Marriage in Fiction

From Regency England to modern India, two literary voices expose the constraints, compromises and defiance within marriage.

- Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee

Jane Austen and Anita Desai have always been among my favourite writers.

I taught their works for decades in colleges and universities in India and abroad, and I was often struck by how easily students, even those new to literature, connected with them.

For many years, Jane Austen was a compulsory author in British literature courses. Later, as Indian English literature gained recognition as a separate field, writers like Anita Desai and Shashi Deshpande came into focus.

At first glance, the literary worlds of Austen and Desai seem far apart. One writes about early nineteenth-century England, the other about modern, post-Independence India. Their settings, cultures, and social customs are different.

But beneath these differences lies a powerful connection. Both writers explore how women live and struggle within patriarchal systems, especially through the institution of marriage.

Across time and culture, marriage becomes a shared space where women must negotiate duty, desire, identity, and survival.

Anita Desai once wrote that life does not flow smoothly like a river, but moves in sudden jumps, as if held back by locks that open now and then. This idea captures much of her fiction.

Born Anita Mazumdar, Desai is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary Indian novelists. Her writing combines poetic language with sharp psychological insight.

From her first novel, Cry, the Peacock, to later works like Where Shall We Go This Summer?, she repeatedly returns to the emotional lives of women constrained by family, tradition, and marriage.

Jane Austen, writing more than a century earlier, also placed women at the center of her fiction.