Alienation

Anita Desai’s characters symbolize the alienation of women under patriarchy and of postcolonial identity in India. Nanda Kaul is the top example of this. She endured most of her life in a barren, loveless marriage, performing domestic labor and projecting a socially acceptable image of marriage in order to maintain his status as Vice-Chancellor of a university. Despite devoting herself to keeping his house and raising their many children, neither he nor the children respect her or seem to care about her. She remembers her life like she was a prisoner and, having been so thoroughly alienated from herself and her potential, she herself becomes barren and incapable of connecting with others. Nanda Kaul ends up so estranged from herself that she becomes a recluse who never goes out, shudders when the phone rings, and identifies most with a windblown tree. When Raka arrives and...