Dept. of English, University of Lucknow
Online published on 18 February, 2012.
Among the recent Indian women novelists, Shashi Deshpande's credentials are unquestionable. Her novels and short stories explore the psyche of the educated middle-class Indian woman.Her protagonists are acutely aware of their smothered and fettered existence in an orthodox male-dominated society. Trapped between tradition and modernity they undergo great mental trauma in their quest for identity before they affirm themse1ves. Deshpande's attempt to give an honest portrayal of their frustration, hopes and disappointments make her novels susceptible to treatment from the feminist angle. In Small Remedies, Shashi Deshpande adopts the structure of a biography within a biography. Madhu Saptarishi, the protagonist, has been commissioned by a publisher to write a biography on a famous classical singer, Savitribai Indorekar, the aging doyenne of Hindustani music, who avoids marriage and home to pursue her genius. She has led the most unconventional of lives, and undergoes great mental trauma due to the opposition by a society that practises double standards- one for men and the other for women. Besides, Madhu narrates her own life story and those of her aunt Leela and Savitribai's daughter, Munni. In the process, Shashi Deshpande reveals the dilemma of the Indian woman trapped between her own aspirations as an individual and the forces of patriarchy which confine her.
