Female Subjectivity and Patriarchal Resistance in the Novels of Shashi Deshpande

Abstract

This paper examines the dynamics of female subjectivity and resistance to patriarchal structures in the novels of Shashi Deshpande, one of India's most distinguished women writers in English. Drawing on feminist literary theory, postcolonial criticism, and psychoanalytic frameworks, this study analyses how Deshpande's protagonists negotiate identity, silence, language, and selfhood within the circumscribed spaces of the Indian patriarchal family. The paper focuses primarily on That Long Silence (1988), The Dark Holds No Terrors (1980), A Matter of Time (1996), and Small Remedies (2000), tracing Deshpande's evolving portraiture of women who move from internalised oppression toward tentative acts of self-articulation.