Extra-marital relationships are a part of Deshpande’s novels. In this novel, Jaya has a fruitful relationship with Mr. Kamat, a widower, Jaya’s neighbor in Dadar. The most striking quality of Kamat is that he sees Jaya as an equal. While Mohan discourages Jaya from writing, it is Kamat who introduces her with the ‘lost’ self. Jaya sheds her restraints in Kamat’s presence who gives comfort in a fatherly way. Her failed writing and her close association with Kamat are two example of Jaya’s inability to seek her own identity. Kamat makes her aware of her emotional as well as physical needs and asks her to break her silence and speak freely. In spite of his support and encouragement, Jaya leaves him dying because of social
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As she puts it, “You learn a lot of tricks to get by in a relationship, Silence is one of them. You never find a woman criticizing her husband, even playfully, in case it might damage the relationship” (Deshpande, 41). The novel is not an autobiography, except for certain parts dealing with the frustrations of an unsuccessful writer. Shashi Deshpande has presented an Indian woman as she is in India of the eighties and not as should be. Veena Sheshadri says in her review:
Why has the author chosen a “heroine” who only succeeds in evoking waves of irritation in the reader? Perhaps it is because a competent writer like her is never satisfied unless she is tackling new challenges. Also, she believes in presenting life as it is and not as it should be; and there must be thousands of self-centered women like Jaya, perennially griping about their fate, but unwilling to do anything that could result in their being tossed out of their comfortable ruts in to the big, bad world of reality, to fend for themselves. (Deshpande, …show more content…
Jaya is “Suhasini” and also “Seeta”, the pseudonym she assumes to write columns about the plight of the middle-class housewife. Both “Suhasini” and also “Seeta” are as Jaya says, “the many selves waiting to be discovered[…] each self -attached like a Siamese twin to a self of another person, neither able to exist without the other”(69). Jaya has to live neither as ‘Suhasini’ or ‘Jaya’ nor as ‘Seeta’ or ‘anti-Kusum’. Jaya was in a dilemma about herself as she says that, “But what was that ‘myself’? ‘Trying to find oneself’- what cliche that has become.”( Deshpande,69). Jaya keeps on oscillating in opinions and choices, yet to decide, “Who she really she
As she puts it, “You learn a lot of tricks to get by in a relationship, Silence is one of them. You never find a woman criticizing her husband, even playfully, in case it might damage the relationship” (Deshpande, 41). The novel is not an autobiography, except for certain parts dealing with the frustrations of an unsuccessful writer. Shashi Deshpande has presented an Indian woman as she is in India of the eighties and not as should be. Veena Sheshadri says in her review:
Why has the author chosen a “heroine” who only succeeds in evoking waves of irritation in the reader? Perhaps it is because a competent writer like her is never satisfied unless she is tackling new challenges. Also, she believes in presenting life as it is and not as it should be; and there must be thousands of self-centered women like Jaya, perennially griping about their fate, but unwilling to do anything that could result in their being tossed out of their comfortable ruts in to the big, bad world of reality, to fend for themselves. (Deshpande, …show more content…
Jaya is “Suhasini” and also “Seeta”, the pseudonym she assumes to write columns about the plight of the middle-class housewife. Both “Suhasini” and also “Seeta” are as Jaya says, “the many selves waiting to be discovered[…] each self -attached like a Siamese twin to a self of another person, neither able to exist without the other”(69). Jaya has to live neither as ‘Suhasini’ or ‘Jaya’ nor as ‘Seeta’ or ‘anti-Kusum’. Jaya was in a dilemma about herself as she says that, “But what was that ‘myself’? ‘Trying to find oneself’- what cliche that has become.”( Deshpande,69). Jaya keeps on oscillating in opinions and choices, yet to decide, “Who she really she