Feminist Perspective in Anita Desai’s Where Shall We Go This Summer

Anita Desai is one of the prominent novelists of Indian English fiction. She is not only concerned with the social realities, but also explores the hidden niches of human consciousness and meditates upon the existential question of women and their quest for identity in a complex patriarchal world. Her novel, Where Shall We Go This Summer is a story of a middle- aged, over- sensitive woman, Sita who is trapped in familial relationships and finds herself lonely in her own family. She suffers from identity crisis, but towards the end of the novel discovers her real self and solves the question of her existence.

The novels of Anita Desai are mainly women oriented. Her heroines are presented as victims in the male dominated Indian families. She has depicted both submissive and powerful women, and also those who have the ability to change and cope with situations. She tries to explore the psyche of Indian women emphasizing their solitude and alienation. Those characters who have doubts about their existence and identities go through transformation and find solutions to their problems towards the end of the novel.

Desai’s entire fiction traces the changing image of women in the face of existential dilemmas. These female protagonists assert their right to exist not as shadows of their male counterparts but as independent human beings with a will of their own. (Tandon 111-112) In Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975), the protagonist Sita who in the beginning is a victim of loneliness and alienation and lacks identity, changes and recognizes her true- self with the course of time. Sita is a sensitive middle- aged woman who feels alienated from her family due to her emotional attitude towards day today happenings. She is inflexible and i...

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...ly associated to her self- discovery and the identification of her real- self. The mystery of the conflict going on within her is now resolved and she has come through as a maturer woman cleared of all doubts and fears.

Works Cited

Desai, Anita. Where Shall We Go This Summer?. Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd. Delhi,1975.

Print.

“Feminist Literary Criticism and Motherhood: Introducing the Mother Without Child”. UC Press

& Books Collection. U of California, 1982-2004. Web. 17 Dec.2013.

Kohli, Devindra, Melaine Maria Just, eds. Anita Desai: Critical Perspectives. Pencraft

International. New Delhi, 2008. Print.

Tandon, Neeru. Anita Desai and Her Fictional World. Atlantic. Delhi, 2008. Print.

Tiwari, Shubha, ed. Critical Responses to Anita Desai. Atlantic. Delhi, 2004. Print.