Thoughts on Anita Desais Novels
Thoughts on Anita Desais Novels. Dr.R.Gandhi Subramanian.
Indian Writings in English have grown and have been nurtured to
be recognized today as Indian English Literature. This has not been
achieved in a day, but it is the fruition of the talented work
rendered by many a great writers. What started as a study of
English language to render the required services to the British
ruler has developed into Indias own literature and in the process
has revolutionized Indian thought. Indians began to look at
themselves in a new light in their relation to the world and this
also had led them to a search for an identity, in a sense,
different from searching for their identity in the ancient and
traditional Indian sense. Though Indian writers excelled in writing
English in all its forms, fiction became their natural tool of
expression. The genre gave them the freedom of expression, as
fiction is considered epic in its modern Avathar. Stalwarts like
Rabindranath Tagore, R.K.Narayan, Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand are
well known and one comes across famous writers such as Arun Joshi,
Anita Desai, Chaman Nahal, Kamala Das and many more just to mention
a few. These writers have been the path-breakers, producing
outstanding works that have acquired critical acclaim all over the
world. These writers also reveal the unique Indian sensibility in
emphasizing that religion without compassion and cultures without
conscience were worthless. (Krishna Kripalani. Panoramic Glimpse.
471-472). Many Indian women starting with Sarojini Naidu have
created an indelible impression with their mastery of English.
Anita Desai stands apart who can be marked in many ways a
representative woman novelist of India, making use of English as
her effective tool of expression. Toni Morrison, an American Nobel
Laureate said that she was not a feminist, but a woman writing for
her oppressed women. Anita Desai can be considered as a woman
highlighting the lives of Indian women with their innate problems
and trying her best to improve their lot through her writings.
Desais lucid style in her novels makes her familiar to readers all
over the world. She has shown her understanding of people not only
of India, but in her later novels she embraces people living in
different parts of the world such as England and America and
highlights their problems in their environment. Critics praise her
for her profound understanding of intellectual issues and her
intuitive grasp of emotional complexity.
Fiction, especially by Indian women, tries to juxtapose ideal
pictures of womanhood filled with honour and glory with those of
dark reality and not-so-happy lives of womanhood, irrespective of
their status as educated or not educated, urban or rural and the
like. In spite of serious efforts made by people, women still
suffer discrimination and even women-centric laws prove most of the
times that all are equal before law, but some are more equal.
Anita Desai stands apart from other Indian women writers in that
she feels that there should be a conspicuous difference in the
writings of men and women and that difference should be concerned
with the sense of values. She gives more prominence to thought,
emotion and sensation than to action, experience and achievement as
depicted in the novels of other novelists. Desai has mentioned that
her primary aim is to discover the truth that is nine-tenths of the
iceberg that lies submerged beneath the one-tenth visible portion
we call Reality. Her mother being a German and father an Indian had
given Anita Desai the advantage of exposure to German and English,
besides Hindi the local language. Her published works include short
stories, childrens books and novels numbering more than ten. Two of
her novels Clear Light of Day and In Custody were short-listed for
the Booker Prize. She has been a Visiting Fellow at Girton College,
Cambridge, England and has taught Creative Writing and English at
Mount Holyoke College in the United States. She has received
Sahitya Academy and Authors Guild Awards for excellence in writing.
Anita Desai refers to the inner world, talks of the language of the
interior and thereby refers to both form and subject. She not only
recognizes this division between the inner and the outer worlds but
acknowledges its validity too. Anita Desai adds a new dimension to
her novels through her exploration of troubled sensibility, the
obvious part of Indian feminine sensibility. She has a rare
imaginative awareness and profound understanding of feminine
sensibility. (R.Krishnamoorthy. Role of woman as a Daughter, Wife
and Mother in select novels of Anita Desai: Cry, The Peacock, Where
Shall We Go This Summer? , Voices in the City and Clear Light of
Day Unpublished thesis.15) Though Anita Desai has been influenced
by writers such as D.H.Lawrence, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf,
she maintains her individuality in her writings. In getting deeper
into the unknown mysteries of the mind of her protagonists, she
discovers and underlines the true significance of the lives of
people. By presenting the external problems of seeking their
identity and individuality of her protagonists, Desai explores the
resultant interior problems of withdrawal, loneliness and
incompatibility leading to frustration, anger and even alienation.
