COMPLEXITY OF WOMEN’S PSYCHE IN THE DARK HOLDS NO
TERRORS
R. Rajeshwari
Assistant Professor,
Department of English,
Sri Balamurugan College of Arts and Science for Women,
Sathappadi, Mettur (TK), Salem
Abstract
Women have been portrayed in various
dimensions in literature. With the advent of literary modernism women authors
came into their own as innovators. As they traditionally had, women writers
tended to focus on the experience and insights of female characters, domestic
difficulties and the social tragedy caused by wasting the will and talent of
women. The emergence of women authors as full-fledged members of literary
communities continued in the twentieth century. In Shashi Deshpande’s well-known
fiction “The dark Holds No Terrors” its protagonist Sarita can be viewed from a
psychological point of view. The novel explores how sarita dwells in the world
of inner conflicts, and take courses of her life that lead to her mental
dilemma. But at the end, Sarita tries to make compromise with her predicament.
There was a hope of resettlement. She revolts against the tradition but
ultimately tries to comprise with the reality. The whole novel focuses on how
she searches her ownself in the patriarchally inclined society.
Keywords: Psychological, Inner conflicts,
Resettlement & own self
The term ‘feminism’ has its origin from the Latin word
‘femina’ meaning ‘woman’. It refers to the advocacy of women’s rights. In other
words, it relates to the belief that women should have the same social,
economic and political rights as men. The term became popular from the early
twentieth century struggles for securing women’s suffrage in the western
countries and the later well-organized socio-political movement for women’s
emancipation from patriarchal oppression. The male writers have mostly seen
women as inferior and weak. But the modern woman has raised her voice against
the atrocity and injustice done to her by the system. It was mainly after the
women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s that the contemporary feminist
ideology evolved and the female voice was heard with special concern.
The first wave
feminism has been the political movement for women’s rights. The second wave
feminism relates to the historical context of patriarchy and oppression and
attacks the male domination in aggressive, militant tone. The third wave
feminism challenges the gender discrimination and attempts to find a rationale
for the identities of masculinity and feminity. The fourth wave feminism is
termed post-modern feminism and may be called ‘post-feminism’, which lay
emphasis on individual woman’s inner freedom and awakening. It tries to resolve
the issues and problems raised by feminism and attempts to understand the
relationship of interdependence between men and women.
Shashi Deshpande
is a well know author in the field of Indian Literature. Some of her best-known
works are The Dark Holds No Terrors, That Long Silence which won the
Sahithya Academic Award. As an author of the 70’s and 80’s, she mirrors a
realistic picture of the contemporary middle class, educated urban Indian
woman. She gave focus on despicable condition of woman who is ignorant of
herself and rights have been on the stream of her writing. Shashi Deshpande has
made bold attempts at giving a voice to the disappointments and frustration of
women despite her vehement denial of being a feminist.
Shashi Deshpande
significantly brings out the inner struggles of women wherein the emancipate
for better solution. This theme turned the readers to look upon her novel as a
comforting word to one’s psyche. Most of her novels shed light on her various interests
in bringing new ideas. Her feminist ideologies and her way of perceiving issues
began to influence the women society.
Shashi Deshpande
can be considered a postcolonial novelist because she is writing in
post-independence India. The Dark Holds No Terrors by Shashi Deshpande
is totally different novel in the sense that it explodes the myth of man’s
superiority and the myth of woman being a paragon of all virtues. It is based
on the problem faced by a career woman, a refreshingly new phenomenon in Indian
English fiction.
The Dark Holds No
Terrors tells the story of a marriage on the rocks.
The novel opens with Sarita (often call as Saru) returning after fifteen years
to her father’s house a place she had once sworn never to return to. Unable to
bear the sexual sadism of her husband. The rest of the novel is remembrance of
things past and a brief confession to the father with whom she had hardly
communicated before. So, the narrative wandering between present and past. The
stay in her father’s house gives Sarita a chance to review her relationship
with her husband, her dead mother, dead brother, Dhruva and her children Renu
and Abhi.
