Shukla:161 Chapter - IV Faminine psyche in the novels of Anita Desai Feminine psyche constitutes a major part of Anita Desai’s fictional material. Women writers of all ages have a natural preference for writing about women characters. Anita Desai is no exception in so far as she has written, by and large, about women characters; and no wonder, most of her novels move around women characters. By 'Psyche' Jung means: Not only what we generally call 'soul' but the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as uncon- scious, hence something broader and more comprehen- sive than the soul. (Jung: 5) To understand "Feminine", just as we cannot confuse female and feminist, we also cannot presume that anything and everything written by women, will be 'feminine'. To quote Toril Moi: It has long been an established practice among most feminists to use 'Feminine' (and Masculine) to represent social constructs . . . and to reserve 'Female' and 'Male' for the purely biological aspects of sexual difference. Shukla:162 Thus, 'feminine' represents nurture, and 'female' - nature in this usage . . . Seen in this perspective, patriarchal oppression consists of imposing certain social standards of femininity on all biological women in order precisely to make us believe that the chosen standards for 'femininity' are natural. Thus a woman who refuses to conform can be labelled both unfeminine and unnatural . . . Patriarchy, in other words, wants us to believe that there is such a thing as an essence of femaleness, called femininity. Feminists must therefore always insist that though women undoubtedly are female, this in no way guarantees that they will be feminine. (Moi: 65) The word 'Feminine', as used in the title of this chapter, is not meant to denote "an essence of femaleness" but rather a mode of characterising females in fiction. The novels of Anita Desai revolve around the women protagonists, who mirror the persisting grip of the culturally imposed 'Feminine', upon their female conscious and unconscious. Thus, it is implied that the author's understanding of what constitutes 'Femininity' in behaviour and thought, is intermingled with the creation of female characters who define themselves according to the socially prescribed norms for a woman. It is also informed by a feminist’s awareness about the kind of limitations inevitably faced by the Shukla:163 'feminine' self that is at the centre of their novels and is explored through the female protagonists. The present study is aimed at examining the commonly recurring image of the lonely woman protagonists in the novels of Anita Desai, chiefly to explore the female psyche in the different stages of a woman's life, particularly the influences that shaped the females psyche that makes it conform to rigid patriarchal structures; and to analyse the different thought patterns that emerge from the different experiences portrayed in the novels with reference of the main characters. These thought patterns emerge from the battle-ground of life itself with relation to the main characters in the novels. Even though a lot has been written about women by both men and women in the past, yet scientific studies on women have shown an increase only in the recent decades. In our country, most of the studies on women have been undertaken by sociologists, economists, historians, political scientists and educationists, besides medical practitioners. Psyche has always been woven into political and realistic writings. Psyche describes the realms of the unconscious and the world of imagination. Among Indian writers in English, too, this theme has been dealt with extensively. Mulk Raj Anand, Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Shashi Deshpande, Anita Desai are to name a few writers who have dealt with this theme in their novels in one or the other form. As Eric Rabkin in The Shukla:164 Fantastic In Literature, expresses the view that the fantastic is nearly allied to "disexpected" than unexpected. The important thing is that it takes the readers by surprise. He also points out that fantastic is comprehensible only in relation to reality. It gives a greater degree of experimentation on any level - the level of event or plot, of characters, language and thought. It has also taken various forms. Fantasy takes the form of ‘utopia’ or ‘dystopia’ as in Sunita Namjoshi's Mothers of Maya Diip. In R. K. Narayan's The Painter of Signs and The Vender of Sweets, it incorporates with a fable. It also incorporates itself with myth and religion, as in Raja Rao's Kanthapura and Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel. In the novels of Anita Desai there is a willing suspension of disbelief. Anita Desai, in her novels, mainly explores the emotional world of women, revealing a rare imaginative awareness of various deeper forces at work and a profound understanding of feminine sensibility as well as psychology. She sets herself to voice the mute miseries and helplessness of millions of married women tormented by existentialist problems and predicaments. She is concerned with the problems faced by her protagonists. Her serious concern is the "journey within", her central characters mostly being women. The recurring theme in her novels is the trauma of existence in a hostile, male-dominated society that is conservative and taboo-ridden. She Shukla:165 portrays the inner conflicts of her characters and also underlines their individuality and quest for freedom. Nature is not merely a matter of heredity. It is also a matter of inclination and tendency of the different combinations of instinct, feeling and thought, of the surfacing or otherwise of the unconscious and the subconscious. The unconscious itself is determined by various factors, dominant among them being a character's relationship with others, which itself is governed by the unconscious. But the self, in order to grow towards harmony, to move towards wholeness, needs to attain some measure of distance from the central being, to reach a position of being self-critical, in order to be able to be analyse the ramifications. In psychological terms, it is convenient to talk of the conscious and the sub-conscious layers, of the extrovert and the introvert types; but in ordinary terms, it would be the equivalent of stepping out of oneself. One of the ways to do this is by questioning one's motive and situations, another by going through the process of recollecting the past. These are not foolproof methods, for, whether they lead to sanity or insanity, distancing or self-glory and self-pity depends on the initial point - why the person is motivated to go through the past ! But no matter in which direction it leads, the process is excruciatingly painful and violent. This mechanism then acts more and more actively to face the anxious situation that tends to build up tensions in human minds. Coleman has commented in Abnormal Psychology and Modern life, Shukla:166 “Strong emotions make maximum energy resources available to the organism for meeting such emergencies”.