Thematic and Stylistic concerns in the novels of Anita Desai M. MURUGANANTHAM.,M.A.,M.PHIL.,B.ED.,

2. Thematic and Stylistic concerns in the novels of Anita Desai M. MURUGANANTHAM.,M.A.,M.PHIL.,B.ED., Assistant Professor Department of English Rajapalayam Rajus’ College Rajapalayam

3. Primary sources • Cry, the Peacock 1963. • Voices in the City 1965. • Bye-Bye Blackbird 1971. • Where Shall We Go This Summer? 1975. • Fire on the Mountain 1977. • Clear Light of Day 1980. • In Custody 1984. • Baumgartner’s Bombay 1988 • Journey of Ithaca 1995. • Fasting, Feasting 1999. • ZigZag Way 2004.

4. Chapters • Introduction. • Feminine Sensibility, Quest for Identity and Alienation. • Stylistic Analysis: Narration, Fictional Sequencing and Language. • Stylistic Devices: Image and Symbol. • Summing up.

5. Fiction is the most powerful form of literary expression. • Embodying experiences and ideas. • Mirrors the social fabric. • Reflects the thoughts of an age. • A sort of documentation for the study of social traditions and socio-cultural changes. • Fiction by women writers provides insights, a wealthy of understanding. • Always challenge patriarchal domination . • Women register their protest against the established standards. • Anita Desai occupies an important place. • Her exploration of the inner consciousness or the psychological state of human.

6. Self-analytical and introspective. • Individual’s quest for a personal meaning . • Desai excels in writing psychological novels. • Herwritings reveal inner realities. • A new voice and adds a new dimension. • Delve deeper and deeper in a character. • Hercharacters, especially women, are educated, well-do-to and hypersensitive. • Reflects the inner struggle and their desire to break the shackles. • Cocoon-existence and assert themselves as human beings.

7. Cry, the Peacock • Maya--wealthy daughter of a brahmin. • Married to Gautama– becomes neurotic. • Kills her husband and commits suicide. • Voices in the City • Nirode, Monisha and Amla are major characters. • Presents moving picture of Monisha. • Feels emptiness within and without . • Develops an incurable claustrophobia and commits suicide.

8. Bye-Bye Blackbird • Tale of two Bengali youths, Dev and Adit. • Adit decides to return India • Dev manages to stay there. • Sarah surrenders her decision . • Where Shall We Go This Summer? • Sita is the protagonist. • Sita and Raman live in Bombay. • Presents the loneliness and boredom of Sita. • Became neurotic and sensitive. • Dislikes to deliver her fifth baby and to live in Bombay.

9. Fire on the Mountain • Presents three female characters Nanda Kaul, Raka and Ila Das. • NandaKaul lives in a summer villa. • Raka is her grand daughter. • Ila Das is her childhood friend. • Ila Das is finally raped and murdered. • The fire light on the Mountain stands for funeral fire. • The novel is divided into three parts.

10. Clear Light of Day • Story about Bimla, Tara, Raja and Baba. • Moves in the background of Partition. • Portrays the pathetic condition of Bimla. • In Custody • Deven, a Hindi lecturer is the protagonist. • Interviews the Urdu poet, Nur. • Finally stands in the Cross cut road. • Restores the inner self.

11. Baumgartner’s Bombay • Hugo Baumgartner is the protagonist. • Portrays the loneliness and destitution . • Story moves in the backdrop of Indian and German. • Flashback technique is used. • Finally Hugo is killed. • Journey of Ithaca • Reveals the theme of Indian spirituality. • India appears as Ithaca. • European couple Matteo and Sophie are main characters. • Sophie is the center of narrative. • Characters searching for enlightenment.

12. Fasting, Feasting • Recapture the family life of different cultures and places. • The first part deals about Indian life and the second part an American family. • Uma is the protagonist and it portrays the pathetic life of Uma. • Second part presents Melanie

13. Chapter II • Feminine Sensibility, Quest for Identity and Alienation • Emerged as a concept in the enlightenment era. • Sensibility is the display of virtue. • Cry, the Peacock, Voices in the City, Where Shall We Go This Summer?, Fire on the Mountain, Clear Light of Day replete with feminine sensibility. • Feminine sensibility includes –love, marriage , divorce, social taboos, inhibitions, cruelty and violence. • Maya is right example---unable to relate herself to reality. • Voices in the City-moving picture of the life of another Maya, Monisha.

