Anita Desai : Hunger For Freedom

The wife is the main focus in this story and as the story continues she begins to realize that her sickness results from her controlling husband. She learns that John is crippling her health and understands his reasoning behind why he chose the “nursery” to place her in. The wife is a dynamic character who gains insight as the story progresses. In the beginning of the wife’s diagnosis, her husband forbids her from working until she is well again. The wife writes in her journal, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change would do me good” (489). This begins a trend of the wife’s disagreement with him. Instead of listening to John’s “professional” advice, she challenges his statement within the safety of her journal. The journal is a way to express herself freely, although John believes it does her more harm than good. The wife continues to write proclaiming “John would think it absurd. But I must say (write) what I feel and think in some way- it is such a relief” (494)!

This personal confession shows that Mrs. Mallard, though she will mourn at first, now is free to “live for herself,” (228) not for her imposing husband. Before her husband’s death, Mrs. Mallard believed she was in a healthy, normal marriage. This death revealed to her how while she cared about her husband, she despised the lack of freedom her marriage had given her. All of the realizations that Mrs. Mallard reaches during her time of reflection shows the readers exactly why she will no longer mourn the death of her husband.

As a convention, marriage for women has been a landmark of success. It is necessary for a woman to enter into marriage to be recognized by the society as successful. The requisites of marriage such as love and affection are often neglected in exchange for some financial value imposed by the husband. In The Story of an Hour it is exemplified in ?a heart trouble? of Mrs. Mallard while in The Girls in Their Summer Dresses points out to Frances? longing to keep her husband in spite of her doubtful interest upon her.

On the first read of The Student’s Wife by Raymond Carver, it seems this is a story of a man who is trying to sleep and a woman who is simply nagging. This short essay will convey the depth and significance of both trying to sleep and nagging. The text is only effective in the third person omniscient perspective. Carver utilizes, through perspective and clever language, the ability to see into the mind of each character at specific times. The reader sees and hears what is required to be heard and who is required to be seen and heard from. The story title is the first impression given by the story: a woman who is the wife of a student. Nan is not much more than a housewife, or so it seems in the beginning.

In the story, the narrators view of the “wife” is not very admirable. Almost everything she either says or does is childlike. The conflict of feeling emotionally separated from her husband no doubt

Bharati Mukherjee is one of the accomplished diasporic writers. Her writing focuses mainly on women’s suppression, struggle to overcome the problems and attempt to attain identification. Bharati Mukherjee also depicts the cultural conflicts between the East and the West. When a person enters into a new culture from the old one, the conflict arises between the two cultures in the alien land. This paper explores how the female character, Jasmine is portrayed as protagonist in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine. Bharati Mukherjee portrays Indian woman as protagonist in all her novels and the character takes brave decision to emigrate which is the first major step of heroism. The character is portrayed with the capable of facing adventures and creates own happiness and identity, unyielding by conventionality. In Jasmine (1989),

In Draupadi, Mahasweta Devi debunks and transgresses the narrow, apolitical, socio personal gird to which the female protagonist are usually confined in traditional feminist fiction . Devi address the gap in Indian feminism and dalit activism as neither of them have addressed to the concerns of the dalit and tribal woman who is placed at the locus of multiple Beniwal.

Anita Desai, a noteworthy woman novelist, is a modern Indo-English writer, widely acclaimed not only in India but also in the world of fiction writing. She emerged after independence, deliberating on the highly debatable contemporary issues. Anita Desai is a keen observer of the society and the position of the women in the contemporary society draws her special attention. The novels of Anita Desai are noted for the profound probing into the inner life and feelings of the women, bounded by the shackles of the middle class. They are the explorations of the family problems, which perhaps is the chief cause behind the estrangement of the women from their family. 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 avoids the traditional grooves of external reality and physical world. In fact, her real concern is the thorough investigation of human psyche, inner climate, and she unravels the mystery of the inner life of her characters. Her main engagement is to study human existence and human predicament, her exploration being a quest for self. Anita’s main focus, in this way, is to depict the psychic states of her protagonists at some crucial juncture of their lives.

