• Ms. Leethiyal Nancy Crocker

In Shashi Deshpande's novels, one can find the variety of characters too. In Deshpande's literary world there are characters taken from almost all the sections of life. They are medical practitioners and writers, educated housewives, uneducated ones and maidservants. Besides poverty, bereavement and such other common adversities, there are some causes of suffering exclusively for the female. Deshpande renders with sympathetic understanding the variety of suffering a woman has to undergo. Sometimes the suffering is attached to the social taboos, and sometimes the women are silenced in the name of family honor, and are compelled to digest torture. Shashi Deshpande usually describes Indian women in her novels. That is what the condition of women in most families. Shashi Deshpande's sincere attempt to break the silence of women has been widely acclaimed at home and abroad. Her clear understanding of human relationship, her close observation of the way ofthe world, her unbiased attitude to dogmas and movement enforced one to do a study in this direction.

Sympathetic understanding, maidservants, dogmas, social taboos.

"Gender Equality and Socio-Cultural Explorationsin Shashi Deshpande's", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 4, page no.919-923, April-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIRAG06192.pdf

"Gender Equality and Socio-Cultural Explorationsin Shashi Deshpande's", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 4, page no. pp919-923, April-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIRAG06192.pdf