Augustine1

Arya Augustine

1024104

MEL232, CIA3

Contemporary Critical Theory

Renu Elizabeth Abraham

10/Feb2011

Feminist Perspectives in Shashi Despande’s The Dark Holds no Terrors

The ideal image of woman like the traditional Sita or Savitri is replaced by the realistic character

Saritha (Saru) with in Shashi Despande’s second novel Dark Holds No Terrors. She raises a

consciousness of identity and freedom in the minds of women.The novel deals with the awful

experience of the protagonist, Saru who undergoes a large amount of humiliation in the novel, as

a daughter, and as a wife.

Despande in the novel The Dark Holds No Terrors establishes women as autonomous beings.

Free from the restrictions imposed by society, culture, nature and free from their own fears and

guilt, Saru tries to identify her subjectivity. Despande questions the unquestioned position that

man enjoys in society.

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As a female writer, she carries female experiences in an effective manner and drives home the

point what makes women become hysteric, escapists, sacrificial goats. She also discusses the

compulsions forcing them to take extreme decisions or to become passive recipient and shows

how often women become the cause of female subjugation and suffering.

The novel focuses on woman's awareness of her predicament, her wanting to be recognized as a

person than as a woman or a second sex and her wanting to have an independent social image.

Saru's feminist reactions date  back to her childhood, when she had to contend with sexist

discrimination at home. As Simone de Beauvoir observes "One is not born, but rather becomes a

woman. It is civilization as a whole that produces this creature which is described as feminine".

The novel depicts the anguish and conflict of the modern educated Indian women caught

between patriarchy and tradition and self-expression, and individuality and independence for

the women. Her fiction also explores the search of the women to fulfill herself as a human being,

independent of her traditional role as daughter, wife and mother. She has examined a variety of

common domestic crisis revealing the woman’s struggle to secure self-respect and self-identity

for herself, the author subtly bares the multiple levels of oppression, including sexual oppression

experienced by women in our society.

Saru discusses the gender discrimination she experienced as a daughter because of her parents’

craving for a male child. As a traditional Hindu woman Saru’s mother thinks that it is her duty

to remind her daughter that she is grown up and she should behave accordingly. The first

experience of menstruation is horrible for Sarita and the mother frighten her with the fact that she
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would bleed for years and years. Saru was not allouded to enter the kitchen and Puja-room. She

is forced to sleep on Straw mat.

The inner urge of Sarita for her own identity is that she wanted an equal rights as that of her

brother, Dhruva. But she never had given her so much value. Her mother, a strong product of

patriarchal society considers her daughter responsible for the her son's death.”Why didn't you

die? Why are you alive and he dead?” (p. 14).

When Saru expresses her wish to stay with her mother all her life, her mother says "You can't

"But your brother Dhruva can stay" He is different. He is a boy" (40). These words carry the

desire for a boy child which reflects the position that men enjoy in the society . Even the

mother-daughter relationship is based on gender-bias. Saru is the daughter of the family,

deprived of parental care and affection. She proclaims to her mother If you're a woman, I don't

want to be one" (55).

In the rejection of her mother she also discard the meaningless rituals. Saru refuse to undertake

rituals like circumambulating the tulsi plant which is meant to increase the life span of their

husbands. The rejection is an indication of their independence and their capacity to see her lives

free of her mother.

After her marriage she gains a greater social status and earns more than her husband,

Manohar.This develops an inferiority complex in him and feels humiliated. The novelist clearly

portrays the sexual sadism of a annoyed husband’s oppression of his wife.

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The definition of Saru, A+B ≠ B+A in marriage is true in Indian context. We find Manu felt

irritated when he was interviewed by a Women Magazine as the husband of Saru. For everyone

Manu was known as the husband of the lady doctor, and the question raised by the interviewer

“what do you feel when your wife earns not only butter but most of the bread too” made Manu a

beast at night. He wanted to be superior at least in their bedroom. The idea behind this thought is

the thought or a rule set up by the patriarchy where women should be inferior to man

everywhere. The brutality of her husband makes her state “for a successful married life wife

should be few inches behind the husband. If he is an M.A wife should be B.A, if he earns Rs.500

women should not earn more than Rs.499.” The rest part of the novel shows how a woman of

good education and earning could react to issues against women in the male opinionated society.

