Issue Details

JAYA: STANDING AT CROSSROADS

ABSTRACT

Shashi Deshpande has depicted the picture of Indian women, who are generally submissive, docile, neglected and suppressed. But the female protagonists of hers are well-educated, self aware and assertive, having a prestigious life of their own. Education is now becoming available to a section of women but it does not change their way of thinking automatically. Despite education, they do not shed their prejudices easily. Only the hard blow of the circumstances can compel them to think anew and behave in a new way. When men and women distort their identities, when they ignore their social obligations and creative impulses in the name of family demands, they get nowhere. Personality of an individual is an integrated whole. It cannot be reduced to pieces, some to be suppressed and some to be played up. Jaya commits a blunder when she tries to suppress her social being, her individuality and to confine herself to the role of Mohan’s wife and the mother of their two children. What the novel highlights is that education is now becoming available to a section of women but it does not change their way of thinking automatically. Despite education, they do not shed their prejudices easily. Only Solution, they have to take recourse to self-examination and to become bold enough to resist undesirable pressures.

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