POVERTY— A CHALLENGE TO HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract

In male dominated Indian society, women are given a secondary place. Weather a women is a technologist, a bureaucrat, a lawyer, a novelist or a scientist, she can not escape her or ordained duties as a wife or a family member. Women novelists of Indian languages and Indo-Anglian literature have taken up issues related to their status and tried to influence the conscience of the society.  The contribution of women writers to the variety and validity of Indo-Anglian novel is considerable. Fiction by women writers provides searching insights and a great deal of human understanding.

In India a woman's life is governed by tradition and family customs. A good woman is one who is a good daughter, a good wife and a good mother. To be good means to be of a sacrificing, self-abnegating, meek and of quiet nature. Jaya's married life has always been attending to the needs of the husband. Tending and caring for the children becomes her full-time occupation. She states in "unequivocal terms" that Mohan is her profession, career and means of livelihood. In the process, she becomes dwarfed and annihilated as an individual. She believes that there is pain in hostility, and rebellion is anguish and agony. Hence, she adopts a subaltern and subservient attitude:

That long silence, acclaimed master piece of feminist writing in Indo-anglian fiction raises the status of Shashi Deshpande among the writers of present day; the novel highlights the image of middle class women sandwiched between the tradition and modernity.