Professor Vikas Sharma and Shashi Deshpande as a novelist describing female concern: A comparative study

Abstract

In the last few decades feminism has emerged as a very important topic in contemporary literature. Its importance has increased not only in terms of literature but also politically, economically and socially. Feminist movements have been the center of debate and have attracted a lot of attention. A question that a lot of people raise is what the need of feminism is. They argue that if there was never a movement dedicated to men why do we need one dedicated to women. A reason behind this can be that because of the widespread social structure based on patriarchy not only in India but all over the world, the male population was made very strong and the existence of a woman was reduced significantly. When this suppressed women to an extent that their personal rights and liberties were being violated, the feminist movement came before us. But like a coin has two sides, so does feminism. Feminism has both bad and good sides. There have been uncountable works of literature relating to feminism but only very few of them actually understand and analyze the complex nature of a woman's psychic and the problems that women face. Among such writers is Shashi Deshpande. She is one of the few writers who recognize women as a complete character in themselves and not merely a counterpart of the male characters in her works.

On the other hand, Professor Vikas Sharma is a writer who is a very famous teacher and stepped into the world of writing during the covid 19 pandemic. In the past three years, he has successfully published ten novels. In most of his novels, women play a central role and the theme of most of his novels is women and their problems. But his female characters appear to be stuck between the modern thinking of the twenty-first century and traditions at the same time. The aim of this research paper is to present a comparison between the female characters of Professor Vikas Sharma and Shashi Deshpande who are facing the patriarchy along with the problems of a changing society and are fighting to establish their own identity.