Abstract
The object of this paper is to explore the meaning of life which the women protagonists depicted in Anita Desai’s novels connect in and the various outcomes they reach. Today’s modern woman seems to be in a similar situation as Desai has depicted in her novels. Desai’s women show a heightened awareness of life in all its sordidness. Modern society with its set norms and codes of behaviour and with its conditions for success and fame is one of the most prominent causes for the increase of alienation in individuals. Human relationships are grounded on emotions. Hence emotional wants are the particular ways through which individuals acquire the ability to confront the world. The feelings and behaviour that constitute the emotions strain human relationship in this manner. To ease the tension in relationships migrant individuals readily form communities and pool together for each other’s emotional wants. Desai’s major characters are women and she focuses on the suffering of women in the male dominated society who have reached various stages of life because of the conservatism of counterparts. The setting of her novels is the Indian in transactional which is bound by cultural and ethical values in the melting-pot.
Literature is where ideas are investigated, lived out, explored in all their messy complexity. Sometimes these ideas look quite simple and sometimes they might appear more complicated. Literature is how we make ourselves intangible to ourselves. Quest for identity is basic to the human world. With the decline of grandeur and dignity of human life in the post-world era, the crisis has intensified. Man faces an unprecedented rootlessness, loneliness and alienation. His quest is to attain a personal view of life and world, which makes life meaningful, and a sense of belonging to him. Literature comprises this process-the crisis of self, the quest and the succeeding discoveries. In the case of women it is a double quest-the quest for identity as a woman, and as a human being. The quest for identity of the Indian women poets in English began with Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu, and their poetry is an assertion of national identity. There is a drastic change in life concern in the post-Independence period so life has become more complicated.
“The era of hope, aspiration and certitude having gone, as the age of merciless self-scrutiny, questioning ironic exposures commenced. The rightful assumption of recognized national identity also gave the post-independence poet great self confidence in his new role as the critic of the present, past and himself.” (Page 28)
The modern Indian writers in English also expressed the identity crisis in their writing. They have evolved their full identity ‘modern woman’ in the post-independence period. They encounter a variety of tension in this age, which stimulates their psyches’ progress from tradition to modernity. They often deviate from the traditional pattern of Indian womanhood and revolt against the conventional role of a woman in the society. Their struggle for new identity and their conscious participation in life around has given a new turn to their writing. Thus they mark the evolution of the Indian feminine psyche from tradition to modernity. The Indian writer’s writing in English emerged as an off-school of our colonial experience in the early 20th century and took various forms of literature. The genre of the novel was readily adapted by Indian authors to become a vehicle of their expressions. Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and RK Narayan were the three stalwarts of the Indian literary scene. Women novelists appeared on the scene by 1874 and the women writers like Toru Dutt confined themselves to writing about their own limited experience. But with the advent of Kamala Markandeya, Ruth Jhavwala, Nayantara Sehgal , Anita Desai and Attiya Hussein the themes became wide-ranging. Indian women writing in English are alienated into two groups. The first group of writers cantered on the diverse social problem of India like poverty, class discrimination, social dogmas, and rigid religious norms, which has an appeal to the west. The second group of writers comprises the category of expatriate writers, who are global Indians but have lived abroad. They relinquish a flavour of Indian realities and have enriched English language with their creativity. Women writers and women readers have always had to work ‘against the grain’. Aristotle declared that ‘the female is female’ by virtue of a certain lack of qualities, and Saint Thomas Aquinas believed that woman is an ‘imperfect man’.
The Indian writer writing in English has finally come of age. He is no longer trying to reform the consciousness of his readers as in the pre-Independence days nor is he dealing only with casteism and nationalism. Promoting Orientalism is gradually taking a back-sea, giving way to an honest appraisal of the individual in the post colonioal era. The conflict between the East and West, tension between urban and rural life and the changing political trends are being reflected in the writings of these writers. Among the women writers writing in English, Anita Mazumdar Desai holds a unique place because of her deep understanding and relationship of the inner psyche of her characters, especially the women protagonists. She is a trend-setting writer for laying bare the inner recesses and the existential trauma of the human psyche, the problem of human relationship, the protagonist’s quest for identity almost in all her novels Cry the Peacock to Fasting, Feasting. Celebrated and sometimes reviled for the sensitive portrayal of the inner life of her female characters presents a vivid picture of the agony that one can go through when he /she is not understood by the people around him/her. Desai made her debut in 1663 with Cry, the Peacock, and Where Shall We Go This Summer? Was published in 1975 and is not as well known as her first book Cry, the Peacock and Fire on the Mountain which came out in1977. These novels are all presented in three parts and display deft imagery and linguistic devices like use of poems and stream of consciousness methodology.
