Anita Desai’s Baumgartner and the Goddess Mother

Abstract

This essay works within the focus of ecofeminist epistemologies as part of an international research project on the theme of partnership and the Goddess archetype as a figure of the sacred. As our perspective of the origins of humanity affects our beliefs, political and social behaviour in contemporary culture, we analyse the meaningful episode in Anita Desai’s novel Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988) when the protagonist enters in a cave/temple in the Indian countryside, showing the importance of the representation of the Mother of the Caves, one of the most ancient emanations of the Hindu Kali, a matrikadevi (mother Goddess), called Kurukulla.

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