Several feminist writers took Marxist approaches to their analyzes of the family, visualizing it as a unity of capitalism indulging in the. Any reading of the family as a social institution would seem incomplete if cultural forces are not taken into account. The family as a gender construct has important implications in the socio-cultural realm of the nation.
As for the critical evaluation of Deshpande's fiction, her treatment of the family is in. The family in itself is one of the oldest institutions that is in the process of evolution in the global context. Therefore, it is safe to say that the importance of the family in the fiction of Shashi Deshpande has so far received only critical attention.
These are mostly in the form of essays and there is a clear lack of a comprehensive critical study of the representation of the family in her works.
Myths, Archetypes and Cultural Legitimation
It is significant that the use of myths in Deshpande's novels does not simply remain within the framework of information and decoration of the plots. As has been said earlier, myths have a powerful role in Indian socio-cultural life and give meaning to almost every aspect of the Hindu family set-up. In his fiction, Deshpande seeks to explore the importance of myths in the family and the lives of the characters, while placing the narrative in the socio-cultural environment.
It is perhaps for this reason that Sarita finds her marriage becoming difficult as she tries to go beyond the given setting in the context of the family. The myth of the "happy family" emerges in The Dark Holds No Terrors when the protagonist Sarita talks about her family: "A family the right size. But how far the idea of happiness seems feasible in spreading the idea of a small family is an area of debate.
The performative aspect of myths is brought up considerably by Deshpande in her sketch of characters' family and everyday life. It is through marriage that collective meaning is carried out in the form of the demarcation of roles, position, space and power for the members of a family. It should be understood that the cultural role models do not exist only in discourses, but are internalized by the community to the extent that they become real in people's lived lives.
It is at such a time at Mini's wedding that Indu feels "the concept of the family taking shape, living. Critical studies of this novel include an examination of the wife/victim figure (Dharkar), of woman visualized as struggling against a more firmly established patriarchal tradition (Behera), postcolonial perspective that analyzes the novel as an attempt to erase the silence of the dominated (Joshi). The Family' and 'The River' open with verses from the Upanishads, and the quoted lines provide the underlying theme for the plot that follows.
This, in turn, enriches our recognition of the otherwise obvious understanding of family politics in the given social and cultural context. Shashi Deshpande: Portraits of an Indian Woman.” The New Indian Novel in English: A Survey of the 1980s.
Identity in the Family
Culture plays a critical role in the construction of the self within a particular family group located in a specific socio-cultural environment. To understand the importance of society and culture in the formation of self, we can refer to Woodward's Questioning Identity (2004) where it is noted that. Sandhu's work deals with the issue of femininity as an image that he feels is reflected in the way Deshpande delineates her female characters.
He further observes that "the stamp of traditional culture is most clear in the formation of their ideals of the 'good' woman, especially in relation to men." This ideal does not only refer to the image of women in general, but also intensively informs the specific roles of mother and wife. Deshpande's artistic vision posits an analytical exploration of cultural givens that documents the personal experiences of her protagonists within a predetermined socio-cultural framework.
The consciousness of the 'I', the construction of an identity, is always seen in the social context. There is now a newfound understanding now that she could see "the concept of the family taking shape, living, for [her]. However, there are also memories of the past that are bitter and remind Indu of "the intrigues, the groups, the schisms in a family.
The novel begins in a moment of crisis - the death of Anusha, the daughter of the central character Urmila. There is a parallel construction of the image of Leela that is revealed again, through Madhu's eyes while she is still writing the biography. Som's mother, so demanding - none of them match the white-clad, sacrificial, sobbing mother of the movies.
In the essay entitled "Cutting Across Time" (2005) Chew analyzes "the dynamics of acts of recollection in Shashi Deshpande's novel Small Remedies, the ways in which they enable the narrator's robust examination of problems. Psychoanalytic regression and finding one's true self in the dark holds no horror: A Winnicottian study. Difference in Writing: The Novels of Shashi Deshpande."
The Family in Conflict
And so the exploration of the fictional rendering of family in the novels of Deshpande as a site of power politics and conflict is desirable. The Dark Holds No Terrors focuses on marriage as a social institution and also as an important component of the family that is at the same time culturally inscribed. The reader is under the impression that the mother-daughter relationship as presented in the novel is characterized by bitterness and mutual hatred.
The question of conflict, however, needs to be analyzed in the deeper perspective of the Indian family and the recognized power structures that work within it and which also convey a notion of space that is intricately woven into it. It is significant that power changes its implication and scope when there is a change in agency, and the exercise of power varies with the male and female of the subject's constitution within a given power structure. Her act of asserting her personal freedom by choosing her spouse seems to arouse disapproval of her actions in the family that had been overseen by the grand old matriarch, Akka.
Like Saru in The Dark Holds No Terrors, Indu in this novel shares a very uneasy relationship with Akka, who represents the conventional value system and to which all other family members bow. It is through Indu that the voice of young women on the Indian social and cultural scene is visualized. The novel foregrounds crisis and conflict by centering Jaya and Mohan's marital relationship and their lives in the larger family context and offers a retrospective exploration of their relationship within the marriage.
Worse than anything else had been the boredom of the unchanging pattern, the endless monotony. Family life seems to be the most desired of the structures established by the cultural and social demands of people's lives. Jaya's character study can only be considered complete when we consider her culture-specific location within family and marriage.
The dynamics of the power equation within the family and the possible subversion of the generally accepted structure are revealed in the novel through mothers. In the novels discussed above, issues related to power and space in relationships, marriage, and family in general appear as one of the strong underlying threads that the novelist focuses on.
The Body in the Family Politic
Analysis of the body can therefore increasingly see it as a product of social coercion and construction. Within the gendered space of the family, the body becomes the site of regulation, manipulation and organization, which is done with the aim of maintaining order and homogeneity in the family. Discipline and Punish (1975), one of Michel Foucault's most influential works, comments on the interconnectedness of power and the sociocultural construction of the body.
The present chapter aims to focus on issues related to sexuality, death and illness that are relevant to an understanding of the constructed body situated within the family. If the family is considered as a hegemonic site of resistance to power relations, an analysis of the socio-cultural processes of the structuring of the body within it becomes all the more significant. The patriarchal nature of Indian sociocultural existence is also reflected in the family as it is one of the basic social institutions.
This awareness is the beginning of an understanding of the feeling of love and the recognition of the demands of sexuality within the social institution of marriage. The constant disciplining of the body in accordance with the dominant Brahminical-patriarchal worldview deprives women of an independent existence within marriage and the family as a whole. Saru's understanding of her life's experiences is delivered to her through her body.
Marriage operates within certain codes that require the woman to conform to socially accepted codes that are often gender-restricted. Considering the body as the vehicle of the entire experience of living, female bodies appear as the text of culture that reflects on the nature of the cultural and family environment. Shashi Deshpande's concern is to explore the root cause of the fragmentation and dichotomy of her characters and.
