A woman enjoys relationship at various levels – as a wife, mother, sister, friend and companion, however still very much the life of an average woman depends on her father, brother, husband and son. Consequently she loses her own identity and makes a frantic effort to rise above the state of utter dependency. She can ascend to the very pinnacle of self-realisation and can free herself from psychic fears and the bondage of centuries. A group of the Indian English women novelists as Shashi Deshpande, Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Manju Kapur et al have tried to explore the issues related to the position of woman in the post independence India. Anita Desai and Shobha De particularly through their writings have tried to explore the feminine psyche in the complex cultural stress and strain of Indian society. An attempt has been made in the present study to identify the concept of man - woman relationship with reference to two novels – Anita Desai's Fire on the Mountain and Shobha De's Second Thoughts. On the one hand in Fire on the Mountain, Anita Desai probes the feminine sensibility and a woman's inherent desire to know herself in terms of not only her relationship with the members of her family but also in terms of her individual identity, while on the other in Second Thoughts Shobha De most unlike Anita Desai exposes the hollowness of marital relationship in elite class. The present paper will make a comparative study on exploring the psyche of two women – Nanda Kaul on the one hand and Maya on the other in respect of the treatment given to them by their husbands. It will also focus on the theme of identity crisis.
Research Scholar, P.G. Department of English and Research Centre, Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya
