NEGOTIATING WITH THE PAST AND CONTEMPORARY LIFE OF

INDIAN WOMAN: A STUDY OF THE WORKS OF

SHASHI DESHPANDE AND CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI

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.
Living in the modern times, the two have the same roots and share a common feeling that
the women be free of the patriarchal strains. The obvious differences in their manner and attitude
to life or writing, however, noticeable they may be do not separate them in their aims. There is a
particular point of convergence where the two writers meet and run parallel to each other. Their
point of meeting is their homeland. Though Divakaruni is now settled in the US. It is the feeling
of belonging and rootedness to India and her interest in women which binds her with Deshpande.

Comparisons of writers settled in different countries, need to address the particularities

that should help one to evaluate each writer comprehensively. The comparison provides insights
into the distinctive scheme in which each writer chooses to tap the potential of a particular
subject, and enables the reader to see in that subject. Certain conclusions regarding contemporary
women’s narrative are drawn from the analysis of the works of Shashi Deshpande and Chitra
Banerjee Divakaruni and may be considered a contribution to feminist studies as well.

Both writers have grappled with contemporary issues and a variety of themes-
motherhood, mothering, marriage, individuation, class, conflicts, marginalization, woman as
wife, mother, sister and lastly, yet significantly, woman as human, not just a sex object. They
seem skeptical about tradition and, yet they discover in their heritage the solutions for the needs
and longings of women in contemporary times.

For these two writers, the main arena has been the study of the self. They try to locate
meaning in the life around, and then try to respond to the modern conditions of individual
isolation and cultural fracture. They aspire to modernity; attempt to be universal; feel bound to
the roots and as a result, find themselves in an anomalous and jarring position. Striving for
identity in the postcolonial world, the protagonists of these writers present the dilemma of the
modern day woman covering each and every aspect of her life. In fact, their works have mapped
the social, political and cultural changes brought about by colonization, postcolonial
consciousness and globalization. Their manner of expression may be different but their ultimate
aim is the same i.e. a peaceful and progressive life beneficial for the woman community.

They can surely be read and appreciated individually, but thematically they are interlaced
focusing on the psychological complexities of female subjectivity as well as the overtly political
themes of collective feminist struggle and women’s community. It is in understanding this
intrinsic connectedness and preoccupation with the above discussed issues, that a sense of unity
of holistic imaginative pattern is gained. In the process of individuation the heroines of Shashi
Deshpande and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni become permanent parts of a larger community of
women and leave behind the context in which they began, to encompass a wider range of issues.

An attempt has been made in this research project to focus on the psychological aspects
of the inner conflicts experienced by women. Their resolution is sought with the help of
psychoanalysis and the theories of feminist thinkers such as Virginia Woolf, Susan Gubar,
Sandra Gilbert, Juliet Mitchell, Luce Irigaray, Helen Cixous and Julia Kristeva. Shashi
Deshpande aptly says: “Knowledge, after all, always starts from within, it comes out of the ‘fight
with oneself’…it originates in the questions one asks of oneself.” (The Hindu 151)
 Besides as Vrinda Nabar observes that the, “Vastly different scenario in India
encompasses contradictions of a kind undreamed of in mainstream (Western) feminist
philosophy.” The dissertation commences with the analysis of the historical background and
socio-cultural position of women in the novels of both the writers, for which the Indian feminist
theorists and social activists like Lata Mani, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Susie Tharu and
Kumkum Sangari have also been referred to. The thesis is unique as it makes a path breaking
effort as a venture to bring the two writers together.

Their novels outline the lives of women engaged in a quest for values. This is evident in
novels such as The Dark Holds No Terrors, Roots and Shadows, That Long Silence, and The
Binding Vine by Shashi Deshpande and Sister of my Heart, Vine of Desire, The Mistress of
Spices, and Queen of Dreams by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Their novels we have seen are the
products of an intense intellectual engagement with the socio-economic realities of the writer’s
contemporary world. As such the novels fulfil the whole aim of life which is to develop a
specific ideological stance to the political underpinnings of one’s immediate society.

The problems confronted by women are brought to the fore through multicoloured
experiences of woman characters and the registering of their consciousness. Tilo of The Mistress
of Spices, Sarita of The Dark Holds No Terrors, Indu of Roots and Shadows, Anju and Sudha of
Sister of My Heart and Vine of Desire, Urmi of The Binding Vine and Rakhi and Mrs Gupta of
Queen of Dreams are all fractured selves at the beginning of the novel. They come to terms with
their self or persona in their own specific ways. Moreover, situations and events keep adding
novel dimensions to the knowledge of life and the shaping of notions since the societal
constructs impose rigid standards and restraints on its people.