Cry, the Peacock (1963), Voices in the City (1965), Clear Light of
Day (1980), and Where shall we go this Summer?(1975) present the
plight of women alienated from their family, from their parents,
from their partners, from the society and even from their true
selves. Her writings include Fire On the Mountain (1977), Games at
Twilight and Other Stories (1978), The Peacock Garden (1979), Clear
Light of Day (1980), The Village By the Sea (1982), In Custody
(1984), Baumgartners Bombay (1987), Journey to Ithaca (1995)
Fasting, Feasting (1999), Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000) and
The Zigzag Way (2004). With so much of Gods plenty created by Anita
Desai, this paper will confine itself to some passing Thoughts on
Anita Desais Novels taking care of the constraints of time and
space. It is not uncommon to see parents trying their best to
satisfy almost all the needs of their children, especially so with
daughters. While satisfying the needs of their daughters parents
never realize that their children cannot and will not remain
children for ever, will have to grow and will have to face the
world as individuals. The children have a right for developing and
cultivating their own, individual tastes. Whatever the parents
wanted to be, but missed in their lives are forced on the children.
This forbids the development of individuality as well as the
identity of these children paving way for a stunted growth. The
doting parents thereby fail to train their children to face
responsibilities as grown up adults. Cry, the Peacock (1963), Anita
Desais first novel shows Maya, the protagonist in this light. Maya
learns the hard way that real life is not the life that she has
read in fairy tales. The injury caused to the child by a doting
parent has been described by Karen Horney:A blind adoration may
inflate his/ a childs feeling of significance. He may feel wanted
and appreciated not for what he is but merely for satisfying his
parents need for adoration, and prestige and power. A rigid regime
of perfectionist standards may evoke in him a feeling of
inferiority (Neurosis and Human Growth, 87).Maya cannot exist
independently thanks to her bad upbringing. Her marriage was broken
repeatedly and repeatedly the pieces were picked up and put
together again We could not bear to part. (Cry, the Peacock, 126).
Mayas inability to solve her conflicts increases her difficulties
leading to a complete disintegration of her personality. Her sense
of guilt and self-hatred drive her towards murder of her husband
and also drive her to commit suicide.
Maya has grown as a motherless child and she remembers her
mother only through a photograph, a shadow. She remains childless
after almost four years of married life. The impact of the death of
her pet dog on Maya is tremendous. With Toto, her pet, she had a
fantastic attachment which childless women often develop for their
pets. It is no less a relationship than that of a woman and her
child. (10).
Maya, a grown-up and married woman has a childish feeling of
assurance that all will be well. This childishness makes her feel
lonely and neglected. One finds the novel as an exploration of life
as a confrontation between life and death and Maya is unable to
accept life and death as they are. She never grows mentally and she
always depends on others. When all her expectations fail, she
destroys and self-destructs. Mayas love of life and her love for
freedom prompt her to murder Gautama. Maya is lonely though not
free. Her obsession with death combined with her insanity makes her
believe: It was now to be either Gautama or I. (125).
Voices in the City (1965), portrays Calcutta as the stage for
unfolding the story of a brother and two sisters drawn into the
labyrinths of city life. Monisha and Amla come of an affluent
family. The point of time is just after Indian Independence. The
parents of these girls are more concerned about their status in
society than spending any meaningful time with their children. This
environment makes it extremely difficult for the daughters to have
a healthy growth with acceptable tastes and preferences. To Amla,
Monisha is a lost princess from a fairy tale. Both are childless
and sensitive. Monishas words,I see many women, always Bengali
women, who follow five paces behind their men and I think of
generations of Bengali women hidden behind the barred windows of
half dark rooms, spending centuries in washing clothes, kneading
dough and murmuring aloud verses from the Bhagavad Gita and the
Ramayana in the dim light of sooty lamps. Lives spent in waiting
for nothing on men self-centred and indifferent and hungry and
critical, waiting for death and dying misunderstood, always behind
bars, those terrifying black bars that shut us in, in the old
house, in the old city.(120).
exemplify the condition of women living in hell over centuries.
