LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 11 : 11 November 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.

HOME PAGE

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIAL

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Contributors from South Asia may also e-mail their articles to
    B. Mallikarjun,
    Central Institute of Indian Languages,
    Manasagangotri,
    Mysore 570006, India     mallikarjun@ciil.stpmy.soft.net.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2011
M. S. Thirumalai
Custom Search

Alienation of Women Characters in the Select Works of Anita Desai

S. Gunasekaran, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Remarkable Literary Output

Anita Desai is a dominant figure in the twentieth century Indo-Anglian fiction. Born to a German mother and an Indian father on June 24, 1937, Anita Desai spent much of her life in New Delhi. Growing up she spoke German at home and Hindi to friends and neighbours. She first learned English when she went to school. It was the language in which she first learned to read and write and so it became her literary language. Her new style of writing is also different from that of many Indian writers, as it is much less conservative than Indian literature has been in the past. For these reasons, she says, “She is not widely read in India, mainly in Indian Universities if it all” (CLS P.29).

Anita Desai deserves appreciation for her remarkable literary output. Persisting in unraveling the mystery of the inner life of her characters, she shows her perpetual interest in their psychic life. Solitude and self-exploration are the recurring themes of her novels. Throughout her novels, children’s books, and short stories, Desai focuses on personal struggles and problems of contemporary life that her Indian characters must cope with. She maintains that her primary goal is to discover “the truth that is nine-tenths of the iceberg that lies submerged beneath the one-tenth visible portion we call reality” (CLS P.50). She portrays the cultural and social changes that India has undergone as she focuses on the incredible power of family and society and the relationships between family members, paying close attention to the trails of women suppressed by Indian society.

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

S.Gunasekaran, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Anna University of Technology Madurai
Dindigul Campus
Dindigul- 624 622
Tamilnadu
India
gunakundhavai@yahoo.com
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you either cited or used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian scholarship.