QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN SHASHI DESHPANDE’S NOVEL: THAT LONG SILENCE (Pages 01-07) by P. Pramiladevi and Shanmugapriya G in THE INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH SPECIALIST / ISSN: 2350-1499 (Online); 2350-0751 (Print)

In the 20th century we come across so many women liberation movements and are proud to visualize women being liberated, educated and empowered in all spheres of profession equivalent to their male counterparts. Many incidents are being projected to prove of the woman's journey from subjugation to liberation but it is why again and still are feminine in search of Identity. If there has been given equal status why have the women have to fight “to secure a room of her own” the saddest issues are the laws are yet in printed papers which are not in practice. Regarded as the most outstanding novelist fighting for the emancipation and empowerment of women, Shashi Deshpande’s novels deal with the theme of women's quest for fulfillment and the way she is thwarted at every stage of the forces of custom and tradition. This paper aims at examining the encounters faced by the protagonist Jaya on her search for identity. Jaya, a flopped writer, is obsessed by the recollections of the past, disparity with her husband, obstructions in their seventeen years of marriage, distress in her teenage children. Shashi Deshpande gives us an extraordinarily proficient portrayal of a woman trying to obliterate a long silence which had started from her childhood and rooted in her character and in the pressure of her married life. Keywords: subjugation, liberation, female-identity, silence, disparity etc.