PUPPET MAGICPull those Strings

SOCIO-CULTURAL EXPLORATIONS IN SHASHI DESHPANDE’S “THE DARK HOLDS NO TERROR”

The Dark Holds No Terrors as novels of the woman is self-quest and hope to posit the view that women in these novels have established themselves as autonomous beings. Free from the restrictions imposed by society, culture, nature and free from their own fears and guilt; that women have reached a stage of understanding the fundamental truth: You have to find it for yourself.

 Our society is full of paradoxes and contradictions. Here a female is considered a peripheral member of the family, both in her parent’s house as well as husbands. Throughout her lifetime, she is unable to decide her roots and this leads to her insecurity. As the daughter is closest to the mother, this insecurity is rubbed on to her also.

 In the novel The Dark Holds No Terrors, the mother-daughter relationship is based on gender-bias and loveless ness. Saru is the daughter of the family, deprived of parental care and affection.

 Shashi Deshpande’s heroines reject rituals that are the vestiges of the past. In their rejection of their mother, they also discard the meaningless rituals like circumambulating the tulsi plant. Saru refuse to undertake such rituals that are meant to increase the life span of their husbands. The rejection is an indication of their autonomy and their capacity to see their lives independent of their mother/past. These heroines shudder at some of the natural biological functions of the female (associated with the mother) and they have developed, from their childhood, apathy towards their body. Shashi Deshpande heroine is confronted with the problem of what the mother stands for and the only way out for her is to seek a new environment where the mother cannot exercise her will.

The woman in order to achieve her freedom seeks marriage as an alternative to the bondage created by the parental family. She resents the role of a daughter and looks forward to the role of a wife with the hope that her new role will help her in winning their freedom.

 Saritha in The Dark Holds No Terrors too, under goes similar trauma, confronts reality and, at the end, realizes that the dark no longer holds any terrors to her. She survives in a male dominated world that offers no easy outs to women. She neither surrenders to nor does escape from the problems but with great strength accept the challenge of her own protégé.

 Saru in Dark also undergoes the arduous journey into herself and learns to free herself of guilt, shame, humiliation and she is also initiated into the mystery of human existence. The epigraph of the novel, “You are your own refuge There is no other refuge This refuge is hard to achieve (The Dhammapada)” gains its total significance when Saru realizes that the parental home cannot be a refuge. She understands that neither her father nor her husband Manohar can be her refuge. She is her own refuge. She has to overcome herself; she has to kill the ghosts that haunt her; she has to find her own way to salvation.

 It is to be noted that Saru, at the end of the novel, has come to realize that her profession as a doctor is her own and she will decide what to do with it. “My life is my own.” She will no longer be a puppet. Her marriage is a shadow. She held on to the marriage because she did not want to prove her mother right. Only she can be her refuge. Everyone is lonely and that there is no cause for despair.

 In short, almost all the literary ventures of Shashi Deshpande revolve round the pathetic and heartrending condition of women in a male dominated society. To analyze Saru’s character, it would be better first to reduce it to simple facts. The novelist’s contribution lies in the heightened sensitivity and the fresh insights that she brings to bear on the well-known types and situations. The action of the novel is triggered off by a crisis in a middle-class family.

 The true substance of the novel lies in the mental processes that Saru goes through during her apparently eventless existence at her father’s place. She thinks. She analyses all the dark corners of her soul. She introspects. She judges life, relationships.

 We find her true self while she is unweaving her mind through memories and dreams. The process demands real effort. She endeavors hard to gain what she had lost-her self-respect. She tries hard to overcome her psychological fears. “The dark holds no terrors. The terrors are inside us all the time. We carry them within us and like traitors they spring out, when we least expect them, to scratch and maul.”

 Saru’s character can be truly understood only in the light of psychological precepts. First, she carries within her the sad effects of gender discrimination. Social psychology deals with the stereotypes about the two genders. Saru’s feminism springs out as a reaction to this discriminatory psychological set up of society and her parents in particular. Secondly, Saru also has the deep-rooted mentality of an unwanted child. Psychologists have dealt in detail with the mental makeup of an unwanted child. Thirdly and most tragically, Saru suffers the bruises of a terrible physical trauma on her psyche.