For centuries women have been exploited and victimized by male-dominated societies in India and all over the world. The continuing trend of exploitation of women by man provokes her to revolt against the social system and aspire for its reconstitution, under a more equitable dispensation. But with the spread of education and the influence of a few institutions and organizations which have urged for women’s emancipation from the age-old shackles, some signs of awakening among women have become visible. The awareness of the need for liberation from the shackles of marital bondage has been felt by many an educated woman in the India of the post-independence era. As Asnani says, “Withdrawn into a life of seclusion and loneliness, these women characters have their material needs taken care of by wealth and servants but their emotional needs remain unsatiated.” With globalisation, the modern Indian in our cities is also unable to cope with the various changes that they are facing. Education has given rise to a sensitivity in them which makes it difficult to take things lying down any more but at the same time has not empowered her to change things. Like Desai’s characters, she can rebel and rebel again but her quest for life on her own terms leads more often than not in failure or extracts such a heavy price from her that her identity is lost. Prof. MK Bhatanagar holds that
“Her women are quintessential seekers, hankering after what has since long been routine pursuits for their male counterparts but what appears preposterous and appalling in their case.. What these protagonists strive for is self-realization, self fulfilment, carving out an identity, a true image of their individual beings, literal and figurative space to themselves, to define themselves, to make a foray into the outward, to make their own mistakes and retrace their steps if need be rather being chaperoned everywhere.”(Page 46)
Desai is mainly concerned with physical aspects rather than physical aspects which have brought her both appreciation and critical acclaim. Her very first novel Cry the Peacock was one of her successful fiction. She was awarded a certificate of excellence from authors and publishers guild of India for her novel Where Shall We Go This Summer? Her women are quintessential seekers, hankering after what has since long been routine pursuits for their male counterparts but what is preposterous and appalling in their case.... What these protagonists strive for itself-realisation, self-fulfilment, carving out an identity, a true image of their individual beings, literal and figurative space to themselves, to define themselves, to make a foray into the outward, to make their own mistakes and retrace their steps if need be rather than being chaperoned everywhere.
Anita Desai adds a new dimension to the achievement of Indian women writers in English fiction by probing the inner lives of her women characters. K.P. Srinivas Iyenger’s evolution of Anita Desai is pertinent when he asserts:
“Her forte, in other words, is the exploration of sensibility. The particular kind of modern Indian sensibility that is ill at ease among the barbarians and the philistines, the anarchist and the amoralists. Since her preoccupation is with the inner world of sensibility rather than the outer world of action, she has tried to forge a style supple and suggestive enough to convey the fever and fretfulness of the stream of consciousness of her principal characters. The intolerable grapple with thoughts, feelings, and emotions is necessarily reflected in the language, syntax and imagery, yet the reader’s first impression on reading Anita Desai novels may very well be that the emotions are too many and are often the result of excessive celebration on the author’s part and not always determined by the movements in the consciousness of the characters. Nevertheless, Anita Desai’s is an original talent that has the courage to go its own way...” (Page 34)
Anita Desai depicts the Indian woman as a fighter, a victim, a heroine and ultimately a winner because of her indomitable spirit and attitude of compromise. She has portrayed both kinds of women-those who are symbols of growth and change; those who are powerful means of withdrawal, regression, decay, death and destruction. A woman is a giver of life, a means of moving forward and perpetuating the human race, at the same time the cruel onslaught of fate leads to her despondency and withdrawal.Maya the female protagonist in Cry,the Peacock is a sensitive and intensely sensual person. She does not find anybody who can understand her morbid fears and her unique way of looking at life and this alienation pushes her into a state of insanity. Her tendency to give in to her Fate is the direct effect of her feelings of being unimportant and marginalised. As her name suggests, she creates an illusory world around her and trying to come to terms with her marginalised status, she assumes that for Gautama, her husband, life is not of much value and pushes him off the roof.
