Author(s): S. Surya

Abstract: Indian women writers of the twentieth and twenty first centuries always try to raise the issues related to women with a fresh perspective. These women writers have presented life through literature with great vividness. Among the feminist writers, Shashi Deshpande gets a prominent place in later part of the twentieth century. Deshpande’s novels often deal with the problem and sufferings of women in middle class family, which reflects the realistic picture of the contemporary middle class family life. The present article clearly declares the despondency state of middle class women as portrayed in Deshpande’s That Long Silence. Jaya is the main character of this novel. The silence between Jaya and her husband further deteriorates the situation. She realizes at the end that she should break the silence and try to achieve her identity as an individual through self-realization and self-assertion.

Keywords: Identity, Middle class Women, Woman Status, Self-realization.

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.2.6.26