marital discord

Of all the contemporary Indian English novelists Anita Desai is, perhaps, the most perceptive and consistent explorer of the inner life, especially that of Indian women, convulsed by an acute sense of helplessness in the face of onslaughts of an unfeeling world and the resultant mental agony. Anita Desai in most of her female protagonists, by a variety of factors – the most prominant being the marital dischord. This paper puts forward the portrayal of marital dischord in Anita Desai’s Cry, the peacock.
The theme of difficulty of adjustment in conjugal relationship in Anita Desai’s novels reveals her consummate artistry. Mrs. Desai sincerely broods over the fate and future of modern woman particularly in male-chauvinistic society and her annihilation at the altar of marriage. The novelist however does not challenge the futility of marriage as an institution but discloses the inner psyche of the characters through their relations. In her novels, mostly women have been both culturally and emotionally dependent on men, and disruption of attachment or affiliation is seen not as a loss of relationship but a total loss of self, which is then seen as a neurosis. She has explored different aspects of feminine psyche which also includes marital discord. According to
R.K. Gupta:
Anita Desai not only portrays the feminine psyche of a common woman but also the subnormal bordering on abnormal woman.
The woman who are under so much of psychic pressure that they cannot be known for insanity but then they are explicitly normal.
Desai's female protagonists are generally caught in a web of painful circumstances, their struggle and the outcome of which is usually the basis of the novels. The problem invariably in each case, is the difficulty of adjustment in conjugal relationships.
The novel Cry, the Peacock is a family play mainly concerned with the theme of marital discord between Gautama and Maya. The story is about spiritual prays of