3 Review(s)

Anita Desai’s novels have been presenting a spectroscopic canvas of the female self as a self undergoing and grappling with the trials and tribulations of reconstruction, as an existential compulsion to establish a credible feminine identity. The women characters suffer from intense alienation because the boredom of conventional role-playing as wives and mothers stunt their growth as individuals. Desai also provides a glimpse, in her novels, into the subterranean friction, a schism between the husband’s materialistic and selfish male world and the highly sensitive and hurt female world. It is primarily because of Desai’s strong interest in Indian women’s identity and self-assertion in a patriarchal society structured by male authority that singles her out as a psychological-cum-linguistic writer who handles the subject of female and feminine self-expression as a powerful metaphysical authority.