Her search for the true meaning of life and her place in it ends in tragedy for she finds every avenue of escape from her stereotyped life barred to her. Neither her father’s brahminical principles nor her husband’s edicts from the Gita help her. Her two friends, Pom and Leila are as tied down by the norms of society as she herself. Her brother, Arjuna is far away and can only wish her well. Her mother-in-law and sister-in-law are part of the same juggernaut of life. But “In the end Maya is not saved from becoming insane.... she is herself transfixed in the past, to be once again a child and she becomes a fairy princess in a fairy tale. Her inability to change with the change in the circumstances around her, her quest for permanence is doomed to failure. Thus in Desai’s fiction we come across a critique of woman’s position in society. It also provides women with a voice. It has made it easier for women to recognize the common constraints within which they function irrespective of their cultural and social boundaries. This social awareness is the hallmark of today’s educated Indian woman.
Cry the Peacock shows in Maya the awareness of the rigidity of the patriarchal structure which shuts the woman off from a major area of human experience and refuses to acknowledge a woman’s experience as significant. M. Shivaramkrishna rightly remarks that “The protagonist appropriately named after the most elusive of the Indian perceptions of the nature of reality-Maya is agonizingly aware of the net of the inescapable.” (18).
It also shows a young woman and her confrontation with society leading to the annihilation of herself. In other words, there is conflict between two sets of values-one standing for the supremacy of social hierarchy and the other for that of the individual. Her novel Where Shall We Go This Summer? Portrays a woman in her forties named Sita who is fed up with the life she has been leading and is driven to seek out her own Utopia. This is a modern Indian woman, living in a well-appointed apartment with her husband and four children. She is like Maya in the sense that comforts and leisure have only added a sense of boredom and indifference to the mundane life that she leads. There are servants ready to help her carry out her household responsibilities and so it seems that she lives a comfortable life. The title of the book may very well be an innocent and harmless question asked by the lady of the house as she plans a vacation for her family.
But the reality is otherwise she is distraught and distressed at her fifth pregnancy, once again, understandably so, as everyone around her feels and waits for her to settle down to her condition with joy and good grace. But for Sita it is the beginning of the quest. Like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, Sita does not want to bring another child into the insensitive world. She has been waiting her entire life to get at the meaning of life, for life to reveal its mystery to her. She does not believe that there is nothing more to life than existing and she rebels when she finds herself pregnant once again. She sees the world as a violent one, all the more reprehensible because it is of the unthinking, mindless kind. Nobody seems to be affected by it but her.
Disgusted by the materialistic and meaningless world around her, Sita returns to the island of Manori, her utopia. Twenty years back, her father, a freedom fighter, had put his social theories into practice there had emerged as the resident God-man and healer of the place. Her childhood had not been a good one and in her adolescence when she accompanied her father to this island, she saw the island as a piece of magic. “It took her some time to notice that this magic, too, cast shadows.” (46).
Her father's life as a freedom fighter had taken its toll on Sita as a child. A parallel can be drawn to Gautama’s father who was equally uncaring of his family as he spent his time in prison for he too was a freedom fighter. Deprived of the essential of security and certainty which spells home to a young child, she grew up in an austere and fearful environment. She has grown up without a mother and does not even remember her. Her brother Jeevan tells her that Rekha is their step-sister. She herself was ignorant of the fact and is only envious of her father’s paying attention to her and she wonders at her being such a good singer when they do not seem to be any good at it. It is Jeevan, once again, who tells her that their mother had run away to Benaras. Thus the feeling of rejection by her loved ones becomes a part of her childhood. Sita is very much like Maya in her helplessness. She is emotionally dependent on her father and later on her husband, just like Maya. She rebels, but her quest for a better world only brings in the realization of different kinds of courage which her husband possesses and which she decides to emulate.
Troubled by the violence which she finds in the world around her, in the little incidents of the crows attacking the helpless baby eagle, the maid Rosie fighting with other servants, her two older sons mimicking the fights they have watched in a movie as they play, her daughter’s wanton destruction of her water-colour painting or a bud; she wants to “escape to a place where it might be possible to be sane again” (23).
