Marital Discordance and Psychic Tensions in Desai’s Cry, the Peacock

Abstract

The research paper aims to study the psychic tensions of Maya, the protagonist, caused by her marital discordance in Anita Desai’s novel Cry, the Peacock. To explore the marital discord, mainly seen in the married life of Maya and Gautama, Maya’s obsessed condition, drabness, and psychic disaster, the research tool used for the analysis is psychoanalysis, with a special focus on the psychoanalytical theories propounded by Sigmund Freud, and other psychoanalytical theorists like Jacques Lacan. The chief finding of the research is that Maya and Gautama live an unhappy conjugal life because of the incompatibility in their temperaments. Maya is pensive, receptive, and sensitive while Gautama is pragmatic, insensible, and lucid. The researchers interested in perceiving the psychic dimensions of the characters of Desai’s fictions are expected to take this article as a reference.