14. Childless like Maya-crowded city makes her feel too tired. • Sita influenced by her father’s charismatic personality. • Lives with the sense of insecurity, inferiority and emotional detachment. • The novels presents the dilemma of Sita. • The conflict between attachment and detachment assumes a new shape. • Nanda Kaul lost all faith in humanity---leads a secluded life. • Her husband’s faithlessness gives her tension and trauma. • Forest fire does not symbolize purification but destruction of her womanly qualities. • In Clear Light of Day Mira Masi acts as mother substitute plays the foster mother to Bimla’s brothers and sisters.

15. Three facets of the mother identity has been fictionalized---the mother who bears, the mother who cares and the mother who shares. • Fasting, Feasting divided into two parts. • An extremely orthodox family on one hand an unusually whimsical family on the other. • Uma--- most subdued woman in an Indian family • Catalyst-- -presence is never noticed, never appreciated. • Her absence make all the difference. • She never rebels and she suffers silently---- a subdued feminine sensibility. • Bye-Bye Blackbird and Baumgartner’s Bombay replete with identity crisis. • Dev comes to England for higher studies--- Dissatisfied by the racial discrimination.

16. Adit leaves England in search of his roots and identity. • Immigrants like Dev are openly insulted and abused. • They became a victim of racial discrimination--- second grade citizen. • Sarah is complex hypersensitive and intelligent---lives in a dual world. • Torn between English culture and Indian culture. • Cross cultural marriage---her psychological problem. • Explores the issue of identity in terms of individual, social, racial and national identity. • Baumgartner’s Bombay narrates the story of Baumgartner– from childhood to horror of his murder in India. • Political exile after the anti-Jewish attitude in Germany.

17. His romantic imagination of India is shattered. • Partition of India and the anti-German attitude threatens him • A victim of both circumstances and his own ingrained identity. • Lacks conviction. Faces a series of calamities. • Lotte was another alien in India. • Cry, the Peacock, Voices in the City, Where Shall We Go This Summer?, Clear Light of Day, In Custody and Fasting, Feasting replete with theme of alienation. • Cry, the Peacock--- alienation from the self and also husband and wife alienation. • Maya is alienated from Gautama, from her surroundings and from her self .

18. Voices in the City--- Mother children alienation • All three characters--- NirodeMonisha and Amla are alienated. • Monisha is alienated from her mother and her husband. • Her married life is a virtual imprisonment . • Where Shall We Go This Summer?--- Alienation or loneliness in Sita’s married life. • Fire on the Mountain --- Nanda Kaul and Raka suffer from alienation. • Nanda Kaul’s alienation is self imposed. • Clear Light of Day--- Bim and Tara are alienated women. • Bimla sacrifices her married life for the sake of family. • She is alienated from everyone.

19. In custody --- Deven’s sense of boredom, isolation and alienation through his attitude. • Women are not able to express their feelings ,sentiments, thoughts and emotions . • Feminine sensibility is crushed under different reasons--- Maya’s failure in marriage, Monisha’s suicide, Sita’s desire to hold her baby, Nanda Kaul’s protest against her husband, Bim’s imprisonment in her house, Sophie’s reluctance to ashramite life, and Uma’s female autonomy being snipped off by her parents---castrated and muted their finer sensibility. • Feminine sensibility fails to give identity but alienated them • To them hospitable environment becomes a hostile one.

20. ChapterIII Stylistic Analysis: Narration, Fictional Sequencing and Language • There are two types of narration--- first person and third person. • First person narration adopted by epistolatory fiction writers. • The third person is based on impersonal style of narration. • Desai’s novels have the following aspects of technique: • Fictional Sequencing • Discourse and Discourse situation • Types of narration, the narrative voice and tone.

21. Two dominating factors: Indian way of life and western literature. • Influence: Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, Henry James, Anton Chekov and Hopkins. • Desai presents the atmosphere of minds, narrative techniques, symbols, images, flashbacks the method of objective correlative and stream of consciousness technique. • Stream of consciousness technique unravel Maya’s mind. • Interior monologue reveals Maya’s growing restlessness and unhappiness. • Cry, the Peacock is lyrical novel.

22. Voices in the City-- -third person mode of narrating the story of the three voices. • Voices in the City--- epic on Calcutta . • Made of four unequal parts. • Bye-Bye Blackbird is split into three parts--- Arrival, Discovery and Recognition and Departure. • Where Shall We Go This Summer?--- psychological and presentational sequencing. • Visiting to the Island itself is like revisiting the past. • Fire on the Mountain is divided into three parts. • Part I: Nanda Kaul at Carignano Part II: Raka comes to Cariganano Part III: Ila Das leaves Carignano.

