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Deshpande's work:
The Binding Vine
In
her book the Binding Vine the narrator, Urmi, goes to
meet her friend, Vanaa, at the local hospital, and finds her
caring for a mother and daughter. The daughter has been in an
accident - she's unconscious - she has also been violently attacked
and raped. But the mother does not want to believe what she
is told:
 "it's not true"
Urmi
finds herself caught up in the story of the daughter, Kalpana,
and the mother's attempts to protect the honour of her family.
By writing about rape, Deshpande was breaking the silence on
an issue which was rarely discussed - a silence which was intended
to protect the honour of the males in the family:
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"30
years ago it would never be talked about and I think that
to me was the worst thing that it's so bound up with the
honour of the family. It's the men in the family who are
wronged not the woman and the disgrace is the woman's.
I think this is what The Binding Vine is really about
: why is the mother afraid to speak? The disgrace is not
the girl's, the disgrace is the criminal's. But that is
not how it is - because she thinks that it will hurt her
family. It's really the dilemma which Urmi, the narrator,
faces because, if she makes it public, it's possible the
family is going to be affected, and if she does not, you
know it's like saying the woman is the one who is in disgrace,
who has done wrong. and I find a lot of activists in India
also face this problem, it's a very true problem."
Shashi Deshpande |
At
the same time Urmi discovers the story of her own mother in
law, Mira. Through reading her diaries and poetry she learns
that Mira was trapped in a marriage without love and raped by
her husband. Apart from her secret writings, Mira had been silent
on the subject.
Urmi is coping with her own tragedy - her eighteen month old daughter has died. Urmi had spent her own childhood living with her grandparents and does not have a close relationship with her mother, nor with her husband who is often away. She is traumatised by her loss and seems to be searching for love.
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"Love
is what she's trying to look for and with the dead daughter
that she is looking for it and she misses it in her mother
and she gets an idea of it when she reads Mira's diaries
- because there is Mira looking for love and instead meeting
the lust of her husband. And then she is talking about
her unborn child. So you have again this idea of a love
which is not really there but she's imagining it. So I
think the idea of love is present in all my work, there's
a lot of range of emotions in between but I think love
is what all the characters are looking for."
Shashi Deshpande |
Although she writes about harsh and controversial topics, Deshpande does not want to be seen as someone who writes about issues and problems - she is keen to point out that she is a writer of fiction. Her characters' struggles are those of ordinary women fighting to be themselves rather than conform to stereotypes - to a fixed idea of how women should be.
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"I
always feel kind of wronged when people say I write about
women's problems, because I always feel I write about
human beings, many of whom happen to be women. But then
when I look back at my work and I think about what issue
has mattered most, it is the conflict between the idea
women have of themselves and the idea that society imposes
on them of what being a woman is. And there's a struggle
to conform to this image, the guilt when you can't do
that..
I think this image, especially in India, comes through
religion, through myth, through literature, through cultural
stereotypes, through movies, they're all very strong.
So I've been discarding all those stereotypes and all
the mythical images."
Shashi Deshpande |
Many
of Shashi Deshpande's women characters learn to break free of
the stereotypes which surround them - the stereotype for instance
of the mother and wife who remains silent and sacrifices her
own needs and her own self.
publication details
The Dark Holds no Terrors (1980), Vikas Publishing
House
That Long Silence (1988), Penguin
The Binding Vine (1993), Feminist Press
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