New Gender Identity in Anita Desai’s Novel Where Shall We Go This Summer?

Abstract

The present thesis titled “New Gender Identity in Anita Desai’s Novel Where Shall We Go This Summer?” covers the main issues of the miserable plight of Indian women who suffer silently in isolation because of their sharp gender sensibility and corrosive emotionality. Society, culture, traditional norms and modes assign certain roles to each gender. Most of women are born with a stamp of ill-luck on their heads. The tragedy of such women is caused by the fact of their birth in a patriarchal society which fails to respect women as individuals. But women have consciousness of their own career in the post-independence Indian society. In this novel, Desai's women have consciousness of their body; they like to have control in their body. Eventually, woman like the protagonist Sita achieves her own liberation within the male-oriented society from her self-existence.