LangLit

IMPACT FACTOR – 5.61 ISSN 2349-5189

An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal

CONCEPT OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE IN ANITA DESAI'S WORLD

DR. FATIMA ASHANA

Department of English
VSSD. (P.G.) College,
Kanpur

ABSTRACT
Anita Desai has added new dimensions to the Indian English Fiction. Her
works are different from those of other Indian Women. She has dwelt upon the
problem of love, marriage and sex in her own way. Anita Desai thinks that
marriage alone does not provide a solution to life's tension and chaos. Mental
satisfaction and happy married life means better understanding between
husband and wife. One needs the help of the other. A sense of co-operation at
every level is needed. Psychological adjustment is compromise in married life.
In Anita Desai's novels the love happenings explode into marital disputes as
the result of post-marriage relationship between husband and wife. She goes
deeper into such human relationship.

Anita Desai has added new dimensions to the Indian English Fiction. Her works are different
from those of other Indian Women. She has dwelt upon the problem of love, marriage and
sex in her own way. Anita Desai thinks that marriage alone does not provide a solution to
life's tension and chaos. Mental satisfaction and happy married life means better
understanding between husband and wife. One needs the help of the other. A sense of co-
operation at every level is needed. Psychological adjustment is compromise in married life.

From the very ancient times, marriage is rooted in the basic need of the family and at the
same time it is an essential element for maintaining it. According to Hindu tradition marriage
is regarded as a 'SANSKARA' which initially transformed every man into a 'husband' and
every woman a 'wife'; thus giving each a social role and finally uniting them into an eternal
bond of love, procreation and self-realization. Marriage seems to be a bridge for husband and
wife. No doubt, love and marriage are complementary to each other and without love married
life is not supposed to be happy. Thus marriage is a social recognition of love between two
persons.

Love before marriage is totally different from love after marriage; because before marriage,
there is only love but after marriage, duties, responsibilities, ego – all become a part of
human life and love is changed into anger, irritation, hatred etc. Reconciliation between
husband and wife is sometimes more difficult than a treaty alliance between two warring
nations.

Love is an itching of the heart that can not be scratched. There is a great deal of truth in this
definition because love is an experience with various reaction on those who are in love. It
plays a role of mediator between mother and son, lover and beloved and husband and wife.

Vol. 6 Issue 3 90 February, 2020

Website: www.langlit.org Contact No.: +91-9890290602

Indexed: ICI, Google Scholar, Research Gate, Academia.edu, IBI, IIFC, DRJI
 LangLit
IMPACT FACTOR – 5.61 ISSN 2349-5189

An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal

Love has two aspects – subjective and objective. Subjective is conscious and imaginative and
depends on individual point of view, but the objective love is the essence of love, it is
unconscious, spontaneous and not connected with thoughts and feelings. In Indian
civilization we find love, purified of its dross, in schools inter-dependence of man's and
woman's love. It is the supreme confirmation of the universality, immortality and infinitude
of the self.

Marriage is a social institution. It is a partnership between husband and wife, the smallest unit
in society. The necessity of marriage is for the building of the structure of society. It is the
social recognition of the relation between man and women. Economic relationship, mutual
understanding and love are the foundation of the institution of marriage, love having the
sustaining power. In a given society the greatest problem is the problem of love in married
life. Before marriage as the couples are young, love and sex are often combined. But after
marriage love must take the primary place so that the partnership shall remain intact.

Love is the greatest gift of God. It is love on which human existence rests. Almost all the
greatest writers have dealt with the theme of love and its harmonizing power. Love is the
basic need of human life and without it human existence becomes dry and mechanical.

The world of Anita Desai's novel is "a world where the central harmony is aspired to but not
arrived existence becomes dry and mechanical. The world of Anita Desai at and the desire to
love and live clashes – at times violently with the desire to withdraw and achieve harmony. In
her novels there is a striving, there is a need to be loved : Maya, Monisha, Sit almost all of
them – desire this above all else, but they also resist, surrender and involvement."1

In her novels the problem of involvement versus detachment of surrender versus freedom is
variously interpreted. In the ultimate analysis, it becomes obvious that love and marriage are
the basic problem of human life.

Marriage, the oldest institution in the world, has been one of the major expressions of human
career. It is based on biological instinct in man and nature's urge for production. It begins
with earliest name and woman. Basically everything about marriage, and above all romantic
marriage will continue to fascinate every mind for times to come.

