Metaphysical Approach to Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence

Abstract

Shashi Deshpande brings woman’s nobility, passions, struggling and the will to the society which should be understood by all through her writing. In the novel That Long Silence the prolonging phases of unfulfilled sexual happiness, unwarranted life partner, unstable profession, lack of communication, psychological imbalance, economical insufficiency, lack of permanent refuge, the abandonment of parental support, gender domination, misappropriating the cultural values and unagreeable social pattern drive the balance minded middle class woman Jaya and other minor women characters to have an unquenchable thirst for familial love and longing for belonging.

It is suggested by the writer that woman is a silent sufferer. Though she appears as a fair sex and a symbol of love and affection, her physical ailment and psychological disturbance are not understood properly by the male dominant society.