imposed by society, culture and nature. This paper attempts to define Shashi Deshpande’s work ‘Roots and Shadows’ as a feminist discourse and also details of women’s predicament in this work.

Key words: Discrimination – harassment- humiliation - exploitation - torment on women - self-quest - struggle - restrictions

 

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