Marriage is often controlled by custom. It is universally acknowledged fact that marriages in

every country are ceremonized through religious authority, sometimes by social reformers
and legislators. But India remains disunited in marriage customs and rites. This aspect of the
Indian life helps one to study the marriage and marriage customs through the ages. Nobody
can deny the fact that most vital factors in marriage are love and beauty, nearness and
contact, and mutual admiration.

In her novels Anita Desai skillfully depicts the inner emotional world of woman, revealing a
rare imaginative awareness of various deeper forces at work and profound understanding of
love as well as psychology.

In the novel Cry, The Peacock pictures the story of Maya, a young sensitive girl obsessed by
a childhood prophecy of terrible accident that becomes a warm bondage which it becomes

Vol. 6 Issue 3 91 February, 2020

Website: www.langlit.org Contact No.: +91-9890290602

Indexed: ICI, Google Scholar, Research Gate, Academia.edu, IBI, IIFC, DRJI
 LangLit
IMPACT FACTOR – 5.61 ISSN 2349-5189

An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal

difficult, rather impossible for her to get rid of. The marriage of Maya with Gautama leads to
the tragic tone of Cry, The Peacock Maya's pining visions and unfulfilled fancies reveal the
inner most shrines of human heart, craving for 'What is not'. Here in lies the innocent heart of
Maya with a pathetic cry for the company of Gautama who fails to afford a key to her marital
harmony.

After four years of their married life Maya and Gautama have not been able to gain better
sense of understanding and mutual adjustment between them. There seems to be a sense of
frustration reigning in her. Even people sometimes say, "No, you are too young."2 But
Gautama is indifferent to his physical structure. He does not give any importance to it as a
means of attraction for a woman, particularly his wife, Maya.

In the novel Voices In The City the diary-technique lends tone of immediacy and anguish to
Monisha's account of her miserably empty married life. The tragedy of husband-wife
alienation, as already delineated in Cry, The Peacock is re-enacted have through the
Monisha–Jiban tale.

In the novel Bye–Bye Blackbird Anita Desai wants to portray Indians and Englishmen in
England with their problems – both physical and psychological – Adit, an Indian, is married
to Sarah, an English girl. Both of them suffer from problems such as the loss of identity,
alienation and humiliation largely on account of racial and cultural prejudices.

In the novel Where Shall we Go This Summer? Anita Desai depicts the theme love and
marriage very beautifully. The heroine of this novel Sita, like Maya of Cry, The Peacock is a
highly sensitive girl. With the help of marriage one can not revive the heart-beating troubles
or pains or the happiest moment of other's life. Marriage needs more faith. It is the aspiration
of the soul to gain wisdom or virtue. When a man gets rid of his passions and self – will, he
comes through the pure channel of divine power. Sita is also tired of his hellish life. She has
given birth to four children with pride, with pleasure and with emotional satisfaction, but now
she fails to understand what she should do at the time of the birth of fifth one.

Sita is not happy with her indifferent – husband. In this novel Raman and Sita do not play the
role of an ideal husband-wife relationship. There is a lack of harmony in their lives. Like
Gautama, Raman also keeps himself busy and indifferent to his attitude. He is opposite to his
wife both in ideas and attitude. He represents the prose of life, while Sita the poetry of life.

In Anita Desai's novels the love happenings explode into marital disputes as the result of
post-marriage relationship between husband and wife. She goes deeper into such human
relationship.

REFERENCES :

1. Jasbir Jain, Anita Desai (New Delhi : Sterling, 1982), p. 23.

2. Anita Desai, Cry, The Peacock (Delhi : Orient Paper Back, 1980), p.20.

Vol. 6 Issue 3 92 February, 2020

Website: www.langlit.org Contact No.: +91-9890290602

Indexed: ICI, Google Scholar, Research Gate, Academia.edu, IBI, IIFC, DRJI
 LangLit
IMPACT FACTOR – 5.61 ISSN 2349-5189

An International Peer-Reviewed Open Access Journal

Vol. 6 Issue 3 93 February, 2020

Website: www.langlit.org Contact No.: +91-9890290602

Indexed: ICI, Google Scholar, Research Gate, Academia.edu, IBI, IIFC, DRJI