Refractions of Desire: Feminist Perspectives in the Novels of Toni Morrison, Michele Roberts and Anita Desai

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The present book takes a fresh look at gender and feminist perspectives through the novels of the three women writers across the globe, namely Toni Morrison, Michele Roberts and Anita Desai to formulate a comparative model on the theory of ‘Desire.’ The psychoanalytical model of research does not offer any homogeneity of points of view, rather a dialogical perspective to suggest refractions of feminist desire. As the book analyses in detail family and community, mother-daughter and father-daughter relationships, along with marital relationship, it also discusses the politics of gender representation in Afro-American, British and Indian cultures. the author begins withy the comparative analysis of the ‘male gaze’ in the three cultures to discuss the growth and development of feminist resistance to the patriarchal texts and subtexts there, and then goes on to discuss the works of the writers and the stances taken by them. Drawing on the theories of the French feminists along with Jung’s ideas on ‘Sacred Marriage’ and Deconstruction’ and Judith Butler’s Dream of Symmetry’, the analysis foreground as new historicity which is distinctly non-linear and discursive in the writings of Toni Morrison, Michele Roberts and Anita Desai. The book is definitely a major contribution to Comparative Literature and Gender Studies. It will be useful for postgraduate students and scholars interested in such fields of study.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jayita Sengupta

Jayita Sengupta teaches English Literature in South Calcutta Girls College under Calcutta University. She completed her Master of Arts from Calcutta University and M.Phil. and Ph.d from J.M.I., New Delhi. She was the recipient of the Charles Wallace Grant in 2000, which enabled her to do research in U.K. and was a British Council Fellow at the Oxford Conference in the same year. Her publications include research articles on post-colonial literatures, critical theory and feminist literatures in journals of repute. Her translations from Bangla to English include, Relationships, short stories by Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay (Kolkata: Writers Workshop, 2003) and In The Other Bengal, a creative travelogue by Ramkumar Mukhopadhyay (New Delhi: Foundation for SAARC Writers and Literature, 2005). She has edited a collection of stories from various Indian languages in English translation, The Muffled Heart: Stories of the Disempowered Male (New Delhi: Rupa, 2005) and translated Bani Basu's Novel, Gandharbi, forthcoming from Katha.