Chapter-III

Male-Female Dichotomy in the Novels of Anita Desai

The theme of the male-female dichotomy, the tension

between husband and wife, because of the incompatibility in

their temperament is present in many of Anita Desai's

novels. She is not interested in pre-marital relationship

between man and woman but deals with the problems of

marital relationship in all its dimensions and

manifestations. Marriage which is a means of self-fulfillment

and self-knowledge eludes most women and fails to come up

to their anticipation and aspirations. As Twinkle B. Manavar

has said:

Most marriages prove to be unions of incompatibility. Men are apt to be rational and matter of fact while women are sentimental and emotional.1

Anita Desai's prime concern is the projection of the

existential predicament of woman as an individual. She

expresses a desire for a way of life, which would respond to

the innermost yearning of women for self-emancipation and

self-dignity. The sensitivity of women both physical and

psychological passes by their male-counterparts. So the

sensitive wife is like a finely tuned musical instrument and

[ 88 ]

the husband is stolid, and imperious to her finer vibrations.

The tragedy of marital disharmony in each of Anita Desai's

novels can be traced back to this disparity in sensibilities.

The self image of her protagonist structures the way in

which all violence and disturbing things are due to man and

patriarchal. As Purnima Mehta has remarked:

Her women know how they have been trapped and how they can begin to live afresh but the obstacle is man. Man enters her world as disturbing factors.

But in the process, she reduces the patriarchal discourse to a set of clinches and soon her women are caught by fantasy.2

The theme of marital discord is handled very

effectively in Cry, the Peacock, through the married life of

Maya and Gautama. Maya is a hypersensitive, childless

woman obsessed by a childhood prophecy and father-

fixation and her husband Gautama with his philosophy of

detachment is a reputed lawyer, worldly wise and a realist.

Maya's tendency to depend on her father and then on her

husband shows that she constantly needs a prop. She does

not consider Gautama to be a loving husband but a means

to reach her father unconsciously. Her fruitless marriage to

Gautama with its lack of emotional attachment stands in

"sharp contrast to her affection-filled childhood." She had

[ 89 ]

felt that her marriage would be a continuation of her happy

childhood with Gautama playing the role of an indulgent

elderly husband. But Gautama refuses to be reduced into a

surrogate father. In this context Ramesh Srivastava has

commented:

The attachment of a little motherless daughter to her father is common occurrence but when Maya detaches her libidinal urges from father and hooks them on to Gautama, she expects a similar satisfaction but it does not happen to be so.3

Both of them have a fanatic adherence to their beliefs and

ideas and neither is prepared to relent.

Maya looks for a communion relationship in her life

but her spiritual need almost remains unfulfilled. The need

for emotional attention is the central problem of the novel.

The poignant cry of Maya is a passionate urge to express her

or to be understood by her husband. But Gautama never

feels the necessity of interaction. Maya yearn for his

companionship and understanding but her sensitive nature

and intense emotions are smothered under the heavy weight

of her formal life. Maya feels ecstatic when Gautama recites

an Urdu complete for her. She is deeply fascinated by the

underlying emotions of the couplet and seems to achieve her

[ 90 ]

transcendence: "And my heart stretched, painfully,

agonizingly, expanding and swelling with the vastness of a

single moment of absolute happiness. . . ."4 One small

gesture of tender understanding from her husband makes

Maya feel fulfilled. But Gautama is not a romantic and

forgets the couplet. This temperamental incompatibility rules

out the possibility of an intimate relationship between the

two.

The lack of communication between husband and

wife is felt throughout the novel. Both Maya and Gautama

disagree over trifles with each other. Through similar,

metaphors and symbols, the two spouses Maya and

Gautama are evoked for us as opposed archetypes. Maya

herself feels that they would not have married each other,

had her father and Gautama not been friends and had

mutual respect for each and other. She realizes that her

marriage was a failure and feels tortured and imprisoned in

a loveless marriage.

Gautama tries to satisfy Maya's appetite for love

with logic and rationality. But she feels that he is not

concerned about her misery, her physical and psychological

demands. Being a genius person Gautama gifts her opal ring

but does not notice her beauty and the longing to be loved.

