Orientalistic Approach to Anita Desai's Novels: A Critical Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31305/rrijm.2025.v10.n6.035Keywords:
Anita Desai, Orientalism, Edward Said, Postcolonialism, Cultural Representation, Indian English Fiction, DiasporaAbstract
This paper examines the Orientalist themes in the novels of Anita Desai through the lens of Edward Said’s Orientalism. While Desai’s works are praised for their psychological realism and Indian settings, they are often interpreted through a Western lens. This study argues that Desai’s narratives, while shaped by diasporic experience and Western readership, challenge stereotypical representations of India. Her novels subtly critique Western spiritual tourism and Orientalist romanticism by presenting a fragmented, internal, and often disenchanted India.
References
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994.
Desai, Anita. Clear Light of Day. Vintage, 2001.
Desai, Anita. In Custody. Vintage, 1999.
Desai, Anita. Journey to Ithaca. Vintage, 1995.
Mukherjee, Meenakshi. The Twice Born Fiction: Themes and Techniques of the Indian Novel in English. Heinemann, 1971.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Penguin Books, 2003.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, University of Illinois Press, 1988, pp. 271–313.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
