A Comparative Study of the Psychoanalytical Portrayal of the Women Characters by Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai

A critical and comparative study of Women Characters as portrayed by Virginia Woolf and Anita Desai needs preliminary discussions of the major prevailing conditions that had their corresponding impact on these writers. When Mrs. Woolf started writing her major novels, she had been influenced by the new technique in modern novels known as the Stream of Consciousness that became an influential force in the field of modern fiction. All the psychological theories propounded by Freud and Jung influenced the major writers of the twentieth century like D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and others. Almost every modern writer tried to explore various psychological theories relating to human behaviour and human relationship. Fresh exploration in psychological studies opened new vistas in the field of criticism, poetry and novels as a result of which we had the emergence of such critical concepts as ‘Oedipus Complex,’ ‘Stream of Consciousness’ and such other concepts. But the main influence of the new psychology was on the art of characterization leading to the emergence of some of the major writings in modern fictions. Novels like James Joyce’s Ullysses, Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and The Waves are some of the important examples of this group of novels.