Psychological Conditioning of Women in The Novels of Shashi Deshpande

ABSTRACT

Shashi Deshpande an eminent Indian novelist in her works she has spotlighted the issue of the psychological conditioning of women in a way that it rendered their whole lives dependent, powerless, lifeless, submissive, inferior and in a miserable state. Or to say in other simple words women were left to become puppets of patriarchal society. Indian society is a very male-dominated, traditionalist, orthodox, suppressing and rigid society. A girl right before her birth was designated as a bad omen, and burden and her birth were celebrated as a black day. Beginning from her imagination, curiosity, psychological development, dreams and aspiration were crushed. She was conditioned to be a submissive blind follower who has no voice of her own and had no sole existence of her own. She was defined about men and often designated as someones mother, wife, sister, daughter, daughter-in-law, aunt, niece etc. Society strived to condition girl child in a way that in her psychology male was always superior, respectable and authoritarian whose status was next to God or he was the parmeshwara whom she was entitled to serve all her life keeping aside her choices, dreams, aspirations, and goals. All her life she was told she was inferior, powerless, unwanted, unappreciated and a burden. Deshpande in her works has minutely captured the very essence of how society conditions the psychology of a girl child differently. Commencing from denying them the right to be born to be held captivated to denying their existence a womans psychology had to grow through many tough, rough and repressive phases which were normalized by the society in the names of the traditions and customs. Deshpande also unearthed various other factors which inhibit the psychological growth of women leading them to a powerless, miserable and vulnerable state. This research paper is an attempt to explore the psychological conditioning of women in Indian patriarchal society.

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