LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 11 : 6 June 2011
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.

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Search for Self: Sensitive Sita in Anita Desai’s
Where Shall We Go This Summer


V. Hema, M.A., M.Phil.

Inner World of Characters

Anita Desai is a renowned contemporary Indian woman novelist in English. For K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, she has added “a new dimension to the achievement of the Indian writers in India.” ( Seshadri 50). She is a very sensitive novelist who associates more with the inner world of her characters. Generally her women protagonists are not brought up in a healthy way, being either pampered or else utterly neglected. Under such circumstances, women naturally turn to their husband and families for seeking their identity. Ann Lowry Weir who examines the feminine sensibility of Desai, states: “Anita Desai is the Vanguard of a new generation of Indian writers who are experimenting with themes of inner consciousness. She gives her readers valuable insights into the feminine consciousness through her memorable protagonists”. (Dodiya 2). Her artistic skill primarily lies in the delineation of the psychic condition of the characters.

Boredom and Loneliness in Where Shall We Go This Summer

Desai’s Where Shall We Go This Summer depicts the boredom and loneliness of a married woman Sita. She is a nervous, sensitive middle-aged woman who finds herself isolated from her husband and children because of her emotional reactions to many things that happen to her. She is an introverted character and her suffering springs from her constitutional inability to accept the authority of the society. Usha Bande rightly observes, “Anita Desai’s characters reveal her vision of life, they share her perceptions and set out in quest of meaning and they love solitude and privacy.” (Bande 20). Hence, Sita’s alienation is natural and dispositional.

Sita’s Emotions

Sita is highly sensitive, emotional and touchy whereas Raman is sane, rational and passive. He ignores Sita. Desai’s protagonists are “tormented souls who, in their death-in-life aspire towards life-in-death” (Sinha 30). Sita’s state is representative of the alienation of a woman, a wife and a mother. She is also oppressed and depressed with loveless wedlock with Raman. So, she takes a holy pilgrimage to Manori, an island and it is a journey for spiritual purification, a search for identity. S.P. Swain and P.M. Nayak emphatically comment that “Sita is an uprooted woman who wants to regain her primitive self”. Ironically her pilgrimage with its promise of renewal and regeneration is the result of her social alienation” (S.P. Swain 23). At last, she gets physical and mental courage in the island.

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

V. Hema, M.A., M.Phil.
Lecturer in English
Vels University
Pallavaram
Chennai 600 117
Tamilnadu, India
hema_rameshkumar@yahoo.co.in
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