Inter-Relationship between Women and Nature: A Critical Study of the Fictions of Anita Desai

The inward or inner agony, pressure and any other issues of women life are reflected in a peculiar way through the Nature or its natural objects of as we can clearly point out in the novels of Anita Desai. The female protagonists of the novels of Anita Desai could not express their inner feelings before their male partners or anybody as they express themselves properly and smoothly through Nature and its different Natural objects. In other words, we can say that life of the women protagonists in the novels of Anita Desai and Nature are closely connected with each other. As Nature and women both have the power of nurturing and sustenance, which means both of them carry maximum similar feminine qualities. So to maintain peace and equality in the society, we should have to understand the inward feelings of both women and Nature.

Anita Desai’s Cry the Peacock: A Manifesto of Maya’s Psychological Predicament

The present paper aims to explore Anita Desai’s Debut novel, Cry, the Peacock as a manifesto of Maya’s psychological predicament. Cry, the Peacock is Anita Desai’s first novel published in 1963. Anita Desai is one of the most known and distinguished Indian English novelists with worldwide fame and name. She is gifted with extraordinary penetration and sharpness of vision. Her works have provided her with worldwide fame and attention. The novelist is accomplished with prospecting psychological insight. Majority of Anita Desai’s novels are the true and real manifesto of women’s situation and predicament. Cry, the Peacock is a manifesto of Maya’s psychological predicament. Desai’s has very well explored the inner or interior world of woman, her anger, frustration and storm raging inside her mind and heart through the protagonist of this novel. The novelist’s concern with the emancipation of Maya can be seen in almost every page of the work. She often peeps into the interior or inner psyche of her main characters instead of just focusing on the outer view. She is a master in composing the psychological novels. She very well knows how to explore the psychic depth of her main protagonists as well to analyse and examine their motives in details. The novelist is generally considered as a trendsetter in the area of psychoanalytic study. Through her extraordinary penetration of vision and sharpness, the novelist has brilliantly portrayed the inner turmoil going on in the psyche of Maya who is a hysterical personality. She is successful in bringing out the frustration, loneliness and claustrophobia of Maya.

Shashi Deshpande, Anita Desai, and Bharati Mukherjee: A Comparative Study

Shashi Deshpande, Anita Desai and Bharati Mukherjee are contemporary Indian English Writers. They have represented the case of Indian women who are the subject of negligence, suffering, suppression and exploitation. The problems of identity figures more prominently in the novels of Bharati Mukherjee and Anita Desai. Shashi Deshpande’s main concern also has been to trace out the root cause of denial of women’s self and their struggle for self-identity. Thus all these factors give rise to emergent trends and tendencies like hybrid cultural forms among the migrants. These three female authors who have been under the influence of trans-nationalism, immigration, migration as well as re-housement, began to take deep interest in study of the women’s problems in India and giving them insight and outlook that have some relevance with the Western culture and social back-grounds.

The Influence of the Partition on the Indian Family in Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day

Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day (1980) is a partition novel which depicts the influence of the Partition between India and Pakistan on the unity of the Indian family. In 1947, India witnessed a civil war which led to partitioning it into two countries along religious lines. These events coincided with the end of the British rule in India. As a result of that, the Indian individual started questioning his real identity. During the period (1947-1970), India witnessed dramatic social, political, economic changes and transformations In her sixth novel Clear Light of Day, Anita Desai studies the impact of the Partition on the country and on the personal lives of the Indian individuals. The novel is precisely a depiction of family disintegration which parallels the disintegration of India under the Partition circumstances. The aim of the study is to investigate the influence of the Partition on the Indian families which survive the civil wars between the Hindus and the Muslims. Also the study tackles the role of women in the Indian society and the influence of the western principles on them.

Feminism in Shashi Deshpande's That Long Silence and Anita Desai's Cry, the Peacock: A Comparative Study

Feminism is a rapidly developing critical ideology of great promise. In the words of M.K. Bhatnagar, "Feminism in the Indian context is a by product of western liberalism in general and feminist thoughts in particular". With the social and cultural change in post independence India, women find themselves standing at the cross-roads. On one hand it is the consciousness of a changed time and on the other, the socio-cultural modes and values that have given them defined role towards themselves, have led to the fragmentation of the very psyche of these women. Caught between two worlds, they need to define themselves, their place in society and their relationship with surroundings. Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande have constantly sought to come to grips with these problems of Indian womanhood and vividly and realistically portrayed the 'women question' and 'feministic traits' in their novels. If comparative study is the study of literature across national, political and linguistic boundaries, feminism is the comparative work across boundaries of gender and culture. The main concern of this paper is to present a comparative study of the note of feminism in the best words of both these feministic writers, i.e. Anita Desai's Cry, The Peacock and Shashi Deshpande's That Long Silence.