The search for self and an attempt to define it also explains the frequent mixture of
fiction and autobiography. In the novels of both, not only does the protagonist remain at the
centre but even the story is told from her perspective. “This may also be interpreted as a refusal
to conform to traditional genres of the dominant literary culture.” (Joshi 139) Shashi Deshpande
says that “Women especially, have always had to be more careful, to stay within the lines drawn
for them by social rules, by their own conditioning-a kind of self-censorship, something that
women impose on themselves without knowing they are doing so.” (Writing from the Margin,
“The Enemy Within”, 238) In the process of individuation, each heroine undergoes a quest for
spiritual and worldly affirmation which invariably results in an active conflict with the existing
social forms and myths of dominant patriarchal culture, as they endeavour to reform and review
themselves. Deshpande also suggests that it is women themselves who perpetuate patriarchy
through their own actions by refusing to change themselves. They do not rebel against patriarchy
and at times also dominate who are weaker.

Migrants and diasporics encounter new epistemologies and new ways of living. Chitra
Banerjee Divakaruni living in America away from her land of birth realizes the fragility of her
identity, which she portrays through her protagonists. Her protagonists make new adjustments in
their new surroundings and for this they reinvent themselves. Their physical distance from their
home and their encounters with new ways of life confer upon them a kind of double vision which
enables them to look both objectively and nostalgically at their own culture and the alien culture
into which they seek to integrate. As Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni writes in her article “Do South
Asian Women Need Separate Shelter Homes?”, “Coming to the US gave me a distance I needed
to look back on my culture with objectivity, to pick out what I valued and realize what I didn’t
agree with.”

The realization in women of their capacity to go beyond the confines allotted to them by
the society and the indifferent response of the patriarchal set up to their extraordinary abilities
makes women “doubly – mapped bodies.” It is also the conflict between the spirit and the ‘flesh’
the ‘self’ and the ‘society’ that Shashi Deshpande and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni delineate
through their novels. But with patriarchal notions and impediments coming in the way, the
fecund society which they portray through their novels would remain handicapped; they also see
a glorious vision which reinforces their volition. Their attempt is to re-structure sexual
colonialism in the society, by not only indicating the patriarchal methods of female
objectification, but also presenting women characters who in variegated ways defy such
methods. The most important thing is that their works represent a genuine and honest thinking of
women psyche.

Both the writers make use of myths to enhance the artistic effect of the novel. Indian
writers in Englih have derived inspiration from the wealth of material available in the form of
stories from the Ramanaya, the Mahabharata and the Puranas and also local legends and folk-
lore. The most often used symbol from Indian mythology, of course, is Sita, who is considered
the ideal woman.
 The characters of both the novelists Saru, Indu, Jaya, Urmi, Anju, Sudha, Tilo all discard
propriety so as to act in accordance with their “inner voice” the antharatma. They are all in fact
guided by the spirit albeit with ironic equipoise between faith and disbelief. To them, sensibility
emerges as a latter day psychology where Moksha is defined anew in relation to the discovery of
the “Atman” (here “self”, not soul) and the true grace is manifested by a novel sense of life’s
direction.

To Deshpande and Divakaruni, the deeper levels of fiction exist only as the deeper levels of their
character consciousness. In both the novelists predominantly there is only one central character
in each novel who is not static and is always learning from the past. In their heroines, the
tendency towards self realization is acting from within and overcomes the commotion arising
from the confrontation with the existing world. The images of the nations, women, culture that
emerge from their novels proceed from past to present and in their mutual negotiations, they are
continually resituating themselves. By drawing on non-canonical figures in their work, these
contemporary women writers are both revalorizing the work of their predecessors and creating a
collective female tradition, grounded in the realities of women’s lives.

In a broader perspective, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Shashi Deshpande are

humanists preoccupied with a process through which human potential especially that of a
woman, gets actualized. Both deal with contemporary problems in terms of their own ancestral
roots of religion and culture. In their novels the battle of sexes is presented in vivid images of
women as powerful and equally vivid images of men as powerful and powerless. They
acknowledge the fecundation of the divine like spirit or psyche within the individual, a
fecundation that is synonymous with self realization.

In sum, the thesis has attempted through a study of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and
Shashi Deshpande the sensitive nature of the question of marginality of women and how as
women writers belonging as they do to diverse socio-economic and geo-cultural realities, their
novels record and reflect a very broad spectrum of the experiences of life. Finally it must be
pointed out that we cannot possibly adjudicate the quality of talent in each of them. Time has
imposed both challenges and constraints on each of them, which in spite of their contempraniety
they acknowledge.