(Coleman: 75) It has been proved that philosophers and writers were the first to discover the 'unconscious'. As Usha Bande expresses it: Freud, during his studies, often maintained that the credit of discovering the unconscious goes to the poets and philosophers before him, and that, he simply discovered the scientific method by which the unconscious could be studied. (Bande: 24) The normal or abnormal behaviour of a person expresses or reflects conflicts and complexes of a person. These constitute the inner-nature and if it is "suppressed, one gets sick; if it is encouraged it leads to healthy personality"(Bande: 25) When inner nature is suppressed it gives rise to frustrations. This fact has been illuminated by Coleman also: Frustration results when our motives are thwarted either by some obstacle that blocks or impedes our progress towards a desirable goal, or by the absence of an appropriate goal. Frustration may be minor or they may be serious threats to our welfare, they may arise from outer or inner sources.(Coleman: 82) Shukla:167 In the characters of Desai's novels many internal frustrations arise out of psychological barriers. When these barriers, in the form of reality and ethical restraints, break down her characters get involved in self-recrimination and a feeling of guilt. Her characters suffer from loneliness which gives rise to insecurity. There is tension in their mind which results in their strained relationships. They react vehemently and emotionally to these situations. Because of feelings of insecurity, her characters do suffer and also cause suffering for others. In this connection Coleman has observed : Feelings of insecurity may have widely differing effects on behaviour, but typically they lead to a restriction in activities, to fearfulness and apprehension and a failure to participate fully in one's world. (Coleman: 70-72) Such psychological problems leave a restraining effect on their mutual relationship. Anita Desai, almost all in her novels, portray female protagonists who are hyper-sensitive, solitary and retrospective. Maya, Monisha, Sita are obsessed with the idea of death. They are aware that they are living on the edge and show a marked tendency towards neurotic behaviour. Desai is interested in peculiar and eccentric characters. In an interview to Yashodhara Dalmia she told: Shukla:168 I am interested in characters who are not average but have retreated or been driven into some extremity of despair and so turned against general current. It is easy to flow with the current : it makes no demands, it casts no effort. But those who cannot follow it, whose heart cries out ‘the great no’, who fight the current and struggle against it, they know what the demands are and what it costs to meet them. (Dalmia: TOI) The emotional needs of these women remain unsatisfied, with the result, they are withdrawn into a life of seclusion and loneliness. These women seem to live in closed, sequestered limbo of private suffering which is real, though different from the material suffering of rural female characters in the earlier novels of Markandaya, or the suffering of females due to marital disharmony in the novels of Nayantara Sahgal. According to Yashodhara Dalmia, "Only the individual, the solitary being, is of true interest." (Dalmia: TOI) The novels of Anita Desai present characters undergoing psycho-logical turbulence arising out of a conflict between reality and illusion that the characters build up for themselves. In psychological terms, this types of psychic nature in called ‘semiotics’ and ‘regression’. We find both kinds of psychic nature in her novels, but mainly ‘semiotics’ - Maya in Cry The Shukla:169 Peacock, Nirode and Monisha in Voices In The City, Nanda Kaul in Fire On The Mountain, Sita in Where Shall We Go This Summer?, Sarah in Bye-Bye, Blackbird and Sarla and Deven in In Custody. We find all characters clinging to imagination or belief as they are unable to relate to reality. It is a kind of temporary compromise with the immediate environment. The resulting complicity increases as it persists in a given frame-work in which the characters operate, as has been rightly pointed out by Jasbir Jain in Desai's novels : Fantasy is never a total structure as in the world of fairy tale and it does not necessitate a complete shifting of perspective but is always a part of the total structure and is constantly juxtaposed with other worlds and does, at some point, merge with the normative, commonly accepted world view. (Jain: 69) In the novels of Anita Desai, we also find characters suffering from loneliness, unfulfilling relationship and psychic disorders. This void in their lives is, at times, filled by illusions. Being hypersensitive to these inadequacies in their lives, they turn to romanticise these with their imagination, by weaving a happy world for themselves. As N. R. Gopal has pointed out : Characters in the novels of Mrs. Anita Desai are generally neurotic females, highly sensitive but sequestered in a Shukla:170 surrounding as a consequence of their failure or unwilling- ness to adjust with the reality. They often differ in their opinion from others and embark on a long voyage of contemplation in order to find the meaning of their existence. (Gopal: 7) This search for identity by these characters often leads to escapism. Imagination may be a desire to escape for adventure or for freedom from the bondages of life. Julia Segal, in Phantasy In Every Day Life, develops the aspects of liberating experience: In some ways the word fantasy seems to give me a similar freedom as a child gains when he learns the concept of 'Pretend'. What is 'Pretend' can be subjected to different laws from what is real. As a result, the child is free to play and to experiment in a way that it could not do if it did not make the distinction. (Segal: 20) But there is no permanent relief for them in illusion. The objective world, consisting of other human beings, acts upon them and shatters them. It becomes difficult for them to grapple with reality without these beliefs which had sustained them so far. This anxiety leads to a conflict between their belief and objective reality. As a result, they contemplate their own identity. They