Negotiating with the past and contemporary life of Indian woman: a study of the works of Shashi Deshpande and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Abstract

This thesis attempts to describe the similarities and contrasts between two writers from India living in two hemispheres, in order to highlight how the pulls and pressures of the past lives of women continue to influence their present. There is constant interplay of nostalgia and reality in Deshpande’s and Divakaruni’s novels. At a deeper level they show a conflict between tradition and modernity. The trials and tribulations and the struggle to maintain the modern values and to carve out an identity of their own in the new and ostensibly stifling environment of her protagonists makes them a feminist. Their protagonists seek to synthesize traditions with the modern values which are the needs of the hour. To an extent they reconcile themselves to the rigidity of traditions but with reservations and carve out their own identity as ‘new women’ living within the ambit of tradition. Particularly in the case of Deshpande’s protagonists, they neither shatter the ancestral dignity nor give up essentials of modernity. They keep some of them in suspended animation and wait for the right time to bring about the change in the role of the women and are successful in relaxing the rigidity of some customs. They subtly change their immediate environment and the people concerned. They are both conformist and non conformist. They conform to the modern values of education and marriage. But they appear non-conformist to the age long tradition. Shashi Deshpande’s success lies not just in conducting the voyage in the traditional way of life of her heroines but in harmonizing the two divergent trends.