Quest for Identity in That Long Silence

Abstract

Shashi Deshpande is an award winning Indian novelist. She focuses mainly on the career women and their quest for identity in the male chauvinistic Indian social set up. Shashi Deshpande?s chief thematic concern is with a women?s struggle, in the context of contemporary Indian society, her effort to find and preserve her identity as a wife, mother and most of all as a human being. That Long Silence, it is the story of Jaya, the house wife who is seen always engaged in searching her own identity. The male superiority signifies the patriarchal culture in the family relationship between Jaya and her husband Mohan. As woman who lost her identity in family. Shashi Deshpande becomes successful in the novel to transform Jaya?s mute suffering into revolting thinking to gain her identity.