期刊名称：Journal of Post-Colonial Cultures & Societies
印刷版ISSN：1948-1845
电子版ISSN：1948-1853
出版年度：2012
卷号：3
期号：2
出版社：Wright State University
摘要：As a private personal addressal of the constraints and commitments that muffle the voice of the woman writer, Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence (1988) deals directly with feminist narratological preoccupation with the context of how a woman writes. Deshpande expertly handles the use of the first person homodiegetic narrator to build a sense of intimacy and empathy with the reader, and also to add to the touch of real life authenticity which facilitates the reader’s sense of identification with the situations depicted in the novel. As in most women’s writing, the plot is minimal, and is restricted to the mind of the narrator, which is the site for the quest for selfhood that formulates the substance of the novel. Shashi Deshpande exploits the flashback and stream of consciousness techniques to their full potential to lay bare the innards of the intimate personal story of a woman. Considering the nature of the subject matter, perhaps this is the only technique permissible. That Long Silence as a representative sample of women’s writing exposes stereotypical images of women as meaningless constructions of the male imagination. The novel also shows instances of “reflexive perception” and “inversion” which have been identified as characteristic features of women’s writing. Also the presence of a mad woman in the text allows us to interpret the novel from the perspective of Gilbert and Gubar. In the light of certain feminist theories, certain recognizable strains of women’s writing may thus be identified
关键词：feminist narratological application; selfhood; stream of consciousness; inversion; ;reflexive perception.
