You are on page 1of 19

Aqeel 1

Postcolonial theory can be fully understood after having a look at the concept of
colonialism. Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one
people to another. One of the difficulties in defining colonialism is that it is hard to
distinguish it from imperialism. Frequently the two concepts are treated as synonyms. Like
colonialism, imperialism also involves political and economic control over a dependent
territory. The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer. This root
reminds us that the practice of colonialism usually involved the transfer of population to a
new territory, where the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political
allegiance to their country of origin. Imperialism, on the other hand, comes from the Latin
term imperium, meaning to command. Thus, the term imperialism draws attention to the way
that one country exercises power over another, whether through settlement, sovereignty, or
indirect mechanisms of control.
Colonialism refers to a period of history from the late 15th to the 20th century when
European nation states established colonies on other continents. The justification for
colonialism included various factors such as the profits from trade and the expansion of the
power of the metropole.
The term postcolonial refers to the era after the dismantling of the European colonies
throughout the world. It was during this era that the colonized nations began to feel that they
have been misrepresented by the colonizer, their culture and identity has been distorted, and
their traditions are at stake.
The ancestry of postcolonial criticism can be traced to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched
of the Earth, published in French in 1961, and voicing what might be called 'cultural
resistance'. Fanon, a psychiatrist, argued that the first step for 'colonialized' people in finding
a voice and an identity is to reclaim their own past. For centuries the European colonizing
power will have devalued the nation's past, seeing its pre-colonial era as a pre-civilized.

Aqeel 2

Children, both black and white, will have been taught to see history, culture and progress as
beginning with the arrival of the Europeans.
In order to preserve their individuality the colonized nations began to assert their
identity by writing about their own real societies and cultures. This awareness led the critics
of the previously colonized societies to scrutinize their representation by the colonized. If the
first step towards a postcolonial perspective is to reclaim one's own past, then the second is to
begin to erode the colonialist ideology by which that past had been devalued.
The postcolonial theory looks at the discourses of the colonialism in order to highlight
the representation of the colonized in these discourses. Colonialism involves two types of
imperialism_ political and cultural. Therefore, myth and history, language and landscape, self
and the other are all very important ingredients of postcolonial theory. It uses the stance of
post-structuralism and deconstruction to dismantle to hegemonic position of the Western
discourses. Its main focus is on the polarized vision of the colonizer when it looks at the
colonized. The colonizer is not concerned with the real portrait of the native; rather he creates
his own perception about the natives and their culture. This stance of the colonizer determines
the fact that the colonizer views the native from the privileged place of superiority. Moreover
the colonizer fails to understand the individuality of the natives. Some key concepts of the
Postcolonial theory are as follows:
Centre/Margin:
This idea is of great importance in the post-colonial studies. This binary opposition
refers to the idea of power that the colonizer is at the centre of power and the colonized has
been marginalized and is devoid of any power whatsoever. The colonizer not only exercises
physical power but also enjoys a privileged position of representing the colonized in certain
discourses. The postcolonial theory aims at identifying such binaries and dismantling them.

Aqeel 3

The Postcolonial theorists have usually used the model to suggest that dismantling such
binaries does more than merely assert the independence of the marginal, it also radically
undermines the very idea of such a centre, deconstructing the claims of the European
colonizers of a unity and fixity of a different order from that of others.
Other:
The other is the colonized subject. In general terms, the other is anyone who is
separate from ones self. The existence of others is crucial in defining what is normal and in
locating ones own place in the world. The colonized subject is characterized as other
through discourses such as primitivism and cannibalism, as a means of establishing the binary
separation of the colonizer and colonized and asserting the naturalness and primacy of the
colonizing culture and world view.
The colonizer comes with pre-conceptions to the new land and the natives are viewed from
this distorted lens. Viewed from this angle, in creating the other the colonizer tells the story
of its own mind rather than the mind of the natives. The qualities inherent in the other are
actually inherent in the colonizer and they are forcefully attached to the image of the natives.
These qualities are always negative and evil. The postcolonial theorists are of the view that
the colonizer attaches the evil qualities of his own mind to the natives and these are in fact the
corruptions present in the colonizer when he invades the new territory. The other is the
product of the perception of the colonizer, it does not exist in reality. The colonizer then
creates a class from among the natives that fits the idea of the other. The colonizer, in the
act of creating the other, creates stereotypes of the natives. These standardized others are not
like the colonized but not quite the same. In words of Homi Bhabha: same but not quite.

