LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 17:5 May 2017
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.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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The Theme of Alienation in Anita Desai’s Novel, Cry, the Peacock

G. Aruna, M.A, M.Phil.
Dr. V. Peruvalluthi


Abstract

Anita Desai is one of the few feminist voices in the Indian literary firmament who carved a niche for herself. She has made a landmark contribution by the flair of her creativity and imagination to remain an inspiration to the subsequent generations of women writers. She is vociferous against the wrongs done to her gender, through her works. Only very few writers like Kamala Markandeya, Nayanthara Seghal and others have portrayed ‘woman’ in such glorious uncertainties in their works. Desai’s primary concern as a novelist is with the sequestered individual living in an abandoned limbo of personal privation. She projects the psycho emotional and socio psychic states of protagonists living in an alien and cloistered world of existential problems and passions. Desai herself has disclosed in an interview that her concern revolves around the ‘solitary and individual beings’. Her fictional world portrays alienated characters who find it difficult to come to terms with reality. Writer Desai is not far from her fictional world as her novels are purely subjective. Her protagonists are women who find themselves caught in the web of social, economic, cultural and political crises. Anita Desai has been categorically hailed as a ‘feminist writer’ by several critics, although she never missed an opportunity to deny it. But analyses of her novels in the light of feminist ideology prove that her critics are right. Cry the Peacock stands tall in that order.

Keywords: Cry, the Peacock, alienated women, hysterical minds, horoscope predictions, mental agony, Indian women, psychological alienation

Cry, the Peacock

Anita Desai’s first novel Cry, the Peacock reveals the inner realities and psychic reverberations in the minds of her characters. In this novel Desai explores the hysterical mind of an Indian housewife, Maya. Her novel faithfully captures the contemporary Indian reality, especially the domestic life. The novel is an attempt to account the turbulent, emotional world of the neurotic protagonist, Maya who is married to Gautama. Maya is portrayed as a spoilt and pampered daughter of a wealthy Brahmin. The pre-marital freedom she enjoyed in her father’s house puts her utterly defenceless when she counters a different code of conduct in her father-in-law’s house. Moreover she is portrayed as a woman constantly haunted by the predictions of the horoscope which adds more woes to her married life.

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


G. Aruna, M.A, M.Phil.
Ph.D. Research Scholar-Part Time Assistant Professor of English
Indian Arts and Science College
Tiruvannamalai
Taminadu
India
aru.g13@gmail.com

Dr. V. Peruvalluthi
Professor of English
Registrar, i/c., &
Dean – College Development Council
Thiruvalluvar University
Serkkadu
Vellore - 632 115
Tamilnadu
India
tvudeancdc@gmail.com

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