Voices in the City : A Portrayal of Women’s Existential Insecurity

Pages:244-246
Nitika Rani (Department of English, Govt College, Hisar)

Anita Desai portrays the existential insecurity created by stereotyping in a very powerful manner. According to Desai women feel that they are outcast. They feel empty, threatened and depersonalized by family and society. Desai feels that this insecurity makes women vulnerable. The Indian woman, owing to this, experiences the risk of losing her identity and self-image in highly potentiated forms. Desai’s novels graphically portray the existential anguish of Indian women, who are unable to forestall the danger of being sucked into the whirlpool of stereotyping. It is so powerful that it shakes the reader out of complacency. Through Monisha in Voices in the City Desai unveils the real drama of Indian woman’s life, bordering on the tragic. She is swamped, impinged upon by the stereotyped role models, customs and traditions of the establishment. She feels that she lives to satisfy others. Monisha feels an outcast in the confines of her husband’s joint family. She asks a question to herself “what is the meaning of life without freedom and equality?.”‘1 It is a question existential in its anguish epitomizing the frustration of an average Indian woman stereotyped to play rather a meaningless and marginal role in life. The greatest trauma according to Desai is to exist alone, amidst the madding crowd, without any understanding and love. If the person is more conscious or aware of his autonomous self, the anguish is more. Monisha thus experiences her “separateness” in an intense manner. The trapped situation of Indian woman as evidenced in the case of Monisha is comparable to that of the caged dove which is unable to move freely. Monisha looking out through the barred window of the house brings home to us the domestic confines that really limit, handicap and even obstruct the personal development of Indian women. She oscillates between two extremes: either to completely submerge her identity or to impel her individual self forward, breaking all confines and then existing in isolation and preserving her autonomy. According to Desai the discrimination against women and the submissiveness of her sex have become enduring characteristics of Indian society.