Vol. 6, Issue 1, Part A (2024)

Anita Desai is one of the most gifted and prominent novelists in Indian English Fiction. Born to a mixed parentage, Bengali father and German mother, on 24th June, 1937, Anita Desai was well versed in four languages: Hindi, English, Bengali and German. Despite this, she chose to write her novels, stories and children book in English. She is not a social realist in the conventional sense of the term. The major themes of her novels are isolation, lack of communication, inner struggle, man woman relationship and marital discord. Anita Desai stands ahead of other women writers for her focus on the inner climate of her characters. Her main concern is to depict the psychic states of her protagonists at some crucial juncture of their lives. Anita Desai often employs a psychological technique to delve into the inner thoughts and emotions of her characters. She explores the mental state of her female characters using vivid and symbolic nature imagery to convey their emotional landscapes. Anita Desai uses nature imagery in her novels to depict the moods of her protagonists. All her protagonists are nature lovers and they understand nature as an extension of their self. They are conscious of the trees, flowers and animals around them and often Desai uses the moods of nature as symbols to express the moods of her protagonists. The present paper is an effort to bring forth some of the important nature imagery used by Anita Desai to describe the mental state of her character Maya in Cry the Peacock.