ANITA DESAI’S 'CRY THE PEACOCK' EMANATES THE OUTCRY OF THE FEMALE PREDICAMENT (Pages 152-160) by Ms. Noor Fathima Ibrahim in THE ENGLISH RESEARCH EXPRESS / ISSN:2321-1164 (Online); 2347-2642 (Print)

The feminist study has thrown much light in making women conscious of their subjugation. The male writing about women was not really appreciated by the intellectuals because it was more about their understanding of women than what women felt themselves. Hence most of the portrayal by male writers was about what they wanted women to be. They rarely addressed the question of bringing any changes in the social conditions of women. For long, the women had written under the pseudonym of male writers, gradually bringing the women’s issues in public. This in many ways influenced more women writers to bring out the enigmatic questions of their exploitation. Women’s writing as a new disciplinary field has by and large brought awareness among women and enabled them to question the ideology of patriarchal society in a bright aspect that has overturned the whole range of thinking about women. The female predicament is not just about dealing with suppression and domination that have been in existence for long but more about developing the new thinking that arise in them. This has given a new life having got to assert and define their inimical roles in the male dominated society. This new awareness is a dominant concern in Anita Desai‘s novels and the essay tries to understand critically how her characters challenge and resist their predicament. Anita Desai’s novels can be read as manifesto of the female predicament. The novel, ‘Cry The Peacock’, is a psychological study of Maya, the protagonist in the novel, who emanates the outcry of the feminine predicament. She is a neurotic character who suffers from childhood obsession and father- fixation. Her marriage to Gautama who is much older to her, brings an unbearable agony in her life. Her marriage is a failure as she adamantly expects all that she had received in her father’s place: love, care and affection. Maya and Gautama are two poles apart. While Maya is sensitive , loves all the positive side of life and craves to enjoy to its core, Gautama is sensible, practical minded who is concerned solely about his own needs. He is unable to comfort Maya especially when her pet dog dies. His irresponsive mind throws Maya into a dire psychic disorder. The incompatible temperament between Maya and Gautama results in tension and chaos in her world. Maya is obsessed with fear and doubt due to the prophecy of albino astrologer ,who predicts that either she or her husband would die in the fourth year of her marriage. Gautama is unable to meet her expectations of a bright and vivacious life and she suffers internally having been denied all that is positive in her life. She ends up killing her husband in a state of delusion as she feels he is unfit to live life to its full. Later on, she commits suicide. The research paper deals with the issues related to feminine identity within the institution of marriage . It also tries to focus on the social issues that stem from the troubled relation between the minor characters like Pom and Mrs Lal, who constitute the sub plot of the novel. Keywords: feminist study, social conditions of women, ideology of patriarchal society, male dominated society etc.