Cry The Peacock And Wife Analysis

Modernist movement in literature lays emphasis on the quest for identity on the one hand and internal rather than external realities that lie hidden and repressed on the other and prescribes psychic exploration of characters and feelings to focus the real reality in life which they undergo in different relations and situations. The great European stalwarts like Henry James, James Joyce, Virginia woolf, Dorothy Richardson and DH Lawrence have devoted much of their energy and technique not only to find out the apparent social realities but to a great extent to find out the realities lying hidden in the recesses of the mind of their characters. The characters prior to the emergence of stream of consciousness technique were deployed merely as a
In both the novels heroines go the extreme of killing their husbands. Maya of Cry, the peacock is born in post Independent India but her up-bring-ing is undertaken very much in accordance to the culture and morality of Pre- independent India where female child is considered to be the esteem of the dynasty, a typical but one of the most rigid of middle class moralities, and even the slightest deviation from the set ethical values may damage heavily the grace of dynasty and so are given utmost care accompanied with a lot of restrictions and superstitions. Maya is married to Gautama, a man of academic pursuits and contrary to her romantic and fanciful nature, it was almost a marriage of contradictory temperament hand-picked by her parents . Now Maya becomes victim of two fold conflicts , social and matrimonial on the one hand and on the other internal conflict rooted in the child- hood memory and fantasy over shadowed with the prophesy of an albino astrologer regarding the death of the either of the partners four years after marriage Death of the pet dog toto aggravates her fear of death and becomes the prominent concerns of her consciousness Now obsessed with the feelings of death she develops brooding attitude and turns to be introvert and neurotic. Maya’s unhappiness can be traced in part to external circumstances, her over protected childhood and adolescence which makes it difficult for her to face the realities of adult life, Oedipus complex for excessive love and dependence on her father which makes her seek his substitute in her husband and obviously could not succeed Anita Desai explores the tormented consciousness of Maya with stream of consciousness technique evoking both, the positive and negative images . All her moments of present are closely attached with her memory of the past and she appears to be eternally entrapped with her past. Maya’s