Spaces and Counter Space: A Feminist Study of the Selected Works of Anita Desai

Pages:309-311
Amandeep Kaur and Sudhir Kumar (Department of English, Monad University, Hapur, UP)

Virginia Woolf in A Room of one’s own had pointed out a big paradox of women’s existence: “She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history1” and analyzing the effect of lack of space to women in their creativity she had demanded a room of one’s own which significantly underlines the importance of space because from it springs subjectivity and identity. The recurrent strain in contemporary women’s fiction is on female protagonists’ struggle for identity and existence. No doubt they are feminine and very close to home, living in the cocoon of four walls of their home, but the peculiar domestic situation do ignited their thinking process and urge to put the thoughts on paper, making them move beyond hearth and home. In fact, the act of breaking her silence and carving a counter space for herself in society which has denied her space. The feminine is essentially the marginalized consciousness that operates on the periphery of patriarchal discourse and seeks to write counter narratives.