Emasculation of Man in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds no Terrors.

Abstract

For as long as Adam and Eve were created, the notion of gender hierarchy between men and women positioned the latter unfavourably. The pervasiveness of such subordination is designated throughout the decades, from the book of genesis blaming Eve for Adam’s fall from paradise, to the Greek ecclesiast John Chrysostom who emphasized that women are characteristically evil, to John Keats who conceives women as naïve as children and thus unworthy of his time (Dobie, 2009). This demeaning ideology shaped virtually every aspect of society, whether Western or Eastern, to the point that it still pervades to the present day. Consequently, for the purpose of unshackling themselves from their debilitating state, feminism was formulated. Feminism, according to Molony (Molony,2008: p.513), is perceived as “the quest for rights and improved status and conditions of women”. This movement, which advocates the rights of women in society, is ever-evolving from its origins that stem back to the 19^th century.