[ 91 ]

Gautama laughs off Maya's need to be loved and

when she tries to come close to him to ease her anguish, he

preaches the doctrine of non-attachment from Bhagvat

Geeta which only serves to make her feel even more

miserable and she states that, she does not want to detach

herself into any other world whereas the meaning of true

love is to accept a person as he or she really is. As Dr.

Sanjay Kumar has said:

Engrossed in his busy schedule, Gautama continues to ignore Maya's needs remaining callously immune even to her physical desires. This is how Maya usually suffers the agony of her unfulfilled desires.5

Detachment is misinterpreted by both of them,

Gautama detaches himself so much that he does not get

involve in any physical contact with his wife. For him

detachment is an abstraction totally unrelated with life,

sensation, beauty and eros. On the other hand, Maya

involves herself in sensual life to such an extent that her

past romantic life becomes an obsession. She obtains herself

from active participation in life, from familiar day-to-day

activities. Which result in her strained distorted

consciousness leading her to homicide and suicide?

Maya is pushed to the limits of her emotional tether

[ 92 ]

by the actively cruel environment that Gautama aspires for

the ideal of renunciation. He has a cool, analytical attitude

towards Maya's zest for life and she fails to see any

connecting link between her husband's philosophy and her

own love for life. Ramesh Srivastava has rightly commented:

Since she is still a child abstract thinking is of no help for her.6

Gautama's error lies in his rigidity. He wants to

change Maya as he thinks she 'ought' to be instead of

understanding her as she "actually" is. He tries to teach her

his own ways and philosophy but Maya's killing Gautama

symbolically suggests that Maya (illusions) is able to

overpower and destroy Gautama, the personification of the

lopsided view of detachment.

The novelist highlights Maya's physical needs and

sexual demands with the help of two powerful symbols. The

peacock's voluptuous dance and the mating call of pigeons.

The fighting of peacocks is the central symbol around which

the novel is built.

The first part of the novel is narrated in the third

person and sets given us the direct authorial description of

Maya's state of mind. The expository material in the story

tells us the main facts about the situation and defines the

[ 93 ]

line of conflict between Maya and Gautama. The novel

begins with the death of Toto, Maya's pet dog. This incident

makes the situation worse and it becomes serious and

unforgotten incident to her which reflects and widens the

gulf, that separate these two characters. Maya wants

Gautama, being a modern, educated, emancipated person,

but after having arranged for Totto's burial he forgets about

the incident.

Anita Desai has very subtly portrayed the lives of

Indian women in her novels as passive, dependent and

waiting forever. Maya waits eagerly and begs Gautama to

meet her half-way in her own world and not demand her to

join him in his world which is so different from her own. But

Gautama is unable to reciprocate her love and Maya feels

deprived of the pleasures of a happy marriage which her

friend, Leila, enjoys with her husband. The lack of

communication between the two character and the

references to the steadily recurrent theme of incompatibility

between Maya and Gautama are repeated many times in the

story and in Maya's reflecting on their unsuccessful

marriage.

Gautama fails to respond to the poetry of Maya's

young heart and satisfy her father-fixation. The lack of

[ 94 ]

conciliation between the two entirely opposite temperaments

is highlighted in various such trifling incidents.

There is a total alienation between husband and

wife. They share nothing not even the sensibilities that can

differentiate between the sweet fragrance of petunias and

astringent smell of lemons. But to make life possible, Maya

looks for points of communication. Her pet dog's death is

symbolic of her own psychic death but Gautama remains

untouched by it for his world of reality has very little place

for Maya's fantasy. Maya's dreams and Gautama's solid

world of human activity do not go together.

Gautama's failure in the traditional role of a

husband, as a protector, acts as a potential catalyst for

Maya's collapse. The failure of their marriage renders

everything doubtful. The Albino astrologer's prophecy of

death of one of the two spouses four years after their

marriage has constantly fevered Maya's mind. Her love of life

and desire to live shifts the astrologer's prophecy on to

Gautama's life. Maya pushes Gautama and he goes hurtling

down from the terrace to death because, in a strange way,

she feels that she was meant to live whereas Gautama had

always been indifferent towards life. All that is left of this

marriage is pity, regret and a want on waste because the

[ 95 ]

distance between them is like a desert, which cannot be

crossed. The only strings that had, kept them tied were the

norms of society.

