The Intrusion by Shashi Deshpande

Teacher: Pallavi Dutta.

About the author:

Shashi Despande is the second short story writer we are studying after Salman Rushdie
belonging to the category of writers of Indian Writing in English alongwith other notable
writers like Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai, Nayantara Sehgal, Kiran Nagarkar
and many more. She is a widely acclaimed and award-winning Indian novelist. She was born
in the year 1938 in Dharwad in Karnataka. Although she was familiar with both Marathi as
her mother’s language and Kannda her father’s language, she chose English for her writing.
She began her writing career in 1970 by publishing short fictional pieces. Her first book came
out in 1978; it was a collection of short stories bearing the title Legacy. Many of her writings
revolve around women issues and the relationship of women with other individuals and the
society at large. Like other Indian writers engaged in writing in English, her writings portray
the Indian way of life; in a language of “our emotional make-up” and successfully infused
“the tempo of Indian life in her English expression” as discussed in our previous class on
Raja Rao’s Kanthapura. She got the Sahitya Academy Award in 1990 for her novel That
Long Silence.

In the words of Shashi Despande,

After twenty five years of writing, I cannot close my eyes to the fact that my own writing
comes out of a deep involvement with the society I live in, especially with women.

My novels are about women trying to understand themselves, their history, their roles and
their place in this society and above all their relationship with others.

While engaging ourselves with the prescribed short story, we would keep this quote in
our mind to analyse the narrative and use it as a lens to situate our female protagonist
who interestingly does not have a name allotted to her alongwith her husband by the
author.

Notable works of Shashi Deshpande:

The Dark Hold No Terrors

Roots and Shadows

A Matter of Time

The Binding Vine

About the story:

The short story unfolds the life of a newly married couple whom the narrator defines as
having a relationship of “only husband and wife.” The man and woman in the story are in the
timeline of their honeymoon period as they have recently got married and thus travels to a
“place of privacy” to consummate their marriage. And towards the end of the story, the man
ends up violating the dignity of the woman thereby giving us readers a theme of marital rape
which is a contemporary topic within the discourse of gender studies. But apart from the
theme of marital rape, the story also throws light to the domain of women’s position in the
society at large and theme of women psychology. (Remember Deshpande’s quote)

What was society’s expectation from the protagonist to fulfill a specific gender role?

What was the protagonist’s own expectation from herself as a member of the same society?

What are the emotional aspects of both the characters involved in this story?

Is there a need to break from the predefined norms? What dos these norms or breaking away
of it would mean for a married woman?

While you read and re read (as I expect from you) the story please do so by keeping
these above questions in your mind to be discussed in our next Zoom online classes

About the title of the story: The Intrusion as the title suggests is the unwanted entry of
someone or something. In this case, this title refers to the intrusion of the man in the “private”
space of the woman without her consent.

At another level intrusion is also of societal expectations into the way of living of a newly
married woman.

Please note, apart from the title, how many times the word “intrusion” occurs in the
story?

As we follow the narratorial voice, we see that the intrusion already happened in the
narrator’s life way before the man “physically intruded” as a stranger. The usage of the word
stranger by the protagonist is potent here as the word has much weightage than that of the
word “husband and wife” to portray the concept of familiarity between the two characters.
Right from dressing up in uncomfortable high heels and sarees from being “guilty” about not
being submissive there was already a intrusion in the way of life of the woman; an intrusion
done by the so called expectations by the society; an intrusion by the predefined roles
prescribed by the society; an intrusion done by the woman herself by taking for granted that
her consent is not necessary for marriage. Things changed for her, the moment she stepped in
the area of the vicinity of marriage. But its only after the “incident” the narrator use the term
“intrusion” where she felt that it was a “intrusion in her privacy” by a man with whom she
shared the relationship of “only husband and wife.”

Important instances in the story:

 The very opening lines of the story “we looked blatantly out of place here” establishes
the sense of non-familiarity. The narrator throughout the story portrays her
uncomfortableness with a man who was “not her friend,” “not an acquaintance” but
“only a husband.” This emphasizes on the concept familiarity and friendship which
was absent in their arranged marriage and thus the act of “intrusion” is only reduced
to fulfilment of one’s animalistic desire of making love to the opposite gender.
 Although the story began on a happy note where a newly married couple is on the
way to spend their honeymoon the readers’ get a glimpse of the woman’s
“annoyance” when the husband looked at her impatiently when she would stop and
gazed at the beautiful sky. The physical space was that of enchanting beauty, the
“immense and fascinating sea” experienced by the couple yet the inner space of the
women was that of annoyance, discomfort and irritation.
 The contrast of the inner and outer domain had its presence from the beginning and
prepared the readers for the intrusion… “he held my arm to help me, but awkwardly
too tight, and I wanted to protest, to release my arm from his grip.”
 It is interesting to note how the protagonist referred to her husband in third person as
“the man” instead of my husband or my man, etc. This portrays the psychological
distancing of the protagonist from the other character. On the other hand, the man
happily announced to his wife by emphasizing that they have “complete privacy.”
 Please note: The woman had privacy (in outer space). But at the same time there was
no privacy as she says “for the intrusion into my privacy.” The concept of privacy
differed to both of them.
 Please note the physical description of the room that the couple stayed. It was like a
room where “people stay for a short time and go away, leaving no impress of
themselves behind.” The attendant showed “awareness of what we had come here for”
on his face. Here the author’s usage of the pronoun “we” in the context is interesting.
We will discuss this in detail in our next zoom online class.
 The description of the room paints a picture of a non-homely house “…the sheets
looked grubby and the pillow covers disgustingly greasy…it didn’t look like seem
like a place where children have ever shouted.” However, it also suggests the social
role a woman plays within a household. This room, without a woman (wife) to take
care of it, was in that condition.
 At another level, the description of the room also emphasized on its possibility of
being a space of prostitution “…the man who came here did so with other women,
perhaps bold faced and experienced who would laugh…” and it echoes Bernard
Shaw’s (Irish playwright) comment centuries ago that “marriage is legalized
prostitution.” The story reflects this statement.
 The story also hints at the instances of molestation that the character experienced
from “faceless, nameless men in crowds” of which she was reminded of after the
touch and whisper of her husband thereby posing a question regarding the ownership
of a woman’s body and man’s claimed right to violate it and act like he owns it to
touch it and glance it as per his convenience actively choosing not to consider consent
of the “owner” of the body.

(To be continued both in online class discussion and e content. Keep reading.)