Education as a Savior for Women in Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence and The Dark Holds No Terror

Abstract

Shashi Deshpande is one of those artists who instead of adhering to any established tradition of fiction, created her own tradition of fiction that provided her ample spaces to explore the inner world of female consciousness. Under the influence and inspiration of her father, she started her literary career in 1970. She confessed in one of her interviews that she began writing most casually and without any intention of setting down to career in writing. Even since her visit to England with her husband in 1969, she felt an internal compulsion to express her inner experiences in the form of creative writings. The instinctive urge of ShashiDeshpande to express her sensibility as a woman motivated her to make a representation of it in her novels. The seven great novels written by ShashiDeshpande prepare a comprehensive pattern of female experiences in gender based social structure.