‘I Cry’ Establishing Women in Anita Desai’s Cry, the Peacock

Abstract

Anita Desai is a modern Indo- English writer, widely acclaimed not only in India but also in the world of fiction writing. She emerged on the literary horizon after independence, focusing on the contemporary issues. Anita Desai has added a new dimension to the contemporary Indian English fiction. She has secured a unique and significant place due to her innovative thematic concerns and deals in her fiction with feminine sensibility. Her preoccupation is to explore the deep psyche of her characters. The fiction of Anita Desai is relevant to all times because she writes about the predicament of modern man. She digs into man’s inner psyche and goes beyond the skin and flesh. Literature for her is not a means of escaping reality but an exploration and an inquiry. She prefers the private to the public world and avoid the traditional grooves of external reality and physical world. In fact, her real concern is the exploration of human psyche, inner climate, and she unravels the mystery of the inner life of her characters. Anita Desai’s Cry, the Peacock is the story of a hypersensitive young woman, Maya, who cannot get over the trauma of a prediction. An albino priest forecasts death for Maya or her husband in the fourth year of their marriage. Hearing this prophecy, she loses her peace of mind. And this is the reason that Gautama’s long discourses on detachment appear to her life- negating.