Scrutiny of the Novel in detail.

1. Cry, the Peacock
ANITA DESAI

2. About the novelist..
 Born Anita Mazumdar
 Novelist, short-story writer and children’s author.
 Winner of Sahitya Academy Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain.
 Short-listed for Booker Prize thrice/
 More than 16 works of fiction to her credit.
 A very popular Indian novelist
 Mother of the Indian Psychological novel genre.
 Involves in teaching.
 Author of Children’s Books.
 Awarded Padma Bhushan in 2014.l

3. Anita Desai’s Novels: Critical Perspective..
 Sensitive portrayal of the inner feelings of her female characters
 The novels explore the tensions between family members and the alienation of
middle-class women.
 Suppression and oppression of the Indian women.
 Essential tragic view of Life.
 While she ;feels about India as an Indian,’ she thinks about it ‘as an outsider.’
 Her novels cover themes such as women’s oppression and quest for a fulfilling
identity, family relationship and contrasts, the crumbling of traditions.
 Hers is an uprooted and marginalized identity.

4. Her themes..
 Her literary world is not sharply divided along western and eastern lines but East
and West have been treated as mirror images of each other. i.e. Baumgartner’s
Bombay,(1987)
 Her novels evoke characters, events and moods with recourse to a rich use of
visual imagery and details.
 Thus she can be compared with the modernist sensibilities of T.S. Eliot, William
Faulkner and Virginia Woolf.
 Her stories are rooted in images.
 Sometimes these characters are the hostages of their past memories.(Recall Bim
Das of Clear Light of Day,1980)
 The generational confrontation is echoed in almost all the novels of hers.(Fire on the
Mountain, Clear Light of Day, Journey to Ithaca, Fasting, Feasting)

5. Anita Desai’s Protagonists!!
 Her novels are not populated with heroic male or female. They appear to be losers, victims show a
kind of heroism of survival.
 Bim Das, apparently an independent woman, fights with immobility and frustration.
 Use of the house as the place of confinement for women.(Bim, Nanda Kaul, Lotte, Uma, her mother. Mrs. Patton)
 Feeling of being Marginalized( Hugo in Baumgartner’s Bombay)
 In one of her interviews Anita Desai said to be quoted that she gets inspired regarding precision,
choice of words by reading poetry.
 Individual’s emotional attachments to the languages.
 Family being the feminist subject, becomes the larger than life character to Anita Desai.(Great deal
of turbulence in the family)
 Hers is the women’s world.

6. The Story…Cry!!
 Motherless child born to a Brahmin family. Lover of Animals. Her pet dog Toto’s death brings in
mental imbalance in her personality being childless mother. Gautam’s casual approach towards it
widens the gulf between the two and communication gap develops thus.
 Childhood prophecy of albino priest about either one’s death within four yeas of their marriage
brings disastrous effects on Maya’s psyche.
 She can not cope up between the illusions and realities of life. Her expectations and the things
happening are in discord.
 This Phobia of impending death makes her psychotic.
 In a fit of insanity she kills Gautam. And later kills herself by committing suicide.
 Image of peacock is the figural innovation of Maya herself. Peacock’s ‘dance of joy’ is the ‘dance of
death.’ Other than Maya, Pom, Mrs. Lal and Leila are other women characters. Leila’s is a love
marriage.

7. All is Maya!!
 Believes in astrology. Psychologically imbalanced, loses sanity. Maya is illusion.
Hers is the World of senses.
 Craves for love and understanding in her loveless marriage. Her feminine
sensibility, psychological insight and the inner tumult makes the author establish
her as a novelist of Feminism. (Recall Simone de Beauvoir's “the fact that we are
human is much more important than our being and women.”)
 Concept of patriarchy and problems of inequality are the central themes of Maya’s
Life.
 She challenges the gender oriented tradition and embarks on the quest for her
true self.
 Physical, Emotional and spiritual isolation brings in shattering results in her
married life. (Remember she was often told by her father, “It is best to accept”.48)

8. Maya…..
 Attached to the past, lives in memories. She is raised protected. Suffers from Electra Complex: Father Fixation.
Excessive, unrivalled love from her father alienates her from the realities of the grotesque world. “He is like a
silver oak himself, with his fine, silver white hair brushed smoothly across his bronzed scalp.” (37)
 Maya attempts to transfix the image of her father to Gautama and miserably fails in that.
 Burning a horoscope isn’t the right solution a father can offer. Timidity and fatalism is woven around her. (She
believed “I lived as a toy world.”78)
 She often reacts,” Ah! Gautam, I tried, tearfully, and rose from my pillow to hold and draw him into my own
orbit of thought and feeling yet not daring to make the bold, physical move.”(39) “Dared I go in? Beg for
comfort?...useless. Hopeless.”(28)
 The feeling of subordination grapples her very psyche. Her muted and stifled existence is unbearably taking a
toll on her mental health. She borders on mental insecurities, fear and death.
 Maya’s neurotic behaviours stems from the influences of three men in her live: her Father, her husband and the
albino priest.

9. Significance of the Title
 Peacock-symbol of good and bad. Flesh of it is impure according to Hindu
tradition. Peacock is seen to be the symbol of love and beauty. It possesses
unmelodious cry to herald rainy season. “ A peacock has the feathers of an angel,
the voice of the devil and the walk of the thief.” It represents negative energies.
So it is—EVIL.
 So is with Maya, a woman, having negative energies from creation. Woman is a
string of devil, they say. Women perceive evil. Sexual deprivation exists in every
society. Men are often seen controlling women’s body.
 Existentialism is at the very root of Desai’s novels.

10. Go, Tell it on the mountain..
 Women who face age-old suppression would shout and scream and bang on the
door. They would be nasty anyway.
 Traditional gender roles still prevail. Precarious experiences of the women folk:
Social, economical and emotional by promoting patriarchal sentiments.
 Feeling of rejection and alienation creeps in emotionally shunned women.
 Maya becomes a mere commodity of the house just like furniture.

11. Cry, the Peacock: A Critique
 Women must struggle for their social and economic freedom. They should voice
against their exploitation.
 Anita Desai has given the inner description of the woman’s inner world, her
sensibilities, her sulking frustration and the raging storm inside.
 Existential predicament of woman as an individual.
 An expression of long smothered sad cry of the wounded psyche, the harrowing
tale of blunted human relationship of the protagonist who is obsessed by a
childhood prophecy of disaster.
 Gifted with good observation, sensitiveness, a penetrating analysis and a skill to
point with words, Desai creates a rich gallery of male/female characters.

12. A Story of a pee-hen!!
 Highly Sensitive and a cultured girl Maya marries a man double her age and
temperamentally different person altogether.
 Gautam completely neglects her.( NON-ATTACHMENT-Bhagwat Gita) He is totally
indifferent to her physical charms.