Female Psyche and Search for Self-hood in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors

Abstract

The place of women in society has differed from culture to culture and from age to age, yet one fact common to almost all societies is that woman has never been considered the equal of men. Her status largely depends on the simple biological fact that she is the bearer of children. In this way her sphere is usually restricted to her familial role. Immemorial woman has been the victim of male domination and oppression and treated like a beast of burden of burden and an object for pleasure. Man has always looked down upon her as the weaker sex, as his property, servile to him. Different religions of the world have given sanction to the female’s subjection to the male members of society, thus perpetuating the women; wives, submit yourselves to your husband’s to the lord woman as regarded subordinate to man because it is believed that she was made out of man. This present paper attempts to analysis researcher’s chosen novel The Dark Holds No Terrors by Shashi Deshpande. Her novels appeared as a voice against the tormented women aimed to create a mass awareness against the suppression and the repression of the corrupted patriarchal society. She focus in her fiction is essentially on women’s role in society.