23. Three simple elements: a letter, a telephone call and a forest fire • Flashback technique is used to describe the central theme trauma of a house wife. • Clear Light of Day is divided into four parts. • It is a tale of Bimla ,Tara, Raja and Baba. • In Custody narrative vision operates through consciousness and counter balanced by a third person observer style. • In Baumgartner’s Bombay, Desai have used a distinct narrative strategy. • The constant shift between past and present builds the story. • Flashbacks with in flashbacks is used. • Journey of Ithaca has a related narration without a linear progress. • It is not lyrical. Desai’s language tends to be situational and contextual.

24. Fasting, Feasting deals with East west encounter. • It has two parts: the first deals with the sufferings of Uma and the second part deals with Arun. • The entire narrative structure is built in concrete words. • Desai explores feminine sensibility in her novels with her own technique. • To presents the submerged psychic truth, Desai employs various linguistic devices. • She also chooses clusters of images, symbols and myths. • She exploits even phonological patterns like alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme and so on. • Uses native words for festivals, dress, food items, cultural practices and so on to evoke the Indian atmosphere

25. Chapter IV Stylistic Devices: Image and symbol • Image may be an epithet, a symbol or a simile in the form of a mental picture. • Cry, the Peacock--- frequent comparisons between men and animals. • Gautama raises his head like a horse • Maya relaxes like a cat • Adit’s Indian friends are speechless animals • Sita calls her husband’s friends animals and her father a lion.

26. The image of the dust storm in Cry, the Peacock-Maya’s deteriorating psyche • Moon symbolizes--- Maya’s psyche and stands for madness. • In Voices in the City--- Monisha’s withdrawal and confinement –garden image. • In Fire on the Mountain prominent images include: • Carignano--- for seclusion • Kasauli--- barrenness, starkness • History of Carignano---the loneliness and misery of life, especially of lonely and unmarried women

27. In Clear Light of Day prominent images include: • Snail--stands for Bim who withdraws herself from all. • Cow drowned in the well--isolation and estrangement. • In Custody the prominent images include---circus animals-significant in two ways • Explores the predicament of the characters • Aspiring for their freedom • Water image-- symbol of Deven’s troubled mind • In Baumgartner’s Bombay prominent images include: • Dog image---Baumgartner’s loneliness and destitution • Cats image--- Baumgartner’s homelessness.

28. House image: • Cry, the Peacock: Maya’s house expresses her inner emotional world. • Where Shall We Go This Summer?:Sita’s house expresses her illusory world. • Fire on the Mountain: Nanda Kaul’s house expresses her seclusion and loneliness. • In Custody: Nur’s house with its semi-darkness evokes Nur as an antithetical figure. • In Cry, the Peacock Desai highlights Maya’s sexual demands with two symbols: the Peacock’s voluptuous dance and the mating calls of the pigeons. • In Where Shall We Go This Summer? –Manori is a symbol • It provides a symbolic solace to her suffering soul.

29. In Cry, the Peacock Desai brings out the sub-conscious decision of Maya to kill Gautama by a dust storm symbol. • In Voices in the City, the image of Calcutta is a predominant. • It is the city of the dammed and doomed. • It is called a monster city. • In Journey of the Ithaca the crows are symbols of destructive forces. • Images and symbols enriches the artistic and aesthetic values of her novels. • It enlarges the critical, analytical and interpretative horizon of her art. • Desai delineates the inner longings of women characters through the images of birds and animals.

30. Chapter V Summing up • Desai’s themes are innovative. • Portray miserable plight of women suffering under their insensitive husbands. • Desai refuses to see herself as feminist. • True reflection of the situation of women in male dominated world. • Handicapped by domestic tension. • The dark domestic atmosphere suffocates them. • Some of them try to adjust themselves. • Some extreme cases like Maya, Monisha, Nanda Kaul go to the extent of destruction and death.

31. Sita,Bim, Sarah and Lotte accept life as it is. • They make a heroic attempt to overcome the calamities in life. • They realize the fact that despite anxiety and despair difficulties and complexities, life is worth to be lived. • Desai’s vision of life shows a gradual transition from tragic vision to a compromising vision of life. • Her women protagonists go through the conflict between traditional and modern values. • However, she denies a narrow feminist approach. • Her portrayal of feminine sensibility is not a movement towards feminism . • She looks at her protagonists in the context of human struggle for survival from which none is excluded.