Anita Desai’s Fire on the Mountain: Divulgence of Characters

British Guardian Prize winner and thrice nominated for Booker Prize, famous Indian novelist writing in English Anita Desai’s Sahitya Academy Award winning one of the masterpieces Fire on the Mountain published in1977. The book focuses on an elderly widow’s isolation and loneliness as it tells the story of Nanda Kaul who lives in Kasauli and leads a solitary existence. The old lady, Nanda lives alone in a colonial house on a slope. She gives nobody a chance to interfere with her secluded life. She had spent numerous years thinking about her husband, their kids, and numerous grandkids. She has turned into a loner and remains confined from everybody including an incredible grandkid. This is her circumstance until the point that the colossal grandkid touches base on her doorstep. Raka,a young girl who is wiped out and is as withdrawn as Nanda. The child lives in her very own kind of disconnection as she withdraws into a universe of inward dream where she makes undertakings of pursuing snakes, creatures, and phantoms in the serene slopes that encompass her and her incredible grandma. The old lady sees that both of them share things for all intents and purpose however that a noteworthy distinction exists also. Nanda has been a solitary person while the young lady was naturally introduced to that sort of presence. Nanda gradually starts to need to be a piece of the kid's life and needs to impart her reality to her. Her endeavours, be that as it may, seem, by all accounts, to be futile. Her awesome granddaughter will give nobody a chance to enter her life. Nanda is not debilitated and endeavours to associate with the child by imparting stories to her. Anita Desai talks of her writing as simply ‘stories,’ and of herself as a ‘storyteller’. In this very simple way she has beautifully painted the female characters and their sufferings in the novel Fire on the Mountain which is the focused area of this research article.

Maya’s Materialistic Longings Resulting in Alienation and Frustration: A Feminist Reading of Anita Desai’s Cry, the Peacock

Anita Mazumdar Desai occupies a much privileged place in the Indian Writing in English. She is known as an acclaimed Indian woman novelist who deals with the psychological problems of her women characters. She was born in 24 June 1937 in Mussoorie. Her father D.N. Majumdar was a Bengali businessman and her mother Toni Nime was a German immigrant. Anita Desai is working as Emeritus John E. Buchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anita Desai got a congenial environment to learn different languages in her own home and neighbourhood. She learnt Hindi from her neighbourhood. They used to speak German, Bengali, Urdu and English at their home. She learnt English at her school. She attended Queens Mary Higher Senior Secondary School in Delhi and she did her B.A. in 1957 from the Miranda House of the University of Delhi. So far is Anita Desai literary career is concerned, she wrote her first novel Cry, the Peacock in 1963. With the help of P. Lal, they founded the publishing firm Writers Workshop. Clear Light of Day (1980) is her most autobiographical work. Her novel In Custody was enlisted for the Booker Prize. She became a creative writing teacher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993. When she published her novel Fasting Feasting and it won the Booker Prize in 1999, she came to the limelight. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times in 1980, 1984 and 1999 for her novels Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984) and Fasting Feasting (1999) respectively. She received Padma Bhushan in 2014 also. She has received Sahitya Akademi Award in 1937 for her well-known novel Fire on the Mountain. The present paper analyses the central female protagonist Maya’s materialistic pursuits which turn in a great catastrophe for her in the novel Cry, the Peacock.

Nature as a Healer against Anthropocentric Disposition in Anita Desai's Fire on the Mountain

In her novel Fire on the Mountain, Anita Desai, by making her characters burn the images related to the ill and superstitious law of the anthropocentric world, intends to revere the natural world, which for her possesses healing capacity to revive the dying identity. Nanda Kaul, the protagonist and her great-granddaughter, finds pleasure with nothing else but with the barrenness, stillness, calmness and voice of silent breeze and music of nature itself. The fresh air of the quiet breeze in the naturally painted house wins the heart of the protagonist over the stale air of the electric fan in the artificially painted house. By utilizing theoretical ideas of ecofeminism in communication with deep ecology, the article concludes that the proper tribute to nature is possible when hierarchies between human and non-human blur and biocentric world view exists.