A Study of Alienation in Shashi Despande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors

In Greek there are two words for alienation - 'anomie' and 'anomia'. While 'anomia' stands for self-alienation, 'anomie' refers to alienation from society. In fact, self-alienation and alienation from society are the two basic forms of alienation. If a person's spontaneous individual self has been stunted or stifled that person is said to be in a condition of alienation from himself or herself. The female characters of Shashi Deshpande suffer from both anomie and anomia. The reason in both the cases is patriarchal codes governing the society. Since ages they have deprived women of the right to live according to their own will. Deshpande's treatment of alienation in her women characters has a different dimension. Her protagonists, unlike the protagonists of Anita Desai, neither commit suicide nor go into self-exile because of an oppressive sense of alienation.