Theme Of Alienation In Anita Desai

ANITA DESAI AS A FEMINIST A WITH REFERENCE TO CRY, THE PEACOCK

Submitted by,

A.Thirumani Aarthilaxmi,

M.Phil English,

Nadar Saraswathi College of Arts and Science,

Theni.

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Phone no: 9500762760

Anita Desai as a feminist with reference to Cry, the peacock

Abstract:

Anita Desai isone of the best-known contemporary women writers of Indian fiction in English. She has gained distinction in exploring the human psyche and the emotional feelingsof her protagonists. She has added a new dimension and marvelous favour to the contemporary Indian English fiction and has a significant place due to her innovative thematic concerns and deals in her fiction with feminine sensibility. She examines the

Alienation is one of the major problems confronting the postmodern man. The present era can be rightly called as “the era of alienation”. In the present era, alienation is due to the generation gap, loss of identity, fear, loss of credibility, isolation and so on. The novel opens with the depiction of husband-wife alienation and discord by exposing the relationship of the prominent characters Maya and Gautama. The theme of alienation is the outcome of the hypersensitive nature of Desai’s female characters. In her novel the stress is shifted from the external and the internal world. The protagonist Maya is obsessed with the fear of death as a consequence of an astrological prediction that one of the spouses will die in the fourth year of their marriage. She cannot establish any effective communication with her husband, Gautama, who is detached, rational and twice of her age. Her husband does not understand her feelings and grows her sense of alienation and isolation and consequently, she kills him in a fit of insane fury. In the novel the protagonist Maya receives hostility and indifferences rather than delicacy and affection. In this novel Desai presents the silence, solitude, melancholy and dark world