The aim of this article is to analyze the reflection of the women empowerment in the Indian Diaspora novel The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. It is rightly said by Alfred North Whitehead- "It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression." Literature is not only a reflection of the society but also serves as a corrective mirror in which members of the society can look at themselves and find the need for positive change. It is necessary to take a close look at some works of literature, in order to understand how literature actually reflects the society. Literature as a whole grows and changes from generation to generation. It is not static but dynamic. It means that each age has its own particular point of interest and its own particular way of thinking and feeling about things. So the literature which it produces is governed by certain prevailing tastes. These tastes last for a time only. The influence of literature on society is felt directly or indirectly. Women Empowerment is a burning issue of this modern age. So, an effort is done in this paper to reflect the traditional roles which women, especially, Indian women are expected to follow and the role which the women choose in context to a novel the Lowland.

The postcolonial writers may not achieve international success unless they address certain themes, or more established figures “discover” them, should be considered as well. Mahasweta provides a fruitful example: Mahasweta is an intensive and a social alert writer who showcases the rural realities as well as a broad narrative of the importance of the unprivileged or the people living on the extreme. While Mahasweta originally written in her native Bengali language, most of her works are translated into English and regional Indian languages. The credit for translating her works into English for the first time goes to Gayatri Spivak, who had translated Mahasweta’s “Draupadi” in 1981 and “Breast-Giver” (Stanadayini) in 1987. Since then many of her stories have been translated into English by other scholarly translators, and until now about a dozen translators have translated Mahasweta’s stories into English, among whom the foremost are Spivak and Bandyopadhyay. Mahasweta claims on translators capturing ‘the spirit’ of her work, which to her is more important than technical or even artistic perfection and she readily authorizes those translations of her fiction that have been faithful to the spirit of her fiction.

Although in many ways this text can be seen as a radical feminist text, but Devi dismisses the idea as she is not a feminist. She feels that it is a mere coincidence that some professions are gendered and doesn’t regard women as a separate entity but treats their oppression as linked to a wider oppressive structure controlled by caste. She thinks that to ignore the latter in the shadow of the former, is a “denial of history”. But Usha Ganguli in her introductory text ‘Metamorphosis of Rudali’ presents a different view and says that in many ways this could be read as an ‘enabling’ feminist text-with the empowerement of Sanichri, the bonding between the two characters, the importance given to household chores, the common experiences of discrimination of women along class lines and the rare sensitivity expressed by the author towards women in general. Through this novella, Devi discusses and rethinks questions of class, caste and gender and how such structures affect women by giving a powerful voice to the gendered subaltern and thus rescuing them from the dark recesses of third world

After Independence Indian writers focused on the construction of imaginary communities and individuals, but the focal point of women writers of twentieth century is the issue of marginalization of women and a struggle for gender equality (Tharu and Lalitha

Anita Desai and Shashi Deshande are women who were more interested to represent human psyche, study of human beings ruined within and outside. Both are great artist who portray the characters instilled with real, emotional, natural and lively traits in them. Mainly they showed the pain and sufferings of women. The society and family members imposed various responsibilities and restrictions to them. The life of women is like a prison, they trap into various responsibilities and duties throughout her life. They work without any rest for the welfare of family and to complete all the demands of the society. Women have to complete all her duties which she plays throughout her life, the

Anita Desai’s novels are concerned with the portrayal of the most troubled part of her protagonists’ life. The world seems to be ‘out of joint’, and in their helplessness,

Maya showering care for on her dog, reaches the height of concentration to bring a finish to her husband’s life at her own hands, she initiates the survival of Anita Desai’s responsive heroines in insensitive and cold world, subjugated by men, who seek for worth and agreement in life and either eradicate themselves or concession with their fortune.