LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 14:7 July 2014
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Voice of Agony -
A Study of the Novels of Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande

Prakash Chandra Patel, M.A. (English), M.A. (Linguistics, JNU), M.Phil.
UGC- NET (English), UGC-NET (Linguistics), Ph.D. Scholar

Abstract

With the woman on the margin and at the receiving end to bear the brunt of society and its ills of difficult and dangerous relationships, the novels by Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande give a fascinating account of grim reality that the disadvantaged, the affected and the oppressed feel compelled to suffer. In her novels, Anita Desai vigorously explores the theme of rootlessness, alienation, anxiety, domestic disharmony, interpersonal relationships and patriarchal dominance in traditional Indian families. With her tremendous dexterity and proven skills, she charts a new territory for switching her focus from the external to the internal psychic reality. She succeeds in delving deep into protagonists’ mental struggle resulting in their severe stress and strain. In the wake of her efforts to carry out characters’ psychological analysis, most of her protagonists make constant endeavour to define their relations to themselves vis-à-vis human relationships with others, taking into account the mental dilemma and innermost psyche of emotional troubles. On the other hand, Shashi Deshpande holds the mirror up to the Indian middle class life without any exaggeration, deliberately oblivious of the western audience and critics, or commercial success. She deals in rigorous detail in her novels with human relationships, its bondage, the emotional roller coaster and the struggles and ways to overcome them. Unlike Desai, Deshpande focuses, in particular, on middle class women, peculiar Indian house wives and career-oriented women. More often than not, the novels of Deshpande center around typical Indian joint families, importance of relationships in a family and marriage, and also detached or dysfunctional family relationships. She not only gives descriptions of urban middle class family, but also analyses in depth those families that grapple with poverty, struggle for existence, and hardly manage to lead a normal life. However, both of them paint the bleak picture of the Indian woman, which serves as a timely reminder to those at the helm, to respond to the concerned voice of agony.

Anita Desai and Her Works

Anita Desai, one of the major stalwarts among Indian English novelists, was born of a Bengali father, D. N. Mazumdar, a businessman and a German mother, Toni Nime in Mussori on June 24, 1937. As a prolific and promising figure in novel writing, she has carved out a niche for herself in Indian English Literature. From childhood, she showed her creative talent. At the age of seven, she struck a literary spark of creative writing, and published her first story as a small piece of art in a children’s magazine at nine. The feminine voices of the desolate Indian women find their echo in her writings. She, nominated three times for Man Booker Prize, has been considered to be one of the most brilliant novelists in Indian English Literature since 1960s.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Prakash Chandra Patel
M.A. (English), M.A. (Linguistics JNU), M.Phil., UGC-NET(English), UGC-NET (Linguistics)
(Ph. D. Scholar, Department of English
Sambalpur University, Odisha)

Lecturer in English
PIET
Rourkela
Odissa
India
prakash.patel121@gmail.com
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