Anita Desai's first novel Cry, the Peacock (1963), is about Maya, a dissenting female who battles against three traditional forces in her life: male authority expressed by her husband; her female friends who play stereotypical submissive-wife roles; and her religion's beliefs in karma and detachment. Being over-sensitive, sentimental and imaginative Maya is a total contrast to the rational, logical, Gautam. By making a beautiful use of the symbolic technique, Anita Desai has delved deep into the mysteries of the mind of an abnormal character. “In Cry, the Peacock, Desai explores the turbulent emotional world of the neurotic protagonist Maya, who smarts under an acute alienation, stemming from marital discord, and verges on a curious insanity”
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There is no love and understanding between the two of them. As there is very little interaction between husband and wife, the major action of the novel takes place in the mind of the protagonist. D.S. Maini comments:
Cry, the Peacock is a typically "feminine" novel, a novel of sensibility rather than of action. It has the quality of an orchid and of a flute about it. Its concern is almost wholly with the terrors of existence, and it achieves its effects through a series of exploding and multiplying metaphors. (123)
In the fourth year of her marriage, a forewarning by an albino astrologer about her possible death keeps haunting Maya. For months together, she lives in fear of her own certain death. “I am in love, and I am dying. God, let me sleep, forget, rest. But no, I'll never sleep again. There is no rest any more - only death and waiting” (98). Outwardly, Maya’s daily life is normal. It is the inward existence which Anita Desai intends to portray- in particular, the thought processes of someone walking the tightrope of sanity. The importance of physical activity and social interaction is realized by Maya herself when Nila and her mother come to visit her. These two "had not the time for thinking and imagining" (139); shopping and knitting and painting and cooking and caring for orphans give their lives outward direction and structure. Maya, with no outside concerns or social contacts, is very self- …show more content…
This brings her to reflect intensely on the meaning of life. As a result, there develops in her an extreme awareness of her world's sights, sounds, smells which she desperately tries to imprint on her memory. Thinking that her days are numbered, she comes to savour life all the more. But now, instead of being content to live her remaining days to the fullest, she begins to demand more time. Believing in the inevitability of fate, she assumes that it is Gautam who would die, and that she would live. Initially the realization of this alternative is not conscious, but slowly she starts noticing ever-widening disparities between her attitudes and his. When Maya talks about karma as punishment, Gautam retorts it by calling her ‘Occidental” and dismisses her viewpoint saying, “It is quite impossible to talk to women” (124). Similarly for astrology too, Gautam says, “No educated adult can seriously be expected to believe that the patterns or movements of the astral bodies ... have the remotest influence upon our deeds and actions” (79). His constant disbelief and deprecation makes Maya sure about the impossibility of confiding the content of her horoscope. Also when she tries to assert her own values despite their being in conflict with those of her older, self-assured, and successful husband, a model of male authority, he sees "no value in anything
There is no love and understanding between the two of them. As there is very little interaction between husband and wife, the major action of the novel takes place in the mind of the protagonist. D.S. Maini comments:
Cry, the Peacock is a typically "feminine" novel, a novel of sensibility rather than of action. It has the quality of an orchid and of a flute about it. Its concern is almost wholly with the terrors of existence, and it achieves its effects through a series of exploding and multiplying metaphors. (123)
In the fourth year of her marriage, a forewarning by an albino astrologer about her possible death keeps haunting Maya. For months together, she lives in fear of her own certain death. “I am in love, and I am dying. God, let me sleep, forget, rest. But no, I'll never sleep again. There is no rest any more - only death and waiting” (98). Outwardly, Maya’s daily life is normal. It is the inward existence which Anita Desai intends to portray- in particular, the thought processes of someone walking the tightrope of sanity. The importance of physical activity and social interaction is realized by Maya herself when Nila and her mother come to visit her. These two "had not the time for thinking and imagining" (139); shopping and knitting and painting and cooking and caring for orphans give their lives outward direction and structure. Maya, with no outside concerns or social contacts, is very self- …show more content…
This brings her to reflect intensely on the meaning of life. As a result, there develops in her an extreme awareness of her world's sights, sounds, smells which she desperately tries to imprint on her memory. Thinking that her days are numbered, she comes to savour life all the more. But now, instead of being content to live her remaining days to the fullest, she begins to demand more time. Believing in the inevitability of fate, she assumes that it is Gautam who would die, and that she would live. Initially the realization of this alternative is not conscious, but slowly she starts noticing ever-widening disparities between her attitudes and his. When Maya talks about karma as punishment, Gautam retorts it by calling her ‘Occidental” and dismisses her viewpoint saying, “It is quite impossible to talk to women” (124). Similarly for astrology too, Gautam says, “No educated adult can seriously be expected to believe that the patterns or movements of the astral bodies ... have the remotest influence upon our deeds and actions” (79). His constant disbelief and deprecation makes Maya sure about the impossibility of confiding the content of her horoscope. Also when she tries to assert her own values despite their being in conflict with those of her older, self-assured, and successful husband, a model of male authority, he sees "no value in anything