LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 13:3 March 2013
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.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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M. S. Thirumalai
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The Quest for Emotional Freedom -
Anna Leath in Edith Wharton’s The Reef

Seetha Balakrishnan, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Candidate

Anna’s Struggle

The Reef chronicles Anna’s struggle to free herself from the prison of her existence, and half of the book is from the point of view of the trapped woman herself. For Anna, life at Givre was:

like groping about in a huge dark lumber – room where the exploring ray of curiosity lit up now some shape of breathing beauty and now a mummy’s grin. (TR 95)

Now that Fraser Leath, her husband, has died, she is looking for love to release her from this spell of unreality. Anna seeks this release from a man as conventional as herself, one who is also trapped in the conventional pattern of thinking that categorises women as either ‘fallen or pure’.

It is Anna Leath, the protagonist of the novel, who has attempted to live the role of the good woman and who has suffered from the restrictions of the role. Brought up in the typical old New York way, Anna has been schooled in reticence, evasion, and a kind of artificial serenity that have denied her any sexuality and caused her to suffocate in a boring marriage to a dilettante. As Wershoven observes, “The Reef analyses in great detail the pain and misery that ensue when society establishes the false polarities of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in dealing with its women” (96).

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

Seetha Balakrishnan M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D. Candidate
Lecturer in English
Presidency College (Affiliated to Bangalore University)
Hebbal, Kempapura
Bangalore- 560024
Karnataka, India
sethu_shanu@yahoo.co.in
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