Anita Desai in, Cry, the Peacock has depicted not

only the conflict in man-woman relationship of Maya and

Gautama but of other characters also Nila, Gautama's sister.

She is not leading a happy married life either. She comes to

Gautama because she wants a divorce from her husband

but Gautama is not in favour of this because he knows that

Nila is too bossy, self willed and bullying. Leila, Maya's

friend, marries a man suffering from tuberculosis but feels

satisfied. Pom, another friend, though satisfied with her

husband, does not want to live with her in-laws. In short,

the dominant theme of male-female dichotomy has been

dealt with, successfully by the novelist in Cry, the Peacock.

Voices is the City is structurally divided into four

sections, namely "Nirode", "Monisha: Her Diary", "Amla" and

"Mother". Here, Anita Desai offers a moving picture of

Monisha's married life who is married against her wishes in

a middle class stolid family, grossly unsuited to her

inclinations. Her husband, Jiban, ranks even lower on the

scale. He is an uncontrolled vacuum and a solid well. To

Monisha her marriage is the most excruciating of all social

[ 96 ]

institutions that traps and tortures her isolated, sensitive

psyche: She questions herself:

Is, this what is then, my life? Only a conundrum that I shall brood over forever with passion and pain, never to arrive at a solution. Only a

conundrum is that, then life.7

Her claustrophobia and exasperation ends in

suicide. Her inability to bear a child, her total lack of

communication with her nonchalant husband, lack of love

and the suspicion of her in-laws, who looks upon her as a

thief, tortures her and fill her with agony from which there is

no escape. Monisha's childlessness is the major cause of her

suffering in marriage. As Meena Shirwadkar laments that

The generative cycle of life for a woman ends on a note of indignity as she is unable to assert herself before others in

the society and in the interpersonal relationships based on individual whims.8

The kind of life Monisha wants is not available to

her, but she also finds it very difficult to detach herself from

a loveless marriage. She suffers from what Andrew Crowcraft

terms; "Cultural Schizophrenia." It arises due to out general

setting made up of the traditions and values of the

community we live in. So, the theme of man-woman

[ 97 ]

relationship and dichotomy is beautifully elaborates in the

novel.

Anita Desai returns to her favourite theme of

alienation, incompatibility, and lack of communication in

marital relationships in Where Shall We Go This Summer?

The incompatible couple of Sita and Raman are confronted

with the same problem of male female dichotomy,

inadequacy of marital love relationship and dissatisfaction.

Here Sita represents a world of emotional and feminine

sensibility while Raman is a man with an active view of life

and the sense of the practical. The conflict is natural where

two people with totally irreconcilable temperaments are

living together and are not ready to submit the wishes of

each other. D.S. Maini has opines:

It appears as though she (Anita Desai) wanted to do Cry, the Peacock over again in a more controlled and less hallucinated and exotic manner. That is

why the wife's loneliness is conditioned by society and family.9

The novel deals with the dilemma of existence when

children grow up and the husband becomes increasingly

busy. Maya's anguish was existential whereas Sita's problem

is mainly domestic but the feeling of emptiness in Sita's life

gives an existential dimension. Her burden and loneliness

[ 98 ]

are experienced by married woman when they feel ignored

and unwanted.

Sita tortured by the violence, she realizes that

genuine happiness is not possible in her marital context,

that hope rises only to be crushed in an insensitive and

cruel setting that her children and husband are alien to her

nature and her needs.

The reality of life with her husband is oppressive.

The couple does not represent the ideal man - woman

relationship like Rama and Sita of the epic. Sita's non-

conformity and failure on acclimatizing herself to her

surroundings is the root cause of her anguish. She feels let

down when she recalls that Raman had married her not out

of cavalier's pity for maiden's distress, but for her fire and

beauty. The novel has many episodes which show that they

are incompatible and, therefore, there is no scope to a loving

relationship.

