Feminist Psyche in Anita Desai’s Where Shall We Go This Summer: A Study in Neurosis

Abstract

The outburst of feminism throughout the world was not a matter of chance, but the natural corollary of centuries of struggle for woman's rights. In this context, Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is the landmark which can be regarded as the manifesto of modern feminism. Incidentally, in the same period some women writers in England, Fenny Burney, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen and others came out of the obscure, suffocating shell and presented life and art from the point of view of women. They accentuated the importance of social life centered upon women and demonstrated it as significant as a subject matter as any other so far treated in literature. With the rise of feminism in India in the 70s, the feminist literary critics came to believe that women had to create a literature of their own, in which the feminine sensibility could consider and confront the peculiarly feminine issues and experiences. It was essential to do so, because a large part of the feminine experience is out of the reach of male psyche and, therefore, an authentic and sensitive portrayal of the conflicts and traumas, in all their nuances, ambiguities and contradictions could be achieved only by women writers. Through these female writer's works one can observe a clear picture of women in flash and blood with a distinct mind of their own.