The Representation of Women as Strugglers in Anita Desai‘’s novel Clear Light of Day and Shashi Deshpande‘’s novel The Dark Holds No Terrors

Abstract

Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande portray the sociological effect on the psyche of women. Through their fiction they provide a wealth of understanding in women’s issues, such as psychological, emotional and spiritual crisis experienced by the Indian woman folk. The traumatic psychic experiences faced by women in the conservative male-dominated society and their survival are the main focus of the novels of Desai and Deshpande. They seek liberty at least in the house itself not from outside, without showing their artificial sentiments. She portrays the interior landscape of the mind and psychic elements completely. Her later novels show a sharp shift in her themes. The protagonists try to escape from convulsions and tensions. The Women characters are trying to come to a new understanding and reinstate themselves in the society. Like Desai’s novels Deshpande’s are also dealt with the problems and personal agonies of women in our patriarchal society. Deshpande’s protagonists set out in search of self-expression and self-fulfillment. The women characters crave for freedom from oppressive bonds exercised by the patriarchal society. They try to face the challenges of contemporary life imposed upon them and reconstruct the norms and patterns of womanhood.  They want to find out their identities. Her novels dealt with various forms of suppression faced by women in our society. Deshpande wants to establish a new dimension of presentation. Despande presents women who prove themselves adaptable.