Vol. II. Issue. III September 2011 - The Criterion: An International ...

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165
India but also in the west. By subverting the hierarchies in a family and giving the females the
power to rule does not initiate a valid solution to the problem.
On reading the novels of Anita Desai we see these shifting ideas of gender roles in the
characters of Bim, a female protagonist in The Clear Light of Day, assumes the role of a
Patriarch, a family head after the death of her parents. The reins of power rest completely in her
capable hands but this does not in any way improve the situation of the family. Sita in Where
Shall we go this Summer? Is a woman who has set her own terms and conditions of living and
throughout the novel the patriarch seems to be invisible. But even then the problems seem to
exist and persist throughout the narrative. All these are indicative of a re establishment of gender
roles within the family. A mother in the post modern is not just a caretaker of her family but is
also a bread winner. Her roles gave shifted from the conventional home maker and a docile care
taker Moreover to make it more complicated she may not be the biological mother. Any
individual taking care of the house, children and domesticity can be called mothers. They are the
mother substitutes or surrogate mother which we find in more than one novel of Anita Desai.
Hence a solution cannot be sketched by just allocating roles. A family is only progressive when a
flexible approach or plan is laid down.
Therefore the solution lies in drawing a line somewhere in the middle, and re positioning
and resituating the individuals in a flexible framework which equalizes the powers and re
establishes a more acceptable and peaceful condition.
Therefore this paper proposes to study family and deconstruct its conventional readings
and foreground the deconstructed gender stereotypes.
The characters who facilitate the deconstruction of gender roles and help and prevent a
virtual disintegration of the family are generally males in the novel, though they are just a few
traces that we see in the novels. Therefore I choose to take three novels – Where Shall we go this
Summer?, Cry the Peacock and Voices in the City for my present study and analysis.
Where shall we go this Summer? is a novel which like most of the Desai narratives
focuses round Sita who is the central consciousness. She lives in Bombay with her four children
and the fifth child is yet to be born. She has grown up into a lady who prefers to live an isolated
independent life. She however does not seem to cherish the idea of motherhood as she says-
“Children only mean anxiety, concern and pessimism, not happiness, what other women call
happiness is just sentimentality.”(107)
Sita decides to leave her children and her husband and wants to escape to Manori Island
where she wants to be all alone, away from the busy, chaotic world that surrounds her and also
from domesticity. She wishes to freeze the child who is growing in her womb as she does not
want the child to come into a world which is disturbing, violent and uncompromising. She feels
there is something magical about Manori island and it will preserve the child in the womb
without delivering it. All these are insecurities and complexities of her own disturbed self where
she is unable to connect herself to the world outside. She feels that the island which has
something magical will prevent the child from being born.
Raman makes all efforts to persuade Sita and tries to convince her to return back to her
children who need her more than anybody else. He is worried and scared to know about her plans
to live in Manori where medical attention and care will not reach her. He says-
“Any woman- anyone would think you inhuman. You have four children. You have lived
comfortably always in my house, you’ve had no worries .Yet your happiest memories are not of
your children or your home but of strangers.”(147)
Vol. II. Issue. III 58 September 2011