Indian Women Novelists and Psychoanalysis

Contents: Preface. Part. I. Psychoanalysis in Literature: 1. The Concept of Psychoanalysis. 2. Psycho-analytic Literary Criticism. 3. The Concept of Psychoanalysis and Indian Women Novelists. 4. The Changing Face of Woman in Indian Literature. Part. II. Notable Indian Women Novelists and Their Work: 5. Ajit Cour. 6. Meena Alexander. 7. Anupama Niranjana. 8. Anjana Appachana. 9. Malati Bedekar . 10. Suchitra Bhattacharya. 11. Rimi B. Chatterjee. 12. Rita Chowdhury. 13. Ismat Chughtai. 14. Himani Dalmia. 15. Abha Dawesar. 16. Eunice De Souza. 17. Shobhaa De. 18. Anita Desai. 19. Kiran Desai. 20. Shashi Deshpande. 21. Ashapoorna Devi. 22. Sonia Faleiro. 23. Namita Gokhale. 24. M.K. Indira. 25. Amita Kanekar. 26. Jhumpa Lahiri. 27. Bem Le Hunte. 28. Kamla Markandaya. 29. Jaishree Misra. 30. Chitra Mudgal. 31. Kaveri Nambisan. 32. Amrita Pritam. 33. Ramanichandran. 34. Arundhati Roy. Bibliography. Index.

This book proposes to discuss the neurotic characters of the Indian women novelists in the light of Freudian and post-Freudian psy-choanalysis which has equipped the modern literary critic with remarkable knowledge of the inner struggles of literary characters and other aspects of the literary product. The novels studies here 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 which pres-pectivise and discuss in detail Freudian psychoanalysis, characters and neurosis, and Indian women novelists in English. Psychoanalytic critical study of literary works is limited to a few stray articles in India. This book is, in fact, the first full-length psycho-analytic critical study of Indian fiction in English.(Jacket)