Child like she sets out on her quest, hoping to find the meaning of life, once she is back in the island of Manori. Even though accompanied by two of her children, this pilgrimage is her journey into herself and she emerges as a woman who is true to herself, if not victorious at the end. She is sane enough to be open to the view-points of others and is prudent enough to give in when she realizes that withdrawing from life as one finds it is not the answer for her. The vicarious approval she gives the hitch-hiker speaks of her desire to be brave like him, travelling in a foreign country without knowing what will happen next. The quality of adventure in such a life charms her. Similarly the love she imagines between a couple she sees on a park bench becomes her happiest memory because the poignant tenderness with which the old man treats the young woman is what she yearns for. As a woman, she is not satisfied with the mundane love and concern that her husband shows but wants to be the first priority in his affections. Deprived of her parents’ love, she wants to be loved exclusively above all else.
She does not believe in the concept of idealized motherhood and has no gumption in declaring her children as creatures that cause anxiety and worry, a cause for pessimisms, just like Nanda who did not shrink from her duties of motherhood and running a household but considered it only a duty which she fulfilled beautifully and would not glorify it or sentimentalize it according to the prevalent concepts in society. This tendency of calling a spade a spade gives rise to the voyage of self-discovery in Desai’s women. Sita, like the mythical one, felt herself as a woman who was unloved and rejected. “She had realized what farce marriage was, all human relationships were” (105). Finally she comes to the conclusion that she is only a player on the stage of life. She is yet to differentiate as to which part of her life was ‘pretence and performance’ and which part was ‘sincere and truthful’ but at least the Shakespearean idea of us being merely players holds out the hope that she would find the meaning of life some day.
Fire on the Mountains shows the protagonist as a mature woman and her confrontation with the environment leads to a greater awareness and a compromising attitude. The conventional expectations of marriage and motherhood have been fulfilled and found lacking in Nanda Kaul smiles at the depiction of When a Woman Lives Alone as the author, Sei Shonagon, talks about the dilapidated condition of the house and the pond overgrown with water plants and the weeds growing through the sand in patches. She is well able to manage her house and it is certainly not in this area of her life that a lack is felt.
The next paragraph, “I greatly dislike a woman’s house when it is clear she has scurried about with a knowing look on her face, arranging everything just as it should be, and when the gate is kept tightly shut”(27) shows society’s dislike of self-sufficient women and Nanda Kaul’s rebellious attitude in presenting herself as one of them. Nanda Kaul’s quest for the essence of life leads her to a life of retirement and falsehood where she holds on to her dignity by projecting her unwillingness to include anyone in her life. But Ila, her friend’s death shows her the hollowness of her life in one swift blow and destroys the semblance of life she leads. Ila Das is presented as a misfit who is nevertheless brave enough to face life and help others in the process. She is most aware of the marginalised women in society as she tries to reform their ways. Her quest for life is truly pathetic and at the same time heartening for her, like Nanda tries to hold onto the pretence of dignity and cannot bring herself to ask for the help that she badly needs from Nanda.
Little Raka has also gone through traumatic experiences that naturally pushes her outside the social milieu. Raka’s attitude, like Nanda’s, is one born out of the need to avenge themselves for their past in the society which made it happen. Raka, a little child, starts on the quest for meaning in life with a symbolic act of purging and destruction by setting the mountain side on fire and it may or may not end it self-realization for her. All the three characters are marginalized and try to cope with the fact in their own way. According to V.L.V.N. Narendra Kumar, “Ila Das, Nanda Kaul and Raka stand for attachment, detachment and indifference” (46). The death of Nanda and Ila suggest the futility of all kinds of existence. Ila’s concern for humanity at large doesn’t help her nor does Nanda’s concern for her own self. Their seeking after life results in their death. Nanda Kaul’s house teetering on the mountain-side points to the precarious existence of the modern woman, barely able to cling on to life. Sita’s island surrounded by the wild sea also speaks about the individual psyche trying to protect itself from the elements. This living of life on the edge and conviction that things are out of control works as the catalyst for introspection and the resultant search for a better life. The feeling that life is much more than food, sex and money leads Desai’s protagonists like today’s modern women, to explore their, relationship in a quest to seek meaning in their life. The modern Indian women becoming economically independent, is still emotionally dependent on the people around her, to hold her up. Thrown into a violent, cut-throat world, the global woman is ready to shed some of the conditioning which society has imposed on her. Like Desai’s women characters she is not satisfied with the humdrum quality of life nor is she ready to falsify her feelings and follow the dictates of society at all times.The modern India woman has also embarked on a quest to find the true meaning of life and her sensitivity ad struggle to face the truth, as depicted in these works of Anita Desai, makes one hope that the quest will be fulfilled one day.
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