Acquiescence, Marginality, and Suppression of Desire: A Psychoanalytical Study of Shashi Deshpande's Female Characters

“Almighty God, to whose efficacious Word all things owe their original, did in the beginning Create Man after his own likeness, Male and Female, the true distinction of which Sexes, consists merely in the different site of those parts of the body, wherein Generation necessarily requires a Diversity: the Woman being possess'd of no less excellent Faculties of Mind, Reason, and Speech, than the Man, and equally with him aspiring to those Regions of Bliss and Glory, where there shall be no exception of Sex.” AGRIPPA, Female Pre-eminence or the Dignity and The Excellency of that sex above the Male. Agrippa argued against the misogynistic expositions of the female body in Greek medicament, in the Bible, in Roman and canon law, in theology and moral philosophy, and in politics. He raised the question of why women were debarred and offered answers based not on sex but on social conditioning, education, and the predisposition of their more powerful oppressors. Agrippa argued that men and women are equals in the spiritual sense and that their sexual identity only exists as a physical fact. In the novels of Shashi Deshpande, we see how, just like Agrippa, she has stood up against the misogynistic interpretations of the female body in an Indian society. This paper deals with Shashi Deshpande’s two major novels, The Dark Holds No Terror (1980) and the Sahitya Akademi Award winner That Long Silence (1989). The objective of this paper is to analyze the psyche of the female characters in Deshpande's work. The aim is to find out if Deshpande's women really assert themselves or somewhere in their assertion process, reconcile to endurance. It will delve deep into the psyches of the female protagonists as well as all the female characters present in the novel.