Shashi Deshpande and the Global South Gender Entanglements

1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-041-39301-6
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 140 Seiten, Format (B × H): 138 mm x 216 mm

Reihe: Routledge Focus on Literature

Shashi Deshpande and the Global South Gender Entanglements offers a transformative approach to literary gender studies and feminist literary criticism by moving beyond rigid gender binaries to examine the complex, humanistic dynamics of man-woman relationality in Shashi Deshpande’s fiction.

Grounded in the socio-cultural realities of the Global South, the book investigates how male characters, rather than serving merely as antagonists, act as complex, catalytic enablers in women’s quests for identity. By integrating multipolar facets of masculinity studies with relational feminist theories, it delves into critical, understudied issues such as marital rape, masculinist anxiety, conjugal alienation, and relational autonomy. Through comparative lenses, including a pairing of Deshpande’s modern urban Indian settings with Jane Austen’s Regency-era world, the book exposes the limitations of universalist Western frameworks. It provides a fresh, interdisciplinary model for understanding how gendered identities, agency, and relational paradigms are continuously negotiated within changing Global South situations.

An indispensable contribution to contemporary feminist literary criticism and comparative literature, the book redefines critical conversations around Shashi Deshpande's works while offering a robust methodological framework applicable across Global South literary contexts.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chakraborty, Soumyadeep

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturen sonstiger Sprachräume Indische & Dravidische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: The Quest for a Dynamic Gender Order; 1. Fractured Intimacies: Masculinist Angst and Marital Rape in The Dark Holds No Terrors; 2. Beyond Silences: Relational Ruptures, Escapism and the Global South Realities in That Long Silence; 3. Outsiders in the Home: Masculinist Alienation and Conjugal Dislocations in A Matter of Time; 4. Cartographies of Gender: Mapping Relational Fault Lines in Roots and Shadows; 5. Divergent Patriarchies: Gendered Subjectivity and Relational Autonomy in Jane Austen’s Emma and Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors; Conclusion: The Enduring Relevance

Über Autor(innen)

Dr. Soumyadeep Chakraborty is Assistant Professor of English at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, VIT-AP University, India. His scholarship appears in leading national and international peer-reviewed journals, with recent chapters in Environmental Crisis and Human Rights (Bloomsbury), Encyclopedia of New Populism and Responses in the 21st Century (Springer Nature), and Indian Classical Literature: Critical Essays (Routledge). He has co-edited Global Perspectives on Eco-Aesthetics and Eco-Ethics (Lexington Books) and Ecodisaster and Dystopian Imagination (Bloomsbury). His research interests include gender studies, children's literature and critical childhood studies, and environmental humanities.