Narrative Technique In Anita Desai's Selected Novels

Registration ID: IJNRD_214353

Published ID: IJNRD2402310

DOI: Click Here to Get

Dr Suporna Mitra

Form, style, symbolism, fictional technique

Abstract: Anita Desai has established herself as a novelist- as a psychological novelist, as a woman novelist, as a novelist of Indian Diaspora but she is also historically a major novelist. When she made her novelistic debut with her first novel Cry, The Peacock her thematic choices, technique and style, form and language represented a major shift. Much of the critical writings on Anita Desai centre around her preoccupation with urban sensibility and a style of what she herself called ‘the language of interior.’ The shift in sensibility from writer like R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao and, for that matter Kamala Markandaya and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala to Anita Desai are indicative of the socio-cultural changes India underwent from the forties to the sixties and the seventies. While the major pre-occupation of R. Narayan, Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and Kamala Markandaya is sociological in terms of hunger, poverty, superstition and dogma, the new generation of Indian English novelists with Anita Desai are basically concerned with deep cultural and psychological problems that inevitably emerge in a transitional society. In his selection of women writers. R. Shrinivas Iyengar included a critique of Desai’s fiction and stated that her first two novels, Cry, The Peacock and Voices in the City have “added a new dimension to the achievement of the Indian women writers in India.” This dimension takes multiple forms and is true of both Anita Desai’s early and later novels with some thematic changes especially in the later novels. In Anita Desai’s novels there is a shift from the collective to the personal, from the communal to the individual. Unlike Jhabvala’s novels where the social dimensions are more important than the characters, and Markandeya’s novels where the stress is on the economic and social background. Desai’s novels highlight individual characters their inner worlds and sensibilities. Her first two novels namely Cry, The Peacock and Voices in the City are said to have ushered in the psychological novel in Indian English fiction. Desai’s heroines represent the “creative release of feminine sensibility “which emerge after World War II. Her women characters are not ordinary, mainstream women but are mostly from affluent families and do not have to worry about daily subsistence. They are more concerned with their emotional needs. Desai explores the inner world of her heroines and reveals the deeper forces at work in creating the feminine sensibility. Since Anita Desai’s emphasis is on the inner world of her characters rather than the outer world of action, she uses the stream of consciousness technique to delineate her characters. The subtle nuances of the emotional world of her characters are reflected in syntax and imagery. Form, structure, style and language in Anita Desai’s novels undergo gradual advancement and development with the passage of time in novel. In this paper an attempt has been made to understand the form and style and their application in her selected novels in the chronological order. Simplistically speaking, techniques include everything that a novelist uses for narrating a story. On finer level it means imagery, symbolism, point of view, chronological order of events, stream of consciousness, schematisation of chapter division or some other basis of division of the novel, etc. Dialogue, language, characterization and plot are some other aspects of fictional technique.

Published Paper   E-Certificate

Dr Suporna Mitra (February-2024). Narrative Technique In Anita Desai's Selected Novels. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NOVEL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, 9(2), d110-d114. https://ijnrd.org/papers/IJNRD2402310.pdf

Volume 9 Issue 2, February-2024

Pages : d110-d114

Paper Reg. ID: IJNRD_214353

Published Paper Id: IJNRD2402310

Downloads: 000121994

Research Area: Arts

Country: Pune, Maharashtra, India

Published Paper PDF: https://ijnrd.org/papers/IJNRD2402310.pdf

Published Paper URL: https://ijnrd.org/viewpaperforall?paper=IJNRD2402310

Journal Name: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NOVEL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT(IJNRD)

ISSN: 2456-4184 | IMPACT FACTOR: 8.76 Calculated By Google Scholar | ESTD YEAR: 2016

An International Scholarly Open Access Journal, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed Journal Impact Factor 8.76 Calculate by Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar | AI-Powered Research Tool, Multidisciplinary, Monthly, Multilanguage Journal Indexing in All Major Database & Metadata, Citation Generator

Publisher: IJNRD (IJ Publication) Janvi Wave | IJNRD.ORG | IJNRD.COM | IJPUB.ORG

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License and The Open Definition

Call For Paper - Volume 10 | Issue 10 | October 2025

IJNRD is a Scholarly Open Access, Peer-reviewed, and Refereed Journal with a High Impact Factor of 8.76 (calculated by Google Scholar & Semantic Scholar | AI-Powered Research Tool). It is a Multidisciplinary, Monthly, Low-Cost Journal that follows UGC CARE 2025 Peer-Reviewed Journal Policy norms, Scopus journal standards, and Transparent Peer Review practices to ensure quality and credibility. IJNRD provides indexing in all major databases & metadata repositories, a citation generator, and Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for every published article with full open-access visibility.

The INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NOVEL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT (IJNRD) aims to advance applied, theoretical, and experimental research across diverse fields. Its goal is to promote global scientific information exchange among researchers, developers, engineers, academicians, and practitioners. IJNRD serves as a platform where educators and professionals can share research evidence, models of best practice, and innovative ideas, contributing to academic growth and industry relevance.

Indexing Coverage includes Google Scholar, SSRN, ResearcherID-Publons, Semantic Scholar (AI-Powered Research Tool), Microsoft Academic, Academia.edu, arXiv.org, ResearchGate, CiteSeerX, ResearcherID (Thomson Reuters), Mendeley, DocStoc, ISSUU, Scribd, and many more recognized academic repositories.

How to submit the paper?

By Our website

Click Here to Submit Paper Online

By Mail

Send your paper to editor@ijnrd.org

Important Dates for Current issue

Paper Submission Open For: October 2025

Current Issue: Volume 10 | Issue 10 | October 2025

Impact Factor: 8.76

Last Date for Paper Submission: Till 31-Oct-2025

Notification of Review Result: Within 1-2 Days after Submitting paper.

Publication of Paper: Within 01-02 Days after Submititng documents.

Frequency: Monthly (12 issue Annually).

Journal Type: IJNRD is an International Peer-reviewed, Refereed, and Open Access Journal with Transparent Peer Review as per the new UGC CARE 2025 guidelines, offering low-cost multidisciplinary publication with Crossref DOI and global indexing.

Subject Category: Research Area

Call for Paper: More Details