Monisha also reflects Desais views uttered in A Secret Connivance
where Desai describes in similar terms the fate of Indian women who
have had to confine themselves to the domestic scene few women had
any experience of the world outside their homes and families.
Monishas attempt to suppress all emotions leads her to a sense of
futility, of a person being locked in a steel container, a thick
cubicle.(240). The house used as a place of confinement for women
is one of the typical, recurring portrayals of Desai. Bim and Nanda
Kaul in Fire on the Mountain (1977), Lotte in Baumgartners Bombay
(1987), Uma, her mother and Mrs.Patton in Fasting, Feasting (1999),
rarely walk through the streets of their cities and towns. Amla on
the other hand is liberated to a certain extent and intelligent.
She is determined to enjoy her new job and the independence she
gets through her job. Calcutta doesnt oppress me in the least It
excites me. (142). She is more than average and her profession
gives her the concept of self and art for her becomes a tool of
expression. Tearing up the invitation to Dharmas art exhibition and
going to horse-race with Jit represents her regressive and symbolic
sickening view of life as a gamble. (R.Krishnamoorthy.77) He
mentions, In the shadow of death she discovers the value of life.
Amla grapples from Monishas death her authentic self and maintains
the poise she displays at the end of the novel. (78). Though hurt,
she sustains growth without crumbling like Maya in Cry, the Peacock
or Monisha, her sister. In her mental power she resembles Sita of
Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975), depicting marital despair.
Sita is a deprived child as well. She is in an unenviable situation
where there is a total lack of parental care. In spite of these
negative influences Sita is endowed with a creative urge. By
stating, If only I could paint or sing or play the Sitar well,
really well, I should have grown into a sensible woman I should
have known how to channel my thoughts and feelings, how to put them
to use. I should have given my life some shape then, some meaning.
(Where Shall We Go This Summer? 117) Sita reveals that she realizes
the value of creativity and that creativity could have made her
life more meaningful and purposeful. It may be a futile exercise to
negotiate the labyrinths of Sitas mind. Her thought and activity
are determined more by the past and distant than by the present and
immediate. She makes a strange combination of the real and the
unreal, the ideal and the trivial, the beautiful and the ugly.
(R.Krishnamoorthy.85).
Sita, appalled by the all pervasive violence everywhere retires
to Manori Island. It is a pilgrimage for her. Though she struggles,
she manages to discover her self. This discovery does not resolve
her anxiety but it presents her with knowledge. Her life consists
of a crisis of conscience and values. Sita clearly specifies for
herself that life is a constant struggle. She also realizes that
existence and survival are more relevant to ones life than ones
struggle. (R.Krishnamoorthy.151). This is an important lesson she
learns through suffering and experience. The novel may, thus, be
seen as a possibility on the inability of human beings to relate
the inner with the outer, the individual with the society. It is a
story of illusions melting away in the cold light of the everyday
and the commonplace. (B.Ramachandra Rao. The Novel of Mrs.Anita
Desai, 59).The novel does not have a pessimistic tone even at the
end. Sita has made a compromise as she realizes with her husband
Raman that life has to be continued as it has to be lived with all
its pleasures and pains too. She has also learnt the greatest
lesson namely to live the life of a primitive, to take life as it
is given is a great source of strength sustaining mankind. Clear
Light of Day (1980) is considered an excellent study of family
attachments and the tremendous power wielded by such attachments.
The family home, decaying and the uneasiness of a hot dusty summer
remain as undercurrents of the malaise of the two sisters analyzing
and comparing their memories incidentally to realize the
overwhelming importance of family in their lives.
Bim, the protagonist in the novel strives to re-create a reality
of her own by her deep faith in her will power. She is determined
to toil and sacrifice for her family more particularly for her
brother and her sister.
