Paper Details

Name: Rajinder Kaur Saggu
Country: India

Year: 2014
Volume: Volume-1, Issue-2 (July-December)
Page Number: 1-6

The subject-matter of all fiction is human experience. Characters, therefore, occupy an important place in a novel because it is through them-their personalities, thought processes, emotional complexities and their actions that human experience is expressed. In contrast to drama where primary importance is given to plot and characters are considered secondary, the essentials of a novel are, to quote Duffin, “first, character, second, character and third, character.”(Duffin,p.78) Kamla Markandaya, a leading Indo-Anglian novelist, seems to have been fully aware of this act and has provided a rich gallery of portraits in her novels. Her sense of involvement in Indian social life, her keen observation, critical acumen and feminine sensibility have helped her in delineating characters from various shades of life: the western and Indian, the rich and the poor, urban and rural. Beginning with poor peasants, Markandaya has gone on to portray princes and Maharajas. In between she has covered characters from almost every class: sophisticated families of westernized Indians, ultra-modern men and women, orthodox grannies, swamis, beggars, artists, peasants prostitutes, government officers and patriots.