Anamika’s Deprivation of Higher Education in Fasting, Feasting: A Feminist Critique of Female Autonomy and Social Oppression

This paper critically analyzes the character of Anamika in Anita Desai's Fasting, Feasting (1999) as a representation of the systemic denial of female autonomy, particularly in relation to higher education. Employing feminist frameworks from Simone de Beauvoir and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the study explores how patriarchal control within the domestic sphere suppresses women's intellectual potential and silences their agency. De Beauvoir's concept of woman as the “Other” reveals the structural mechanisms that confine women to roles of immanence, while Spivak's theory of subalternity frames Anamika's silencing and erasure from educational and social spaces. Despite her academic achievements and scholarship offers, Anamika is denied further education and coerced into a repressive marriage that leads to her implied death by domestic violence. Textual references, such as “Anamika, who won scholarships, who wrote poetry…” (Desai, 1999, p. 148), underscore the tragic contrast between her potential and her silencing. Through a feminist critique of her narrative arc, the paper highlights the broader socio-cultural forces that continue to marginalize women in postcolonial Indian society. It ultimately advocates for the transformation of gendered norms and spaces to foster genuine female empowerment and ensure women's rights to education, agency, and identity.