Quest for Identity and Feminine Sensibility in Anita Desai’s Voices in the City and Manju Kapur’s A Married Woma

Abstract

The struggle for identity and autonomy has remained a significant theme in postcolonial Indian English fiction, especially in the works of women writers who foreground feminine sensibility and the challenges of patriarchy. Anita Desai and Manju Kapur, through their novels Voices in the City and A Married Woman respectively, project the conflict of women negotiating between tradition and modernity. Their protagonists—Monisha and Astha—embody the suppressed voices of women who aspire for individuality, self-expression and liberation from patriarchal norms. This paper analyses the portrayal of women’s psychological trauma, their revolt against social conditioning and their search for identity. Both Desai and Kapur deconstruct the patriarchal myth of a woman’s destiny being confined to marriage and domesticity and instead project women as agents of resistance who, despite failures, articulate a feminist consciousness.