Shashi Deshpande, as a feminist writer concentrates on the tortures and sufferings of middle-class Indian, Women who are educated, sensitive and are conscious of their legal, social and conjugal rights. Deshpande highlights the household conflict between wife and husband operating at the emotional, intellectual and sexual levels. The novelist being fully aware of the patriarchal set-up of Indian society does not plead for any kind of confrontation or militancy between Man and women, between husband and wife. As it is often said and practiced that “Silence, tolerance, sufferance is golden” and though the novel is in the feminist framework, the novelist does not cross the limits of Indian, socio—cultural reality.
The metaphor of silence under which the novel is organized helps to impose a quietude and discipline; the inner dynamics of a self cut off from human communication. That Long Silence is not an intrusion into the world of silence but a silent communion with the oppressed self-straining for articulation, for a voice. The concept of new women is a mere attitudinal transformation stifling and oppressive system of sex roles giving her way to undistorted gender equality. Actually, a new woman is a feminist who is in search for the means to overcome oppression, develop her powers and abilities for personal fulfillment and self-actualization.
In conclusion, it is observed that, the exigencies of life presented themselves in the form of traumatic events to Jaya, presents