Deshpande boldly exhibits the plight of the typical Indian girl who suffers acute gender discrimination, is socially conditioned and made to feel inferior to the male child since her childhood. The social conditioning checks the blossoming of the girl‘s personality to its full potential. She is deprived of the instinctive childhood when the child is lost in the frenzy of games and sports amidst its toys and dream world. She is also not provided with her most desired education and training. It is marriage that must be the ultimate goal for her. The man made code of social decency has tricked women by making them the sole custodians of this so called decency, at the same time taking away all their rights. Thus the attributes that call for giving away what you possess, are ascribed as feminine traits. Accordingly, the social conventions emphasize on inculcating these predefined feminine traits such as forgiveness, self-abnegation, tolerance, servility, and serenity. Women have to mould themselves to suit the whims and fancies of their male counterparts and in this process, they suppress their identity.
The novel The Dark Holds No Terrors (1980) is a live example of undue gender discrimination inflicted by mother on her girl-child. Saru the protagonist, is very well aware of her mother‘s preference for her brother Dhruva. She cannot bear her mother‘s undue preference for her brother that her mother so unceremoniously does. Saru cannot do anything as she is helpless. However, she feels the discrepancy as she recalls that there was ―always a puja on Dhruva‘s birthday. A festive lunch in the afternoon and an aarti in the evening. My birthdays were almost the same – but there was no puja‖ .