Anne Tyler’s Real Heroes in Her Selected Novels

Abstract

Anne Tyler is a Southern American novelist and short story writer. The subject she deals with is loneliness, separation and isolation in family relationships caused by estrangement, frustration or a death in the family. The works of Anne Tyler explore how isolation and loneliness transform women characters into enduring, strong, self reliant and competent individuals. The defeat of the South by the North in the American civil War made the women characters long for understanding and sympathy.

After isolation, the women characters re-emerge with greater power and wisdom. Reconciliation to the situation seems to be an important aspect of Tyler’s approach to life. Most of the women in her novels did not have happy marriages, but they choose to stay and endure them, becoming in the end strong and invincible. They give support and sustenance to others in spite of their own distressed life. Anne Tyler has  a special admiration for the heroic women who endure and provide privacy to others around them producing some warmth.