An Analytical Study of Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors

The appearance of women novelist is an important development in Indo-Anglican literature and Shashi Deshpande is an outstanding novelist of Indian English literature. She explores Indian woman in her social relations, emotional reactions and psychological inspirations. Deshpande highlights the problems encountered by the Indian women caught between the native Indian and invading western cultures. Shashi Deshpande’s novels are concerned with a woman’s quest for self; an exploration into the female psyche and an understanding of the mysteries of life and the protagonist’s place in it. The novel The Dark Holds No Terrors is Deshpande’s first major novel which deals with multiple issues concerning women. The novel was published in 1980 and has been translated into German and Russian languages. The novel is divided into four parts and Deshpande commences her novel The Dark Holds No Terrors with an epigraph from the Dhammpada, which says, 

You are your own refuge;

there is no other refuge.

This refuge is hard to achieve. 

It depicts the vulnerability of woman who seeks shelter in a man’s house through marriage and not in herself. But even in her husband’s house she doesn’t find a room of her own. The eternal female dream of finding happiness through a man shatters after marriage. As the real shelter of a woman is her own self but it is very difficult to achieve this refuge as she has to face a lot of obstacles in the form of social codes and morals.

Through in this novel Shashi Deshpande has made an extensive study of a woman in society and has very accurately presented different facets of a woman’s life. She awakens the conscience of her readers and makes them feel guilty for what they have made of woman. The novel reminds us of Simone de Beauvoir that a woman is not born but is made by our patriarchal culture. Deshpande begins the novel with Sarita’s, also known as Saru, returning to her parental home, after a time period of fifteen years, when she learns of her mother’s death. Her mother died before her husband and Saru meditates, “Wasn’t that what all women prayed to the tulsi for?”1 The novel depicts the story of an unsuccessful marriage where the protagonist, Sarita, being overpowered by her husband, finally, in her quest for home, returns to her parent’s house. Saru, who is a successful doctor and is socially and financially more successful as compared to her husband, is subject to her husband’s sexual sadism, physical torture and constant abuse. She describes it in this way,

“The hurting hands, the savage teeth, the monstrous assault of a horribly familiar body. And above me, a face I could not recognize. Total non-comprehension, complete bewilderment, paralysed me for a while. Then I began to struggle. But my body, hurt and painful, could do nothing against the fearful strength which overwhelmed me.”2 

Deshpande deals with the psychological problem of an educated and professionally qualified woman, earning not only the bread but also the butter for the family. Her problems start from her childhood and intensify when she marries a person who is not highly qualified and has a lower financial and social status. As a two-in-one woman she wears a white coat and an air of confidence and knowing at the day time whereas at night she becomes a terrified and trapped animal. Manohar, Saru’s husband, is an English teacher in a third-rate college and therefore, the victim of inferiority complex. He uses the bedroom to manifest his male ego and power. Her husband, Manu, is a man with dual personality as he does not remember the strange action and behaves normally in morning. Even after fifteen years of marriage he remains a stranger to Saru as she says, “A man I didn’t know.”3 

The novel reveals the quest of an anxious, eager, ambitious and self-assertive and self-righteous woman. Sarita is an ordinary middle-class woman, who is aware of her own limitations but lacks self-confidence. Though she had left her parental house with the determination that she would never come back again but she is unable to bear the sexual sadism of her husband and thus her unsuccessful marriage leads her to her primitive environment. It is not only the cruelty of her husband that fills her with grief, but her brother’s death, her dejected life, the pain and suffering of her mother and herself also affects her mentally, psychologically and physically. Sarita was welcomed as she expected. Both she and her father feel uneasy to meet each other after such a long period. And she has to ask her father, “Can I come in, Baba?”