A PSYCHOLOGICAL CONFLICT IN ANITA DESAI’S CRY, THE PEACOCK

The entire Post Independence fiction does not radically depart from the idealistic social strains but consciously focuses at the residuals of issues which shift from society to psyche. And it is the psyche that comes under smart focus. The first group of the novelists includes Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao and Bhabani Bhattacharya. These novelists reveal the social, economic and political realities of India, especially the gross realities “of caste and class conflicts, exploitation and the proverbial Indian poverty”. The second group of writers includes Kamla Markandaya, Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Arun Joshi and Anita Desai voice forth the human predicament-vis-à-vis the negative social forces that subvert man's progress. Of all the novelists of the Post-Independence period, Anita Desai occupies a unique position as a writer. She mainly illustrates the internal drama of human life in her fiction, and concentrates on its basic facts. Of all the contemporary Indian women novelists, Anita Desai is the best known. Although we know not much about her life and views on literature yet we consider him one of the landmarks in the Indi-Anglian fiction. She says herself, “I confess I am afraid of speaking about the art of writing, the mechanics of my craft, I have an intuitive and deep fear that by speaking of something subterranean and subconscious, I will destroy it- it is something so very frail.” Anita Desai appeared on the Indian literary horizon in the year 1963, when her first novel, Cry, the peacock was published. The novel received wide acclaim from the readers and critics. Her second novel Voices in the City came in 1965 and it enhanced her popularity amongst the readers.