The Dark Holds No Terror By Shashi Deshpande Summary

Shashi Deshpande, a well-known Indian Woman novelist in English, started her literary career with the publication of her first story in 1970. Her first novel, ‘The Dark Holds No Terrors’, came out in 1980. Her novel, ‘That Long Silence’, won her the ‘Sahitya Academy Award’ and ‘Nanjangad Thirumlamaba Award’. She was also awarded Padma Shri in 2009 for her significant contribution to Indian English novel. Her novels are deeply rooted in Indian context. She sincerely writes of what she sees and finds around her. As a woman novelist, she is mainly concerned with the projection of sorrows and sufferings, plight and predicament, pain and agony, anguish and frustration, suppression and exploitation of Indian women in Indian patriarchy. Her woman-oriented
She has no existence apart from her male-counter-part. In this regard, Simone de Beauvoir writes: “Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being”. (Beauvoir 16). She is simply what a man sees, defines and decrees. She is just what a man wants her to be. She is defined and understood only with reference to a man. Beauvoir has pin-pointed some fundamental questions related to the female world. The questions are: “How can a human being in woman’s situation attain fulfillment? What roads are open to her? Which are blocked? How can independence be recovered in a state of dependency? What circumstances limit woman’s liberty and how can they be overcome?” (Beauvoir 29). It is very difficult to answer these questions in Indian patriarchy. Jessica Benjamin observers: “The anchoring of this structure so deep in the psyche is what gives domination its appearance of inevitability, makes it seem that a relationship in which both participants are subjects - both empowered and mutually respectful - is impossible”. (Benjamin 85-86). An Indian woman, a meek and obedient member of a male-dominated society, a puppet that follows five paces behind her man, an inanimate object suffering on account of prejudice, conventions and traditions, is expected to be silent, tolerant and patient, and yet gentle and gracious, caring and loving, kind and considerate
After Akka’s death, she becomes the guardian property and family. She knows that the female members of the family, Narmada-atya, Sunanda-atya, Padmini and her mother, Sumitra-kaki, Kamala-kaki with her three daughters, even Saroja, experience pain, agony, suppression and suffocation in a male-dominated and tradition-bound family. At her ancestral home, she learns a lot from Vithal, an orphaned student always busy with his books and studies. He says to Indu that he has to concentrate on his studies with all the pinpricks in the family as he is an outsider, and that he has no other choice. His statement ‘I have no choice’ makes Indu think about her life with her husband. She, who has the potentiality to stand out sharp and clear as Indu, an individual, admits: “For had I not, so very often, felt myself just a mouthing, grimacing puppet, dully saying the lines I had to, feeling, actually, nothing? Had I not felt myself flat, one-dimensional, just a blurred figure merging into the background?” (Deshpande 143). It is the marriage that has made her a mute puppet. Her life is filled with deceptions and betrayals. She realizes that like any other man, her husband expects her to conform to his views and ideas. Her dream of being a complete and independent individual does not come true. Deceived and disillusioned, she accepts a conventional way of