MULTI-FACETS OF WOMEN IN THE SELECT NOVELS OF SHOBHA DE

Abstract

Shobha De, an eminent modern novelists and journalists, becomes the symbol of highlighting different perspectives of woman's freedom and liberation. She conceives the extra-marital affairs of women as the stroke to break the traditional and moral values in society. This is one of the most important aspects of her feminism. Her women are daring and courageous in establishing extra-marital affairs to satisfy their natural urge. These women are not hesitant in using sex as calculated strategy to get social and financial benefit. Marriage for them is an insurance against social values. For instance in her novel Socialite Evenings, Karuna is such a woman who declines to follow the traditional path. She suggests through her women characters in Starry Nights that, whenever women, whether circumstantially or ambitiously, flout morality in the name of their struggle for success in life, they cannot escape disaster and consequent suffering. And in her novel Strange Obsession, Shobha De is rejecting and deconstructing man-made images of women and an alternative female identity is created where a woman sometimes take the role of man and another takes the role of a ‘free woman’. One might say that gender identities cannot be changed or exchanged at will. But Shobha De’s women characters are very good specimens which openly establish that reversal of roles are indeed possible for women in the present day society. These multiple shades of woman's mind and plight are dealt in this paper exclusively.