Indian Women Novelists and Psychoanalysis: A Study of the Neurotic Characters proposes to discuss the neurotic characters of the Indian women novelists in the light of Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalysis which has equipped the modern literary critic with remarkable knowledge of the inner struggles of literary characters and other aspects of the literary product. In the light of the knowledge of psychoanalysis, which has given the modern literary critic remarkable scientific insights into the inner struggles of literary characters and other aspects of the literary product, the book makes discussion on seven novels of Indian English women novelists who encouraged to a certain extent by the historical and cultural context, sporadically treated the neurotic phenomenon in their fictional works and thus, without any express intention, aired the secret wishes of the vast majority of Indian women whose lot it has been to silently suffer repression for ages at the hands of the unfeeling and hostile establishment. In view of their high intellectual accomplishments and a masterly grasp of modern sciences, including especially psychology, these novelists have ably put the suffering of their characters in sharp focus and their private worlds and the social imperatives in perspective. The novels considered in this book are: Anita Desai’s Cry, The Peacock and Where Shall We Go This Summer, Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife, Kamala Markandaya’s A Silence of Desire, Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Get Ready for Battle, Nergis Dalal’s The Inner Door, and Nayantara Sahgal’s The Day in Shadow. Apart from this, the book contains a chapter and an appendix which perspectivise and discuss in detail Freudian psychoanalysis, characters and neurosis, and Indian women novelists in English.
Prof. M. Rajeshwar, M.A. (English), Ph.D. (English), teaches at the Department of English, Kakatiya University, Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, India. He was awarded a Junior Fellowship by the Department of Culture, MHRD, Government of India, in 1998 to work on a project entitled “The Discovery of Regional Language Fiction: A Study of Ten Major Telugu Novels”. His published works of criticism include The Intellectual and Society in the Novels of Wole Soyinka and Indian Women Novelists and Psychoanalysis: A Study of the Neurotic Characters. Apart from four volumes in the series entitled Indian Writings in English and two in Studies in Indian Writing in English, he has edited Post-modernism and English Literature, Lifescapes, Indian Fiction in English, The Novels of Anita Desai, IT Revolution, Globalization and the Teaching of English, Modern American Literature, Kamala Das: A Critical Spectrum, and Post-Independence Indian English Fiction. He has also published more than two dozen articles on Indian, African, and American fiction and ELT in such reputed journals as New Quest, Indian Literature, The Journal of Indian Writing in English, Commonwealth Quarterly, The Commonwealth Review, and Revaluations.
