Cry The Peacock Essay

The novel Cry, The Peacock oscillates between two poles:on the one end, we have Maya, obsessed with the feelings of love, compassion and sympathy – features of feminine quality – whereas on the other end is her husband Gautama, the embodiment of rationality, logic and pragmaticism. The novel begins with the death of Maya’s pet dog Toto which upsets her so terribly that she seeks consolation from her husband but the letter being practical remains complacent towards the loss and assures her that the dog would be replaced. This indifference hurts Maya very much. One could get a number of such examples throughout the novel where Gautama, a rational and professional busy man, neglects the emotional yearnings of Maya. It is the absence of a companion

There is always a conflict between Maya’s conscious and unconscious mind i.e., between life and death. There are binary oppositions in the novel such as : Fantasy / reality, individual / social, inner / outer world, dream / reality, emotion / reason, past / present, white / red colour, morning / evening, involvement / detachment, the rising / falling of musical notes and so on. The temperamental difference between Maya and Gautama leads to marital discard as Maya likes to enjoy life to the utmost, while Gautama is a dry, and prosaic kind of person. Whenever Maya’s sensuousness tends to be sensual, her needs are again left unanswered by the elderly husband who has “a bent of spine” projecting ribs and “long paper match face” – all of which show that he is sexually cold and unattractive. The situation is further deepened when Maya with her seductive posture initiates in love making and Gautama still remains cold and frigid. Maya’s predicament at that particular moment is narrated in the lines that

While the wife is active and dynamic, the husband is passive and inert especially in emotional and sexual matters. Anita Desai, “rejects the western feminist base of binary, male- female gender, hostility, for women’s emancipation in India was pioneered by men starting with Raja Ram Mohan Roy” (Shyamala 45)However, it has to be accepted that in this novel, Anita Desai as a feminist, has portrayed Maya, a woman as a social class who is exploited by patriarchy atleast, at familial, social and finally in her private life. She feels oppressed and her personal feelings and emotions are ignored, checked and suppressed by her husband as ours is male-dominated society. In a nut- shell, Mrs. Desai as a feminist novelist has depicted Maya in Cry, the Peacock as a female protagonist with her heightened physical, sexual, emotional, and romantic needs and greedy of his wife. This temperamental gap leads to alienation, despair and frustration. However, Maya asserts her identity and individuality. She longs, claims and reclaims for love of her husband and even initiates for it but all in vain and therefore, it breeds boredom, loneliness, neurosis suffering and finally, it intensifies Maya’s insanity resulting in the tragic end of both. So the tale told by Anita Desai in Cry, the Peacock, her treatment of man – woman relationships, and her feminist viewpoints are artistically,