Women’s Trauma, New Woman, and Its Impact on Children and Society: A Study of Shashi Deshpande’s Select Fiction

Abstract

Modernization and Urbanization have a visible impact on the man-woman relationship, families, and typically on children. It has challenged the typical family's gender roles, structures, and age-old societal conventions. As one of the prominent feminist writers of India, Sashi Deshpande has portrayed the lives of women who were once suppressed, depressed, and traumatized, and how they finally come to live on their own terms, much like Sarah Grand’s New Woman in almost all of her novels. To name a few, The Dark Holds No Terror (1980), That Long Silence (1988), A Matter of Time (1996), Small Remedies (2000), The Binding Vine (1992), Moving on (2004), Shadow Play (2013), Strangers to Ourselves (2015), etc. This paper thus examines the representation of women’s trauma, single-parenting, and its wider psycho-sociological impact on family, relationships, and especially on the development of the children. It suggests that children growing up in such tense and emotionally unavailable parental households often internalize fear and insecurity, which ultimately influences the broader social structure.