Marital relationships, resistance, and self-redefinition in the women's room and that long silence

Abstract EN

This paper explores the representations of marital relationships, women's resistance and their self-redefinition in Marilyn French's The Women's Room (1977) and Shashi Deshpande's That Long Silence (1989).

It traces the evolving lives of the women characters who are firstly depicted as representatives of the Angel in the House.

These women, however, become aware of their speaking and acting potential as well as of the chauvinistic attempts to mute them, and so they resist these attempts and choose to exercise their agency.

Ostensibly, their voice-quest becomes also a home-quest, a voice which attempts to change the way women are perceived by themselves and by their societies and cultures.