The quest for Identity in Cry, the Peacock of Anita Desai and Maun Raag of Kaajal Oza Vaidya: A Comparative Analysis of protagonists

Abstract

The Indian women writers in English literature have played an important role in describing the Indian society, especially Indian women. They have given voice to the feelings of many women characters; the feeling of isolation, the sense of alienation, detachment, mental trauma, emotional outbursts, etc. Anita Desai, the prominent name in the list, has been on the quest for meaning and identity in life in her fiction. Similarly, in the field of Gujarati literature, Kaajal Oza Vaidya is an emerging name whose protagonists undergo a struggle and try to find meaning. Their writing has focused on females and their role in society. The relationship between husband and wife, the problems in the family, misunderstandings leading to internal conflicts and depression cover the major part of the novels of these eminent female writers. Anita Desai’s Cry, the peacock, and Kaajal OzaVaidya’s Maun Raag deal with the theme of isolation in a very effective way. Both the female protagonists, Maya in Cry, the peacock, and Anjali in Maun Raag, go through the period of introspection and the depression. They experience an inconsistency between the inner desires and outer reality. Both the novelists delve deep inside the psyche of the protagonists and reveal the inner struggle to fight for individuality. This paper attempts to show how two female novelists have treated the same concept differently, showing the same journey, leading towards different destinations.