The aim of the paper is to study the conflicts that women face in the life, in a particular reference to Anita Desai’s novel Cry, the Peacock. A study of her novels reveals that she is interested in the exploration of psychological states of her woman characters. She is of the firm opinion that the inner life of a human being is more important for understanding them, than external circumstances of life. While the paper focuses its attention to this novel in particular, it also takes in to consideration of Anita Desai’s fictional concerns. Desai use the fiction as a site for studying the role of women in society and there by indirectly offer a critique of the existential social set up that marginalizes women. However, having said that her novels exclusively deal with the existential problems of woman characters as protagonists is woman. Anita Desai is primarily in the portrayal of female protagonists living in separate closed world of existential, who are mostly solitary, introspective and hyper-sensitive. This paper attempts to study in detail, the portrayal of Maya, the protagonist of Cry, the Peacock. More