Sita's attitude towards her father adversely affects

her relationship with Raman. In the first chapter of the

novel, Sita recalls her childhood spent on the islands of

Manori with her father and the experiences she had there

were more of the nature of fantasy, dreams, myths and

miracles which have very little to do with the world of reality.

[ 99 ]

Sita is influenced by her father to such an extent that it

eventually hinders her adjustment with Raman who lives

and believes in the work a day world. R.S. Sharma has

remarked:

Sita's alienation from her husband was inherent in her relationship with her father.10

As a motherless child she experiences partiality, neglect and

uncertainties right from the beginning. Her situation is just

the reverse of Maya. Whereas Maya's father is overprotective

and loving, Sita's father is irresponsible and partial. Sita's

mother renounces her family life and becomes a Sadhika

and her father has a strange attraction for elder sister as

well as in the fisher-woman of the island. Both Maya and

Sita, by their inability to cope with the realities of life, evoke

their husband's bitter comments on their up bringing.

For Sita, love is the engulfing passion. The image of

Sita is an object of envy, bliss and complete in itself. Her

own life, at best a routine affair galls her. She expects

Raman to be like the lover, making her to feel how valuable

she is to him, but this dream doesn't materialize. Atma Ram,

regards the novel as a battle between:

Life denying and life affirming impulses.11

[ 100 ]

The things which are ordinary for Raman are some

thing uncommon and unusual for Sita. R.S. Sharma

observes:

They accuse each other of madness because they look at reality from two different perspectives. The natural flow of affection is thus retarded the novelist frequently refers to Sita's wanting and not being given what she wanted and refers to her face to face of a woman unsolved a woman rejected.12

Sita simply wants to be loved by her husband

instead of running after sensual pleasures and luxuries of

life. She wants to run after substance instead of a shadow.

According to O.P. Budholia:

Metaphorically, the state of Sita's mind resembles a tide; it creates in her a tragic vision of life. She feels helpless in her isolation and alienation. The tide of sea envisions of symbolically the tide of personal life.13

Her pregnancy totally shatters her and the rift

between her and her husband widens to such an extent that

she decides neither to give birth not undergo an abortive

surgery, but to keep it undelivered. Her vision of human

relationship admits no ambiguity and deception she

advocates a balance between body and soul and pleads for

[ 101 ]

lawrention love because the imbalance between body and

soul mars the relationship of man and woman. She feels that

a combination of spiritual and physical love alone can make

her feel complete.

The phrase "I had to stay whole" brings forth the

depth of human emotions. Sita craves to share the same of

her husband in love, physical and spiritual. However, Anita

Desai does not let loose the rope of rebellion. Sita does not

seek separation from Raman despite her frustration but

submitting to the Indian way of life, abandons her pursuit of

a separate existence and attains a wider vision of human

relationships. She recovers from her plunge into existential

nullity and discovers her natural roots and connections by

her contact with the soil. The peace sought by her at the

island illudes her because the decadent island of Manori has

lost its cohesiveness which emanated security and harmony.

Now Sita realizes:

She had escaped from duties and responsibilities, from order and routine,

from life and the city, to an unlivable island. She had refused to give birth to a child in a world not fit to receive a child.14

She recovers from her existential dilemma and feels

that the gap of communication between Raman and herself,

[ 102 ]

is after all not unbridgeable and comes to the conclusion

that carrying on the mundane affairs of life, too, requires

courage for life must be continued with all its routine affairs.

Sita's withdrawal indicates a need for unconditional

love and being deprived of this basic necessity she feels

alienated from her husband and is unable to communicate

with him. When the news of Raman's expected visit to the

island reaches her, she is elated, and feels a pleasant

surprise. She wants to be later that he had come for her but

to her disappointment Raman confesses that he had come

because children had sent to him. This gives a deep feeling

of emptiness to her.

Sita's escape to the island proves to be a pilgrimage.

She had come there to beg for the miracle of keeping her

baby unborn but she has to face the reality, that destruction

may be the true element in which life and creation are

merely, temporary and doomed events. She does not take a

drastic step like suicide but prepares to face life and find

solutions to her problems.

