Feminism introspected in shashi deshpande's novel ‘That long silence’

The issues and problems of contemporary middle class woman have always been the subject matter of Shashi Deshpande's writings. This paper seeks to study the feminist perspective in Shashi Deshpande's novel That Long Silence. It reveals Deshpande's sincerity and ability in voicing the concerns of the urban educated-middle class woman.Trapped between tradition and modernity, her sensitive heroines are fully conscious of being victims of gross gender discrimination prevalent in a conservative male dominated society. A culture specific approach has been adopted to unravel Shashi Deshpande's pragmatic resolution related to the modern Indian woman's beleaguered existence. Although many women writers tried their hand at expressing this long Silence that had turned woman into non-entities, they could only provide psychological depths to their characters but Shashi Deshpande's success lies in her representation of real life experience. In her novels she does not present men as wholly bad and women as wholly good. She is realistic in the sense that her stories are very close to life. The protagonist has raised her voice against the straitjacketed role models of wife and other, and rebels against the suppression of the age-old patriarchal setup. Thus, the novel is a feminist critique exposing patriarchal practices.