Anita Desai- Vision and Technique in Her Novels

About the Book The book Anita Desai: Vision and Technique in Her Novels attempts in detail the text-based analysis of Anita Desai's novels from Cry, The Peacock to Journey to Ithaca. This study has been divided into six chapters and it focuses its attention on the critical-analytical study of the entire corpus of Desai's novels, mainly through the four core chapters-"Plot-Structure, Vision," "Search for Self" and "Narrative Technique.

As Desai explores the hidden motives of man, the untraded and unvisited regions of human psyche, she becomes symbolic and suggestive in dealing with the predicament of man vies-a-vies the social forces that subvert the protagonist’s progression in society. Almost all the protagonists of Desai have been entrusted with a Herculean task to work for their identity in society they belong to. They meet failures and disappointments while waging war against the negative and cruel social forces; but the failures and disappointments do not deter them from the persuasiveness of their objectives. The defeat, failure and disappointment make them suffer, but they suffer with tragic dignity. Thus, their sufferings, their indefatigableness, and their ceaseless strivings to exist in society make the novelist use the poetic and symbolic language almost in all her novels.

About the Author Anita Desai employs in her novels, the varied images, metaphors, symbol and myths for bearing out the interior regions of human psyche, obsession, inner motives, latent desires and dormant impulses of human mind. In this study, the author has endeavored to bring out the structural and visionary aspects of Mrs. Desai's novels in order to make it more interesting and useful to scholars and students alike.

O.P. Budholia, Assistant Professor in the Department of Postgraduate Studies and Research in English, Govt. KR.G. College, an autonomous College of Jiwaji University, Gwalior, has been teaching undergraduate and postgraduate classes for the last twenty-two years. He holds his Ph.D. Degree from Jiwaji University. Gwalior (M.P.). He has participated in many national Seminars and Conferences He is an Assistant Editor of the scholarly literary journal, Points of View. He is also on the Board of Advisors for an International literary journal, The Quest. Till date, Dr. Budholia has published many research papers and articles on English Literature, Language, Comparative Literature and Indian Writing in English in various scholarly journals and anthologies. His work includes: George Eliot: Art and Vision in Her Novels (1999, B.R. Publishing Corporation, New Delhi).

Foreword Anita Desal (born 1937) occupies a distinct and distinctive place in the realm of contemporary Indian English fiction; in fact, it would have been poorer without her. She is the first among Indian English novelists to have forcefully expressed the existential problems of womankind; she is the first to have laid bare the Inner recesses of human psyche; she is the first to have introduced deep psychological probing of her characters. In these matters, Anita stands apart from the bulk of Indian English novelists, but for the possible exception of Arum Joshi. Others like Mulch Raj Anand. R.K. Narayan, Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala turn 'outward for their fictional exploration, but Anita Desal moves inward in her subtle psychological probing. Even there where she is concerned with the 'existential Issues, she grapples with the abnormal or the hyper-sensitive. Such are the female protagonists of her early novels-Maya, Monisha, Sita, etc. What is remarkable about her is that she portrays her characters with their specific traits and in her own peculiar style and language. Her sparkling prose remains largely poetic, musical and cadensed, reminding us of the practice of Henry Fielding and Thomas Hardy in English fiction.

Since the publication of her first novel, Cry, the Peacock in 1963, Anita Desal has travelled a long way and has endeared herself to us by virtue of her impressive form and her varied content. Till 1980, she was generally regarded as a novelist harping on the one and same subject in which she depicted the hyper-tension and hyper sensitiveness of her women protagonists, but with the publication of The Clear Light of Day she started drifting towards a sunnier atmosphere and a happier world.

Preface Anita Desal is unquestionably one of the celebrated Indian-English fiction writers. She holds a unique place among the contemporary women novelists of India. She has to her credit a large number of creative works and a coherently growing readership throughout the world. To date, she has published ten novels and other literary works of immense value. As a novelist, she so designs the pattern of her novels as to bring out the interior regions of human psyche. She succeeds immensely in analyzing her characters from inside and unfolds their latent desires and inner motives. Desai uses fiction as a vehicle for venting the predicament of man and his existential trauma in the society he belongs to. The present book undertakes to make a thorough and objective study of Anita Desai's dominant themes and narrative techniques through the text-based analysis of her novels.

The entire corpus of this book has been divided into six successive chapters. Chapter 1 offers a sketchy account of the novelist's life and formative influences upon her. Chapter 2 presents the gist of the novels with a view to giving an elementary knowledge of the stories. It also outlines critically Desai's concept of plot-structure. Chapters 3 and 4 draw attention to the philosophical and psychological aspects of the novelist. These two chapters pin-point the modern approach of the novelist in the analysis of the inner motives and social dilemma of men. In chapter 5, the focus is laid down on the technique and language of the novelist. As Anita Desai's prime concern is to reveal the fundamentals of the personality traits of the protagonists, she works on that level of human psyche from where the concept of idea originates. Thus, she uses a subtle and symbolic language in the narration of her novels.

Introduction The entire Indian English writing can be divided into two parts for its development: Pre-and Post-Independence periods. The first part of this genre includes the writings of Mulch Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao and Bhabant Bhattacharya. These novelists reveal the social, economic and political realities of India, especially the gross realities "of caste and class conflicts, exploitation and the proverbial Indian poverty".

The Post-Independence writers like Kamala Markandaya, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Arum Joshi and Anita Desai voice forth the human predicament vies-a-vies the negative social forces that subvert man's progress. Of all the novelists of the Post-Independence period. Anita Desai occupies a unique position as a writer. She mainly illustrates the internal drama of human life in her fiction, and concentrates on its basic facts. She devotes her creative faculty to exploring the deeper psychic and mental states of the protagonists. Prof. Jabir Jain discovers the vision of ambivalence in Mrs. Desai's fiction:

The world of Anita Desai's novels is an ambivalent one; it is a world where the central harmony is aspired to but not arrived at and the desire to love and live clashes-at times violently-with the desire to withdraw and achieve harmony. Involvement and stillness are incompatible by their nature yet they strive to exist together.

**Contents and Sample Pages**