79 Anita Desai’s “The Domestic Maid”
In This Chapter
Author Background
Born in British India in 1937, Anita Desai’s parents were Dhiren Mazumdar, an Indian businessman, and Antoinette Nim, a German. Anita spoke German and Hindi at home and learned English at school. Despite her parents’ anti-British sentiments, Desai attended Dehli’s Queen Mary’s Higher Secondary School, a school run by British Catholic nuns. She then attended Miranda House, a women’s college of Dehli University. She majored in English literature and published her first short story while still a student.
Writing Career
After she graduated in 1957, Desai worked at the German Cultural Institute where she met Ashuin Desai, whom she married. She moved with him to various places, including Mumbai and Chandigarh, before they settled in Prune. She also continued her writing, publishing her first novel, Cry, the Peacock, in 1963. She followed this with short story collections and novels addressing postcolonial issues in India and women’s experience in the domestic realm within the larger social and cultural context of middle class, urban India. Her novel In Custody (1984) was short-listed for the Booker Prize and made into a film.
Legacy
Desai gained recognition as a writer of profound psychological insight on the displaced and the alienated who often face prejudice and who often suffer a fractured sense of identity. Her style is characterized by its precision and careful crafting. She has won such important literary prizes as the Indian National Academy of Letters Award and the Benson Medal from London’s Royal Society of Literature. She has taught at various prestigious universities around the world, and is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
You can read Anita Desai’s “The Domestic Maid” at this link: http://www.new-asian-writing.com/the-domestic-maid-by-anita-desai/
1. How does Desai introduce the idea of identity here? What features, if any, determine characters’ identity?
2. How do the various female characters relate to each other in this story? What parallels among them exist? What contrasts?
3. What limitations do the characters all share? What opportunities?
4. How do their settings symbolize the characters’ psychology?
5. What is this story’s plot? What unique writing techniques does the author use to convey it?
6. What is the theme of this piece?
Sources
Desai, Anita. “The Domestic Maid.” 2014 New Asian Writing Short Story Anthology. 3 June 2014, http://www.new-asian-writing.com/the-domestic-maid-by-anita-desai/
Robinson, Bonnie J. British Literature II: Romantic Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond. University of North Georgia Press, 2018. https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/16/, CCA-SA 4.0
