Shashi Deshpande: A Humanist

Abstract

Shashi Deshpande is the first woman novelist to have dwelt at length on the problem and predicament of working educated women in the Indian middle class family. This has led many critics to consider her a feminist. But she sharply reacts against this label because she knows it full well that any commitment on the part of a creative artist diminishes the quality of his creative works. But as a woman she is on the know of cruelty and injustice meted out to working woman, by their husbands in the family. Without intending to change theworld, she writes her novels to extend some ideas to the world about the world. She raises questions without giving answers and her questions exhort the readersto think afresh on the question of human relationship in the patriarchal society of ours she says., “Read my novel as a novel, not as a piece of work that intends to propagate feminism”.Her woman protagonists donot intend to desert the family despite having marital discord. Nor do they shout slogans against man. They donot yield to psychic disorder under pressure of discord like the protagonists of Anita Desai. They take courage and confidence from knowledge obtained through the studyof the Indian scriptures and mythology.