NEGOTIATING REPRESSION AND RESISTANCE: A PSYCHOANALYTIC-MARXIST STUDY OF SASHE DESHPANDE'S SELECTIVE NOVELS (THE DARK HOLDS NO TERRORS, THAT LONG SILENCE, ROOTS AND SHADOWS)

Abstract

This study examined repression and resistance in Shashi Deshpande’s selected novels, The Dark Holds No Terrors, That Long Silence, and Roots and Shadows, through a psychoanalytic-Marxist framework. The study focused on how patriarchal ideology shaped female identity through family, marriage, tradition, social respectability, and gendered moral codes. Using qualitative textual analysis, the research interpreted Saru, Jaya, and Indu as women whose private suffering was deeply connected with social structures that trained them into silence, obedience, guilt, and self-denial. Althusser’s concept of ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses was used to analyze how institutions such as family, marriage, and culture reproduced women’s subordination, while Freud’s theory of repression and neurosis helped explain the psychological effects of this subordination. The findings showed that Deshpande’s women were not passive victims; their resistance emerged gradually through memory, self-reflection, writing, and questioning of inherited values. Saru’s confrontation with marital violence, Jaya’s attempt to break her long silence, and Indu’s struggle against family tradition revealed that resistance in Deshpande’s fiction was slow, painful, and internally conflicted. The study concluded that Deshpande’s novels exposed patriarchy as both a social and psychological force, showing how oppression entered women’s minds while also creating the conditions for self-awareness and agency.