Paper Details

Name: Rajbir Singh
Country: India

Year: 2026
Volume: Volume No: 13, Issue No: 1 (January-June)
Page Number: 202-214
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21255619

ABSTRACT:
This research paper examines the representation of identity crisis in selected novels of Anita Desai, namely Cry, the Peacock, Where Shall We Go This Summer?, and Fire on the Mountain. The objective of the study is to analyse how Desai portrays fragmented selfhood through marital alienation, psychological anxiety, domestic confinement, maternal conflict, solitude, repression, symbolic space, and existential alienation. The paper further investigates how female identity in Desai’s fiction is shaped by gendered expectations, family structures, emotional neglect, and socio-cultural pressures. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative research design based on manual close reading and thematic content analysis. The selected novels are examined as primary texts, while feminist, psychoanalytic, and existential critical perspectives are used to interpret the recurring patterns of identity crisis. The findings reveal that Maya’s crisis in Cry, the Peacock emerges from conjugal alienation and psychological instability; Sita’s crisis in Where Shall We Go This Summer? develops through maternal anxiety, domestic suffocation, and resistance to social normalcy; and Nanda Kaul’s crisis in Fire on the Mountain is expressed through solitude, repression, and the fragile desire for autonomy. The study argues that Desai does not represent identity crisis as merely personal weakness or emotional abnormality; rather, she presents it as a literary response to patriarchal structures, emotional invisibility, and existential loneliness. The paper contributes to Indian English literary criticism by offering a systematic content-analysis-based interpretation of female identity crisis in Anita Desai’s selected fiction.

Keywords: Identity crisis; Anita Desai; content analysis; female subjectivity; psychological alienation; Indian English fiction.