Anita Desai has also laid stress on harmonious

marital relationships in which a woman's individuality and

identity are honoured. But Bye-Bye Blackbird presents

Sarah as a wonderful example of a woman willingly resigning

[ 103 ]

all her claims as a European lady and losing her identity for

an Indian husband. Sarah materializes the full vision of

ideal womanhood and undertakes all her responsibilities of

wife. There is hardly any dichotomy between Sarah and Adit.

Sarah plays two contrary roles; her self is divided

into two. As Mrs. Adit Sen she grinds spices for curry, which

she does not like to eat, hears music which she does not

understand and cannot enjoy. As head secretary in a school

she performs her duties sincerely and efficiently. As, Twinkle

B. Manawar has said:

By marrying an Indian she had become

nameless and had shed her name as she shed ancestry and identity, yet, there is no mental peace is her because she is taunted and insulted by her own people. She has to hear such words, "Hurry, Hurry, Mrs. Scurry." She has to

feel pain with the feeling that she has lost her individuality.15

The unhappiness in the marital life of Sarah's parents due to

the commanding nature of her mother makes Sarah meek

and submissive in her relation with Adit. Sarah's timid

nature is liked by her husband. Only once in the whole of

the novel is seen reacting forcefully and vehemently when

she refuses to wear a saree and gold necklace due to rain

and she is charged with xenophobia (or dislike for the

[ 104 ]

foreigners).

Sarah has an adjusting and cooperatively nature but

she is worried about her child's survival life and identity but

Adit's typical behaviour has disturbing and scolding her.

While taking the most major decision of leaving England, he

never bothers to consult Sarah. She is baffled about her

future in India and finds her identity receding, fading and

dying. English is an inherent and integrate part of Sarah's

unconscious mind Adit undergoes the Metamorphosis of

character and feels elated over the cultural superiority of

India. She as a woman lacks in courage to object to her

husband's arbitrary decision and assert herself for the sake

of unborn child.

Anita Desai explores deeply the complicated world

of human relationships, a world of temperamental

incompatibility, where emotion, financial worries and

tensions that hinder marital bliss. She is equally concerned

with the simplicity and purity of human relations as with the

cunningness and delicacy of human behaviour. Deven an

impoverished temporary lecturer in Lala Rama College,

Mirpore, a representative of ordinary average being, is a

humble and helpless person. Socio-economic factors colour

his personality and mould his psyche. Unable to change his

[ 105 ]

circumstances, Deven starts living in his self-created world

of idealism, fantasy and illusions. As a result he ignores the

realities of his married life as well as his household

responsibilities. Sarla, his wife is a simple middle class girl

with all the aspirations which a young girl has. Deven had

been more a poet than professor when he married Sarla. He

had been working as a temporary lecturer and still had

confidence in his verse but she was too prosaic to be a poet's

wife. Also, she had not been his choice but that of his

mother and aunt who was a crafty woman.

There are differences between the couple in the

matters of running a household. Deven is preoccupied in his

pursuit of Urdu poetry and does not take much interest in

his family. He aspires for an intellectual environment while

Sarla longs for a luxurious life. Her dreams are shattered by

her marriage to a man of academic profession and having to

live in a small town like Mirpore. Deven understands the

suffering of his wife but since he wants to concentrate only

on his poetry, he keeps himself at a distance from her to

avoid, any confrontation. Deven has at least his poetry with

him, Sarla has nothing and so she feels bitter for it is

difficult to live on the meager salary of a lecturer. Deven's

sense of despair on the professional front affects his

domestic life adversely for he is fully aware of his personal

[ 106 ]

inadequacy and incompetence in fulfilling his wife's desires

and dreams. Like his father he feels apologetic because he

cannot do better. This attitude prevails in his attitude

towards life in general and towards his family in particular

which makes him live with a sense of defeat and failure.

Sarla is a plain, penny pinching congenitally

pessimistic woman, who presents the picture of an

abandoned wife. In her company Deven feels as if he was a

stranger, an interloper. He is pained to notice the dereliction

of his marriage.