Bim remains confined to her home, while Tara her sister, living
abroad, has come home after several years. The meeting of the
sisters triggers an analysis of Bims stunted growth and her
struggling existence as an individual. Bim and Tara share a feeling
that life had bypassed them since their childhood. It is
significant to note that in their perception their experiences had
failed to create a meaningful life for them. Tara redeems her past
by returning to her parental house. Bim considers her past as
meaningless and insignificant. But later she realizes the
inadequacy of her approach and realizes that only through love for
others one can have any life worthy of any meaning. The Village by
the Sea (1982), In Custody (1984), Baumgartners Bombay (1987),
Journey to Ithaca (1995), Fasting, Feasting (1999), Diamond Dust
and Other Stories (2000) and The Zigzag Way (2004) followed at
regular intervals. Baumgartners Bombay exemplifies Desais view that
East and West are parallel but not contrasting worlds. She has
mentioned, I could have made a contrast of the way Europe treated
Baumgartner and the way India treats him but I always discover that
there isnt a contrast, there are always parallels: India too
excludes him because he is a foreigner, the way he was excluded in
Europe. Fasting, Feasting (1999) relates the consequences of an
Indian daughter leaving her home to achieve independence without
marriage. Umas Indian parents desperately trying to arrange a good
marriage for their daughter, suffer from the same lack of
communication with their children as do the Pattons, the Americans.
One wonders as does Luca Prono, Whether Desais characters live on
the banks of the Ganges or amidst the excesses of Massachusetts,
they cannot find meaningful personal relationship other than with
their own personal solitude. Perhaps it is apt to remember what
Anita Desai has said about her characters: My characters who appear
like losers, victims show a kind of heroism, of survival. I think
if you can come through the experience of life with the heart and
mind intact, without compromising yourself that to me is a heroic
act that needs to be celebrated. Diamond Dust and Other Stories
(2000), consists of stories set in North America and India with
Indians and their Indian concerns playing a prominent part in the
stories. These stories also highlight Desais thematic preoccupation
with the psychological effects of multi-national living and
problems of multiculturalism.
The Zigzag Way (2004) narrates three inter-related stories of
Eric, his girlfriend Dona Vera and also of Erics grandfather. From
the present the narrative moves to the past to come back again to
the present when Eric gets an opportunity to see his future.
Eric, a student in America, follows his girlfriend Dona Vera to
Mexico as an unwelcome guest. His travels take him to a ghost
mining town where he is not much surprised to find Dona Vera. The
second section of the story is Dona Veras. She is the widow of a
mining baron and one with a dubious European past. In the third
section, on the Feast Day of the Dead - La Noche de los Muertos -
Eric encounters a ghost from the past and sees his path into his
future. On the Feast day all the three threads come together,
forcing Eric to confront his past and present. The reviews have
been mixed as usual, some hailing Desais proving again her mastery
of her craft and her understanding of human beings, while others
call it a tourists eye-view of the country presenting some
beautiful postcard images.
The charm of Desais art may be due to her dual ancestry and her
concerns confined to the Westernized middle-class rather than the
majority of Indians. Many have praised her intellectual vigor and
vivid portrayals of India while some have found fault with Desai
that her fiction depends too heavily on the mundane and the
trivial. But no one can differ with the opinion that Anita Desai is
a great, influential and path-breaking creative writer, making
Indian English Literature richer by her contributions. ------ 00000
----- WORKS REFERREDPRIMARY SOURCESDesai, Anita. Cry, the Peacock.
Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1963.
--- Voices in the City. Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1965. ---
Where Shall We Go This Summer? Delhi: Orient
Paperbacks, 1982.
--- Clear Light of Day. New Delhi: Allied Publishers,
1980.
--- Fasting, Feasting. London: Chatto & Windus, 1999.
SECONDARY SOURCES Horney, Karen. Neurosis and Human Growth: The
Struggle Towards Self Realisation. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1951. Kriplani, Krishna. Modern English Literature: A
Panoramic Glimpse. The Journal of
Asian Studies 29, 1970.
Krishnamoorthy, Raman. Role of Woman as a Daughter, Wife and
Mother in Select
Novels of Anita Desai: Cry, the Peacock, Where Shall We Go This
Summer? Voices in the City and Clear Light of Day.
Unpublished Thesis, 2008.
Rao, Ramachandra. The Novel of Mrs.Anita Desai. Ludhiana:
Kalyani Publishers, 1977.
The author acknowledges the contributors/reviewers of articles/
reviews in the internet which could have given him the inspiration
for some of his passing thoughts, while writing this paper.
Dr.R.Gandhi Subramanian welcomes any suggestions to improve this
paper and will be glad to clarify doubts of research
scholars/students/readers. He may be contacted at
[email protected] 000000 ----- 000000
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