International Journal of English Literature and Culture
 

International Journal of English Literature and Culture

Vol. 6(1), pp. 25-29, February, 2018

 ISSN: 2360-7831

DOI: 10.14662/IJELC2018.007

Review paper

The novels of Shashi Deshpande revolves around the sufferings and suffocating situation of female section in the contemporary Indian society. The second novel Shashi Deshpande The Dark Holds No Terror presents the pictures of the various parts of Sarita’s life, the protagonist dividing into four parts. Sarita expresses her heart core desire to get identity which she finds a lack in her many folded life. In the first part Sarita finds a lack of maternal link when she finds herself a nonentity to her father as well as the neighbour Madhav who takes care of her father after the death of her mother. In the second part Sarita reminiscences the insignificance of her existence to her mother who wants the presence of Dhruva in her life instead of Sarita. In the third part Sarita presents the points of view of the common women who live in this caged glided life assuming that they are happy and it is the custom to be happy in life. Sarita in the fourth part reflects her crisis of own existence and its importance which reminds her that everything is meaningless and tenses to Nihilism. The Beckett’s concept of ‘I’ is reverberated through this chapter. Here Sarita presents as the mouthpiece of Shashi Deshpande. Through the life-circle of Sarita, Shashi Deshpande portrays the endless meaningless circle of woman life in this patriarchal system. The lack of woman self which Virginia Woolf expresses in her A Room of One’s Own is found the reflection in the quest of Sarita in The Dark Holds No Terror as well as her awarded novel The Long Silence. The quest of self reflects the helpless situation of female section in this patriarchal society where they are regarded as a non-entity. They get their identity through the help of others. In Sarita’s case sometimes she is known as Manu’s wife, sometimes as mother, sometimes as Lady Doctor and so on. But only by her Christian name no body recognizes her unlike Manohar or Madhav. The keen search to seek a self of one’s own is reflected here in the caged life of female section in The Dark Holds No Terror.

Key-words:- Quest, Self-identity, Suppression, Patriarchal system, Feminism, Sufferings.

Cite This Article As: Das L (2018). An Evaluative Approach of the Quest for Self Identity in Woman Self in The Dark Holds No Terror. Inter.  J. Eng. Lit. Cult. 6(1): 25-29

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