Deven's miserable life with an unsympathetic and

sarcastic wife makes him to think that his marriage, his

family and his job have placed him in the cage and there is

no way to out. Sarla never raised her voice in his presence

but gave vent to her pent up feelings when she was out of

his way, preferably in the kitchen, which she considered to

be her own domain. Here Anita Desai vividly depicts the

socio-economic problems of a middle class family which can

cause tension between husband and wife. As, Dr. Gajendra

Kumar has remarked:

Desai's characters too suffer from the oppressive and depressive walls of sounds from which there is no release.16

[ 107 ]

Psychologically the most subtle and most

complicated is the relationship of Nur and Imtiaz in In

Custody Imtiaz, an intellectual woman is Nur's second wife

whom he picked up from a brothel in one of his earlier poetic

sessions. She shares a love-hate relationship with him and

is more of a rival than a wife. She celebrates her birthday by

reciting her verses to Nur's admirers to win the glory by

using all the tricks of brothel:

. . . a powdered and painted creature in black and silver, coquetting beneath a shining veil . . . flashing smiling at her audience and making the ring on her nose glint with delight.17

Two opposite elements compose the character of

Imtiaz - one is the fascination and the other is the jealousy

for the poet. She has been successful in winning Nur's heart

by her intelligence, beauty and skill in singing and dancing.

Imtiaz has desire to compete with her husband, Nur,

at later on and consequently tries to stop the usual poetic

sessions, which Nur used to have on his terrace and

conspires against his publicity, interviews and book-

publications. Nur, despite knowing her malicious nature,

still loves her and cannot go against her will. Pretensions,

show and strategy characterize her nature.

[ 108 ]

Nur feels that his admirers and glory are being

usurped by Imtiaz but is helpless before her conspiratorial

rivalry. According to Nur's, first wife, Safia Begum, Imtiaz is

fine actress who knows how to enchant Nur whenever she

wants something from him. Safia is simple and pragmatic

and love for Nur is her sole motive. She cooks, cleans,

washes and manages the Nur's household but being illiterate

and unsophisticated she is unable to be an intellectual

companion.

Deven does not like the atmosphere in Nur's house

because there is too much of drinking and womanizing

leading to vulgar family quarrels. In fact it appears more like

a brothel than a normal household. As, Ami Upadhyay has

said:

Her knowledge of female psyche makes her the 'novelist of female psychology'. But in fact, she possesses the deep understanding of male psyche too.18

Maya's problem was psychological in Cry, the

Peacock Sita's was inability to adjust Where Shall We Go This

Summer? Monisha's problem was her sensitivity Voices in the

City Sarah's was cultural Bye-Bye Blackbird and Sarla's is

socio-economic In Custody. The theme of male-female

dichotomy is further studied from a still different angle in

[ 109 ]

Journey to Ithaca. The central issue of this novel is search

for truth, ultimate reality, beauty, joy, ecstasy or whatever

form truth has. In this novel the problem between husband

and wife is spiritual incompatibility. Sophie, a German

journalist follows her husband, Matteo, to India and

wanders with him from one ashram to another despite

having a western approach towards life and not having a

blind faith is ashrams and gurus in Bihar. As a young wife

she also wants fulfillment in life which is not possible in the

stuffy and unruly environment of the ashrams. It upsets and

baffles her to see the unequal living of different devotees and

feels neglected and an outcast among the pilgrims. She

smokes with mixed feeling of guilt and gratefulness whereas

Matteo is at peace and feels fully adjusted to the healthy

environment because his sole purpose in life seems to reach

the truth. This difference of opinion and attitude creates a

gap between the couple. Matteo only moves of divine love;

Sophie merely suffers for getting Matteo's love. The novelist

presents her inner psyche contemplating about her plight

and has the capacity to mark the difference results the

conflict. Her characters continue to struggle, fight against

the strong waves, even if it result in failure.

Sophie feels that it is futile to argue with Matteo on

any topic as she was drained of all her strength due to

[ 110 ]

summer and unhealthy environment. They had come to

India to share an adventure in which Sophie wished to

recover their unique and essential love but her strength had

run out. Matteo was determined that he had come to the

ashram to stay and study which only served to make her

more restless. Matteo avoided her and stayed in the

company of his teachers, most of the time occasionally he

made love to her with a new contempt and a violence that

was so unlike him that it shocked her and if she felt strong

enough, she fought with him which made him more violent.

