The post-Independence period has brought to the forefront a number of noted women novelists who have enriched Indian English fiction by a creative release of feminine sensibility. The works of Indian women novelists like Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande can be compared with those of Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, Aritha Van Herk and Anne Tyler. All these writers write of life as seen by women and life as affecting them. Shashi Deshpande has contributed a great deal to the emergence of the new novel whose differentiating attributes are seen in bold experimentation in narrative strategies and use of language. Deshpande’s maiden novel The Dark Holds No Terrors traces the heroine Sarita’s growth to womanhood through a bitter, claustrophobic girlhood, followed by an industrious studentship, idyllic romance, and finally a horrific wifehood. The present paper shows how Sarita goes through the traumatic experiences when her professional success casts a shadow on her marital life.