Summary Of Anita Desai's Cry The Peacock

Among these eminent Indian women novelists writing in English, Anita Desai is one who is more interested in the interior landscape of the mind rather than in politics or socio- political realities. Desai's protagonists are women. Who have reached different stages in life: Even then, they are fragile introverts trapped in their own skin. Their emotional traumas sometimes lead to a violent death. Besides the central theme of her novels is the existential predicament of women as an individual. She projects this phenomenon through incompatible couples, in actuality, sensitive and dutiful wives but insensitive and un-understanding husbands. Her fictional milieu is the India in transition with its cultural and ethical values in the melting pot. In each of her novels, one could sense the novelists urge for a way of living, which …show more content…
According to the prophecy, she or her husband would die during the fourth year of her marriage. Maya's marriage to Gautam with the lack of emotional attachment is in contrast to her joyous childhood. Those past memories over shadow her present with gloom. She can establish no effective communication with her husband. Maya's life is woven to her instincts and longs for emotional and physical satisfaction in marital life but both these are denied to her, one by Gautam's intellectually and indifference and the other by his age. Further, Maya's sensuous thrills and excitement are dampened by the non-attachment philosophy of the Bhagwad Gita. She is childless which accentuates her isolation and this frustration becomes total when she murders her husband in a fit of insane fury. Maya seeks communion of the kind the peacock seeks and makes intense mating calls. Through Maya's tragic end, Desai tries to emphasize the great yearning of the women to be understood by her male