Masks and Disguises

MASKS AND DISGUISES

Shashi Deshpande

          Shashi Deshpande is one of the prominent voices to arrive on the scene of Indian literature in English.  She has created a place for herself in the galaxy of Indian women novelists in English.  She excels in projecting a realistic picture of Indian middle-class educated women, who though financially independent are confronting the dilemma of existence.

            Shashi Deshpande’s Masks and Disguises is taken from her famous collection of essays titled Writing from the Margin and Other Essays. This is a representative essay of Deshpande in which she enumerates the problems of women in general and the women writers in particular.  She argues that the women writers wear masks and disguises in order to hide their real self.

            Deshpande begins her essay by recollecting an incident that happened in her life in the past.  She was scolded by her parents for writing her name in a public building.  As a child, Shashi Deshpande did not know why she was rebuked but later when she came across a passage in Mahabharata she understood the reason for it. In the passage, Draupadi was advising Satyabhama to hide her thoughts and remain silent to win the love of her husband, Krishna.

            This advice of Draupadi makes Shashi Deshpande to get upset.  She argues that this is an injustice done to women folk. She says that as a writer she has to think and share those thoughts with the world.  But the age old customs and tradition advocate the women not to reveal their thoughts in public. Another problem which women writers face is that whatever they write is associated with themselves.  They are identified with the characters they create. Deshpande is of the opinion that it is easier to write women’s problems in general but harder to write of a specific woman’s sexual abuse by her husband.

Shashi Deshpande observes that the way men and women are looked at and the way their actions are judged in the world are different.  The reactions to their writings are also different. Devadas, the hero of Sharat Chandra’s novel, is considered as an admirable hero when he drinks himself to death because of failure in love. Deshpande asks if Parvati does the same thing will the world give the same status to her.  She is quite sure that Parvati would just become a debased figure.

Shashi Deshpande says that women are given less space or no space in the outer world.  They are confined within the domestic walls. The moment the women step out of their self is the moment of revelation and pure knowledge for them. This is what Jaya, the protagonist of Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence does in the novel.

The early women writers believed that telling things slant was one of the defensive mechanisms by which they could save them from sharp criticism. Today also many women writers follow different techniques to escape criticism. Some use the term ‘Anonymous’ and some others use ‘By a Lady’ .  Shashi Deshpande calls such techniques as mask and disguises.

Women writers prefer to write only poetry and fiction because they help them to make them partly invisible.  This is not possible in an autobiography.  In an autobiography neither masks nor disguises can be used.  But the autobiographies of an early era written by women writers kept the woman writers in the background foregrounding their counter parts. But the Women Liberation Movement and its struggle against the patriarchal society had shaken off the rigid social restraint imposed on women and gave much freedom to women writers as well.  The autobiographies of Sunita Deshpande and Kamala Padhye, wives of eminent men have been more open about their feelings, more analytical about their marriages and often critical about their husbands.

            The most difficult thing for the women writers to write about in public is sex.  Shashi Deshpande recollects that she felt very uncomfortable when she wrote her short story ‘The Intrusion’ which deals about a woman’s first experience with a man.  Many forget the fact that sex is as much part of women’s lives as it is of men’s.  Language  is also a problem and a disguise for women writers.  Many women prefer to write in another language as it gave them a freedom of expression and a shield to protect them from slings and arrows of their own men.

            Shashi Deshpande finally concludes the essay be saying that today a few women have managed to break the barriers and remove their masks and disguises.  They are no longer silent but are bold enough to articulate their deepest feelings, their dreams and frustrations. Shashi Deshpande is quite optimistic that soon many others would also remove their masks and show their real self.