Paper Details

Name: Binita Jhanji
Country: India

Year: 2016
Volume: Volume-3, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 45-47

There has been a general feeling that Anita Desai (Born 1937) has not taken the theme of social criticism so seriously, as she is a psychological novelist. It is true, social criticism has not been her major concern and therefore she is not an overt critic of society. And yet if her novels are studies closely it becomes clear that it has a very clear idea the historical moment and she knows quite well the social milieu in which she fashions her fiction. She focuses consciously, sometimes too narrowly, on the feelings of a feminine self, but she does not ignore the role of the social context that creates that situation.
While attempting social criticism, a novelist has to create a situation of conflict between the protagonist and the social environment. Mrs. Desai has chosen the life of metropolitan towns as the foreground and the rural experiences as the background of her novels.