As, M. Dasan has rightly observed that:

The long conversation between Matteo

and Sophie reveals the irreconcilable difference between the European Couples; the difference in their philosophies of life; their attitude towards Indian spirituality resulting in emotional incompatibility.19

Sophie suffered so much that she became nervous

and insecure. She felt sick and after a checkup by the

ashram doctor, she found that she was pregnant. The news

of Sophie's pregnancy antagonized everyone even more

disciples even went for enough to say that Sophie live. She

was admitted to a hospital with poor medical facilities and

unhygienic conditions and was later shifted, which to and

then hospital in the hills.

[ 111 ]

The insecurity and restlessness in Sophie's mind

can be detected Sophie's dreams where she gives birth to her

baby in a stream of blood, she touches the baby, tries to

unwrap it, it becomes cold and limp, and she draws her

hand back in horror. Confining Sophie to her bizarre world,

Matteo joins another ashram, run by a woman know as

Mother. Matteo is intoxicated with his quest for truth and

finding some indefinable features in Mother, he becomes her

disciple.

He had to visit in the hospital which he did

reluctantly by tearing himself away from the ashram. He

used to make his way to the hospital in town as it were a

penance, and sit by her bed with a suffering face while she

lay-calmly, willingly, even contently.

The dichotomy between Matteo and Sophie assumes

alarming dimensions as the latter's pregnancy advances

where as the former advancers on the path of spirituality.

Both of them grow indifferent to each other with one

nullifying the soul, the other the body. Matteo grows too

attached to the mother.

Sophie, as a normal woman becomes jealous of

Matteo's affinity to the Mother. Her irritation becomes

obvious for she tells Matteo that he could never work so

[ 112 ]

much for his own father's business as he did for Mother.

Sophie tries to isolate herself from Matteo's world by

listening to her old tapes and thinking about of her

pregnancy. Giacomo, a baby boy is her first child and, after

some years, staying in the ashram, she gives birth to baby

girl, Isable. Sophie worries about her children's future as a

mother and her tension builds up with the growing

infatuation of her husband for the mother.

The suspicion in the mind of a wife regarding the presence

and role of other women in a man's life is authentically

depicted. Anita Desai has lightly touched this problem but in

a different sort of relationship. The fundamental difference

between Matteo and Sophie remains that of their approach

to life. For Anita Desai, the basic cause of contention

between man and wife is temperamental in compatibility but

it does not seem to be so in Journey to Ithaca. According to

O.P. Budholia:

Matteo represents all that comes from the heart, while Sophie represents all

that comes from the mind.20

The bitterest quarrel between them is takes place in

regarding to their son's education. Matteo wants him to be

educated at the ashram school and Sophie wants him to go

[ 113 ]

to a school in Europe. Now both of them are locked into

what they feel is a flight to the end but are desperate to

protect what they believed to be right. Matteo lays stress on

"sacred love" and for Sophie physical love and sacred love

are the same.

Sophie decided to returns Italy where she tries to fill

the void created by Matteo's absence by Paolo's friendship

but "her life with Matteo had spoilt possible." Sophie

overcomes the onslaught of lower impulses and realizes that

mother was a great saint after, thoroughly inquiring of her

past. This reveals the purity of Sophie's mind. Sophie seems

to have India behind her completely but when a telegram

arrives about Matteo's sickness and hospitalization, she

reaches it with such swiftness that, it was clear her mind

had been with Matteo all this time, her senses alert to

receive any message from him. Now nothing mattered for her

but to be with her husband instantly she reaches India, the

third time and learns about the death of the Mother and

Matteo's departure from the ashram in quest of his "Self".

Now we find materialistic Sophie filled with the fire of

spiritual height. She perceives the higher vision of love in her

husband and the mother. Sophie is now determined to follow

the ideal of mother as seeks, forgetting her children and

parents and country. She collects that will power to follow

[ 114 ]

the path of higher vision. Some inner enlighten makes her

submit to the higher motives of life. She begins to complete

the journey and she undertakes a journey for mystic

experience. Anita Desai achieves a grand success in

presenting higher values of love, humanism, realism,

mysticism and unified vision of universal brotherhood.