The novel is a
fascinating study of male psychology by a woman which in turn becomes an
exposition of the female psyche too. Saru is highly self-willed and her
problems ensue because of her outsized ego and innate love for power over
others. She defies traditional codes at the slightest thread to her mother’s
house. Saru’s case, defiance is her second nature “Sarita defies her mother to
become a Doctor, defies her caste to marry outside and defies social
conventions by using Boozie to advance her carreer”. As a child saru had seen
the predicament of the grandmother separated from her cruel husband and considered
“an unwanted burden” by her own people. From then on economic independence
became a goal in life which Saru took to be an insurance against subordination
or suppression. Every move in life is towards the realization of the goal.
Saru wins Manu’s love she sees it as her victory. Saru
marries Manu only when she meets him as an equal “movie actor on one time top’
but now clinging to a monthly paid job. When the society confers so much
importance on the doctor as Saru, she proudly wears it on her sleeves, whereas
it leaves Manu thoroughly insecure.
In this novel
three problem incidents that are frequently evoked by Saru from her bitter
memory, these three incidents regulate and even control Saru’s happiness. The
first one is Saru’s interview for a special issue on career women brought out
by a woman’s magazine. The interviewer’s casual query put to Manu- “How does it
feel when your wife earns not only the butter but most of the bread as well”.
Undermines Manu’s confidence totally. Though Saru’scarrer is Manu’s problem. He
unable to come to terms with the fact that he is a failure in life, Manu lets
his wounded male pride manifest itself in the form of sexual sadism. Bed is the
only place where he can assert his animal power over Saru. When Saru goes away
to her father’s house, he writes to her and plans to come and take her back
home as if nothing had gone wrong and that the marriage had given him
“life-long right to affection, love and respect”.
The second one
evoked in the novel with bitterness is Prof.Kulkarni’s message that is Saru
mother’s death. The mother had successfully erased Saru from her household with
the exception of photograph only because Dhruva was in it too. Saru’s obsessive
remembrance of the mother is indicative of both her sense of guilt and her
sense of defeat.
The third
important incident that Saru recalls repeatedly is her brother Dhruva’s
drowning in pond. The mother establishes that Saru has killed Dhruva and Saru
puts herself in the dock. Sarunever boldly refutes or denies the charge of
murder except in the confession to her father. Dhruva’s demise had always been
her subconscious desire and there is very thin demarcation between her wish and
its fulfilment. The guilt had come to stay and she is destined to be in the
dock perennially- her husband, dead mother, dead brother and even her children
are the accusers and she the accused.
The frame work of
the novel provides good acoustics for woman’s voice and establishes that woman
too has choices in life. In an article Shashi Deshpande States: “A woman who
writes of women’s experiences often brings in some aspects of those experiences
that have angered her, roused her strong feelings. Saru’s feeling of
homelessness is an affirmation of her sense of isolation. Saru leaves “home” twice
in the novel to seek release once to establish her independence from mother’s
suppression and the second time to establish her indispensability to her
husband and children.
The feeling of
homelessness is indicative of inner disintegration. According to Saru’s caution
to Dhruva – “The Dark Holds No Terrors that 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” is what she needs to apply herself.
Rather than
escaping from the dark or cursing the darkness all that Saru needs to do is to
light a candle and declare that The Dark Holds No Terrors. It effectively
brings out the psychological problems of a career woman, never before seriously
and artistically discussed in Indian English Fiction. To dismiss it as feminist
propaganda is to discount the serious concerns of the novel. Shashi Deshpande
does not indulge in clichés worked to death by the women’s liberation movement
and this saves the novel from degenerating into a feminist tract. She is
satisfied with a psychological probe and explores the premise of half-lights,
provides the outlines and spares us the clinical details. Thus, the whole
development of the novel can be observed in four phrases, that is flight from
reality, frustration, submission and ultimately an attempt to reconsolidate.
Shashi Deshpande
concern about the problems of women and their quest for identity makes one
consider her novels as feminist texts. Saru herself believes at one point that
it is because her mother cursed her that she is unhappy in her marriage, and is
irreconcilable with her childhood. Though she remains unchanged till the end,
she has a better understanding of herself and others. This gives her the
courage to confront reality. That the Dark can no longer bring her terror in
her life.
Works Cited
Deshpande, Shashi. The Dark Holds No Terrors. New
Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1980. Print.
Dhawan.R.k. Indian Women Novelists. New Delhi:
Prestige Books, 1991. Print.
Sebastian, Mrinalini. The Novels of Shashi Deshpande
in Postcolonial Arguments. New Delhi: Sangam Books, 2008. Print.