 The life that she lives at her father’s place is essentially a spiritual life. It is a reaction against her dirty physical experiences. For her,all that is physical is filthy. Her feminity being brutally crushed, she loses forever the dreams of sentiment and passion. Love, Romance, both, she knew too well, were illusions and not relevant to my life.                                                    

 One may put forth a word about Saru’s dual life. For the world, she is a scared, tortured woman. She is going through quite and abnormal pattern of life, which in the daytime wore a white coat and an air of confidence and knowing and at night became a terrified, trapped animal.

 Saru has in her character what makes a fictional figure universal. Whatever her faults, whatever her life but she does reaches depths of self-actualization. At last, she reaches a stage when she is not beaten down by other people’s rejection … by low self-regard, by anxiety, or by conflict. The theory goes that if the self develops in an open, flexible, expansive manner, the individual will continue on the road to self-actualization.

 Saru is presented simultaneously as an individual and as a female. Her predicament is contrary to the assertion of feminist that financial independence brings security to woman. Saru yearns for security and emotional attachment. She wants her father to support her and her feeling raised against Manu’s brutality.

 Thus, the novels of Shashi Deshpande clearly reveal the author’s perception of the endemic imbalance between the sexes. It is, however, obvious that the author stops short of trying of correct this imbalance. The numerous minor characters in the novels suffer in silence or accept that fate with resignation but do not take any step that might jeopardize their marriage or reputation in society. It is however important to note that each of her novels ends on a note of determination by its protagonist who resolves to take the reins of her life into her hands.

  She introspects philosophically and reaches to the conclusion that escape is a ridiculous idea. There is no refuge, other than one’s own self. She realizes that she cannot attain happiness through anyone else be it a husband, a father or a child. She can attain peace of mind by her own efforts. No one gives peace. It has to be created within. Thus, free from fears and pain, the final picture of Saru is appealing indeed, when she confidently waits for what used to be the greatest terror of her life, her husband. She is ready to face him. She is ready to face life.

                             

    BIBLIOGRAPHY

  

1. Meenakshi Mukherjee, “Ghosts from the Past,” Rev. of The Dark Holds No Terrors, The Book Review, VOL. 5, Mar.-Apr. 1981.
2. Prema Nandakumar, “Every Woman in Bombay,” Rev, of That Long Silence.
3. Rita Joshi, “Something Felt,” Rev. of That Long Silence, Hindustan Times, May 1990.
4. Shashi Deshpande, That Long Silence (New Delhi:    Penguin India, 1989).
5. “In Conversation: Sue Dickman with Indian Writers,” The Book Review, Vol. 19, Apr. 1995

About the Author

RESUME

IDENTIFYING INFORMATION

Name : AGALYA K.A

Date of Birth : 09/08/1972

Age : 36 Years

Languages Known : Tamil, English & Hindi

Address for communication : 124, Patel Street,
Erode – 638 001.

Contact Numbers : Mobile – 98427 37323
Resi. – 0424 – 4031323

Email Id : agalya_ka@rediffmail.com

ACADEMIC PROFILE

Degree Completed Year Class/Percentage of Marks College/University
PhD PURSUING BHARATHIAR UNIVERSITY
M.Phil (English Literature) 2005 Commended Madurai Kamaraj University
M.A (English Literature) 1995 High-second Class Bharathiar University
B.A (English Literature) 1993 Third Bharathiar University

AREAS OF INTEREST

 American Literature (Afro-American Literature)
 English Language Teaching (TESOL)
 Indian Writing in English (Twentieth&Twenty;first Century)
PROFILE OF TEACHING

S.No College Designation Duration Years

1 Bharathidasan College of Arts & Science
Erode Lecturer

Head, Department of English 1997-1998

1998-2000 1 yr

2 yrs

2 Sri Vasavi College
(Self Finance Wing)
Erode Head, Department of English

2000 – till date 8 yrs
7 months

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