Journey to Ithaca thus presents a different kind of

male-female relationship and Anita Desai's vision of married

life.

*****

[ 115 ]

REFERENCES

1. Manawar, B. Twinkle. "Man - Woman Relationship in

Anita Desai's Novel" Critical Essays on Anita Desai's

Fiction ed. Jaydipsingh Dodiya pub. IVY, Publishing

House, New Delhi, 2000, p. 16.

2. Mehta, Purnima. "Dehumazitian of the Male in Anita

Desai's Fiction", Critical Essays on Anita Desai's

Fiction. ed. Jaydipsingh Dodiya Pub. IVY, Publishing

House, New Delhi 2000, p. 10.

3. Srivastava, Ramesh K. Six Indian Novelists in English,

Amritsar, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, 1987,

p. 284.

4. Desai, Anita. Cry, the Peacock, pub. The Orient

Paperbacks, Delhi, 1980, p. 20.

5. Kumar, Sanjay. "The Reverse Patterns Of Journey in

Anita Desai's Cry the Peacock and Where Shall We Go

This Summer?" Critical Essays on Anita Desai's Fiction,

ed. Jaydipsingh Dodiya, Pub., IVY, Publishing House,

New Delhi, 2000, p. 23.

6. Srivastava, Ramesh. "The Psychological Novel and

Anita Desai's Cry, The Peacock", Six Indian Novelist in

English, ed. R.K. Srivastava, Vimal Prakashan,

Ghaziabad, 1984 p. 284.

7. Desai, Anita. Voices in the City, pub. Orient

Paperbacks Delhi, 1965.

[ 116 ]

8. Shriwadkar, Meena. Images of Women in the Indo-

Anglian Novel, Sterling Publishers, New Delhi, 1979,

p. 64.

9. Maini, D.S. The Achievement of Anita Desai, Indo -

English Literature, ed. K.K. Sharma, Vimal Prakashan,

Ghaziabad, 1977, P. 214.

10. Sharma, R.S. "Movement and Stillness in Anita

Desai's Fire on the Mountain", Litt.critt, Vol. 4. No.2,

Dec. 1978, p. 202.

11. Ram, Atma. Island on the Island, A Review of Where

Shall We Go This Summer? World Literature Written in

English, Nov., 1977. p. 74.

12. Sharma, R.S. "Anita Desai's Where Shall We Go This

Summer?" An Analysis, Commonwealth Quarterly, Vol.

3, No. 9, 1978, p. 104.

13. Budholia, O.P. "Anita Desai-Vision And Technique in

her Novels", Studies in Contemporary Indian Fiction in

English, Kitab Mahal, Allahabad, 2001, p. 101.

14. Desai, Anita. Where Shall We Go This Summer? pub.

Orient Paperbacks 1982, pp. 139-400.

15. Manawar, B. Twinkle. "Man - Woman Relationship in

Anita Desai's Novels", Critical Essays on Anita Desai's

fiction. ed. Jaydipsingh Dodiya, Pub. IVY, Publishing

House, New Delhi, 2000, p. 16.

16. Kumar, Gajendra. "Voices in the City: A Tour De

Horizon of Existentialist Philosophy", Critical Essays

[ 117 ]

on Anita Desai's Fiction. ed. Jaydipsingh Dodiya Pub.

IVY, Publishing House, New Delhi, 2000, p. 57.

17. Anita, Desai. In Custody, London: Heinemann (1984),

p. 67.

18. Upadhyay, Ami. "In Custody Theme of Self-Exile

and Alienation", Critical Essays on Anita Desai's

Fiction. ed. Jaydipsingh Dodiya, pub. IVY, Publishing

House, New Delhi, 2000, p. 147.

19. Dasan, M. "Anita Desai's. Journey to Ithaca, Critical

Essays on Anita Desai's Fiction" ed. Jaydipsingh

Dodiya Pub. IVY, Publishing House, New Delhi, 2000,

p. 180.

20. Budholia, O.P. "Anita Desai Vision And Techniques

In Her Novels" Studies in Contemporary Indian Fiction

in English, Kitab Mahal, Allahabad, 1987, p. 65.

*****