The protagonist is strong enough refuse to sacrifice her individuality for the sake of

upholding the traditionasl role models laid down by society for women. She seems to withdraw

from their family for a while analyze her circumstances objectively without any external aid or

advice. Then she makes a compromise with her family. This shows that she in the view of the

novelist tries to assert her individuality among the male society which hurt her very much..

Patriarchal society considers women as physically weak to venture into the world outside

the four walls of their houses and to deficient to make important decisions. Hence, women are

relegated to the domestic sphere where they have to accept the hegemony of a male counterpart.

Since ages it is considered that it is a woman’s duty to house, raise children and give comfort to
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her family. But Saru, breaks this notion by going out of the village to pursue M.B.B.S , by

neglecting all kinds of obstacles that she faced as a girl. When she marries Manu she again

breaking away the ties set up by the society on her.

As there is a strong impact of Indian Tradition on lives of women and they are happy with the

tradition and customs they don’t want to come out of from this. They feel that a husband is very

necessary far a woman to live in the society. They thinks that a husband is a sheltering tree for

them and he is all in all for then. A married woman is thus supposed to stay in the house of her

husband till death in Indian context. Saru breaks this notion too. When she couldn’t tolerate

Manu’s brutal sexual activities she came back to her father’s house.

“The Dark Holds No Terror” (1980), Sarita emerged as a woman of determination and positive

attitude, though she had seen the whole women world suffering without any cause. She was so

bold that she got married with the boy who did not have bright prospects in career, without

consulting her parents.

. In “The Dark Holds No Terror” (1980) Sarita defies the Indian tradition by marrying with a boy

without consulting her parents. Saru breaks the umbilical chord and leaves home. This is her first

public defiance of the patrical power system. Saru`s defiance is further expressed, when she

becomes economically independent and marries of her own choice.

The novelists being women such a choice not only give her feminize sensibility fictional

expression but also ennobles her to highlight the role of women in the present day society. she
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discards the so-believed unbreakable customs of her religion, she adopts only those in which she

thinks there is no discrimination. She is no typical,submissive and stereotype domesticated

Indian woman, bound to their submissive fate.

It is to be noted that Saru, at the end of the novel, has come to realize that her profession as a

doctor is her own and she will decide what to do with it. "My life is my own." She will no longer

be a puppet. . Sarita brings the awakening of the woman spirit, she makes them learn of their

rights, she brings about a turn of the tide in the ways of thinking of the society, where the woman

is no longer objectified. she is no longer the property of her father or her husband, she becomes

her own master.

If the husband is superior to her position wise, she has to serve him that way but unfortunately if

the husband is inferior to her, she is bound to face the sadism and ego of her husband like Saru.

Indian society is still tradition-bound superstitious.. No one dares challenge the existing

patriarchal order, but Saru did. Saru appears as a `New Woman`, who is educated intelligent and

economically independent, she could not accept her destiny as fate written on her forehead.

Deshpande’s fictions is her description of the woman’s inner world. Her protagonists are woman

struggling to find their own voice and continuously in search to define herself. Her major theme

is ‘quest for identity’ Her main concern is the urge to find oneself, to create space for oneself, to

grow on one’s own.

She has dealt with practically every issue raised by the women's movement in India

regarding the subordination of women: rape, child abuse, single motherhood, son - preference,

denial of self- expression, deep inequality and deep - seated prejudice, violence,
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resourcelessness, low self esteem, and the binds (and bonds) of domesticity. In a way this

exploration has corresponded to her development as a writer and, in her own words, helped her

to find her true voice.

Deshpande creates women characters who struggle hard against the social setup to acquire an

identity and individuality of their own.They display a tangible development during the course of

the novel. They go through a process of self-examination before they reach self-actualization.

Shashi Despande never tried to present her readers with ‘bad bad men and good good women’ in

The Dark Holds No Terrors. Nor does she acknowledge either a deliberate or unconscious

connection with the women's movement or with feminist writers. But she furnishes and mirrors

authentic female experience, and the lives of women driven to the point of hysteria, escapist,

sacrificial goats etc. through Saru.

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References

1. Simone De beauvour, The Second Sex translated and edited by H.M.Parshily, Placadon

classics edition published 1988 by Pan Books Ltd. Print.

2.The Dark Holds No Terrors, New Delhi, Penguin, 1990

“The Dilemma of a Woman Writer,” The Fiction of Shashi Deshpande.

Edited by R.S. Pathak, New Delhi: Creative Books, Print,1998.

3. Shashi Despande, The Dark Holds No Terrors, Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.,Print1980.