Ambivalence:

Aqeel 4

The first developed in psychoanalysis which means a fluctuation between wanting


something and at the same moment wanting its opposite. This term is adapted in postcolonial
discourse by Homi Bhabha. It refers to the simultaneous attraction to and repulsion from an
object. Bhabha is of the view that the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is
ambivalent. It is a mixture of complicity and reluctance. This attraction and repulsion is not
only present in the colonized subject; this fluctuation also exists within the colonial subject.
The colonial subject is attracted towards a foreign territory and at the same time feels
repulsion from the natives. Ambivalence also characterizes the way in which colonial
discourse relates to the colonized subject, for it may be both exploitative and nurturing, or
represent itself as nurturing, at the same time. Most importantly in Bhabhas theory, however,
ambivalence disrupts the clear-cut authority of colonial domination because it disturbs the
simple relationship between colonizer and colonized. The ambivalence of the colonizer
generates the seeds of its own destruction. The authority of the colonizer is challenged by the
very fact of its attraction towards the colonized. The idea of ambivalence is unwelcome for
the colonizer.
Hybridity:
It is one of the most widely employed term in postcolonial theory. Its origin is in
horticulture and refers to the formation of a species as a result of mixture of two different
species. In postcolonial theory it refers to the creation of a colonized subject as a result of
interaction between the colonizer and the colonized.
The term hybridity has been most recently associated with the work of Homi
K.Bhabha, whose analysis of colonizer/colonized relations stresses their interdependence and
the mutual construction of their subjectivities. The ambivalent relationship of the colonizer
and the colonized gives birth to such kind of hybridity.

Aqeel 5

The colonizer creates a special class from among the colonized natives and inculcates
its own behaviors, tastes and values in it. This created class is considered better by the
colonizer because it sees its own image reflected in it. This hybrid class is no longer native
because it has inculcated new habits of the colonizer. This class is also ambivalent because it
is attracted towards the colonizer and at the same time repudiates it. It also mimics the
colonizer in order to rise up from its native society.
Mimicry:
This idea is very important because it explains the ambivalent relationship between
the colonizer and the colonized. When the colonized subject is encouraged by the colonial
discourse, it mimics the colonizer by adopting its cultural habits, values and customs. The
result is never a simple reproduction of the colonizer, rather it is a blurred copy. Not exactly
the colonizer but seems to be the same. Mimicry is not very different from mockery because
it can appear to parody whatever it mimics. This can act as a crack in the dominance of the
colonizer because it is no longer very different from the colonized subject.
The term mimicry has been crucial in Homi Bhabhas view of the ambivalence of
colonial discourse. For him, the consequence of this mimicry is the process by which the
colonized subject is reproduced as almost the same, but not quite (Bhabha 1994: 86). The
copying of the colonizing culture, behavior, manners and values by the colonized contains
both mockery and a certain menace, so that mimicry is at once resemblance and menace
(86).
Miscegenation:
Miscegenation is the sexual union of different races, specifically whites with negroes.
It has always haunted European colonizers and their settler descendants. Colonialist practice
was obsessed with the products of such unions, particularly in those areas where black and
white had also been further hierarchized as slave and free.

Aqeel 6

Magical Realism:
This term is used in Latin American criticism. The pre-industrial population of many
postcolonial societies believed in myth and magic. It is a reality for them. These societies
sought their difference from the colonizer on these grounds. It is in contrast to the social
realism present in the colonial discourse. The magic is a distinct feature of these societies. It
is a reality for them, perhaps more real than the social realities. Magic realism became
popular when the South American writers were translated.
Cartography:
Both literally and metaphorically, maps and mapping are dominant practices of
colonial and post-colonial cultures. Colonization itself is often consequent on a voyage of
discovery. The process of discovery is reinforced by the construction of maps, whose
existence is a means of textualizing the spatial reality of the other, naming or, in almost all
cases, re-naming spaces in a symbolic and literal act of mastery and control. In all cases the
lands so colonized are literally re-inscribed, written over, as the names and languages of the
indigenes are replaced by new names, or are corrupted into new and Europeanized forms by
the cartographer and explorer.
The map making does much more than re-naming. The blank spaces shown in
the maps invite the western imagination to occupy those gaps. The races unknown to the
explorers were marked as savages or cannibals. The prior knowledge of the natives about the
lands thus explored is silenced by the act of mapping because the natives lack the scientific
discourse involved in map making. Mapping is a major tool of the colonizer to exploit the
natives. The Royal Geographical Society was a prime mover in the imperial conquests of the
undiscovered regions of the world.

Empire writes back:

Aqeel 7

After the dismantling of the colonial rule the colonized felt the need to write about
their own culture and society. The intellectuals of the colonized countries used the language
of the colonizer to tell about their reality which was misrepresented in the colonial discourse.
Intellectuals like Nugugi are of the view that the language of the colonizer should not be used
because it lacks the originality one needs to justify ones true picture. The main idea is to
challenge the representation of the colonial discourse by writing back to centre from which
the colonized had been marginalized.
Postcolonial theory with reference to colonial & postcolonial novels
A Postcolonial reading of any text helps us understand how literature reflects and shapes
global issues. Postcolonial reading of the colonial and postcolonial novels gives a deep
insight as to how the colonial rule affected the colonized societies and how the story of that
era of history is represented by the colonizer and the colonized and also gives us information
on history, human experience, human emotions and culture. A few novels are discussed
below.
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
A postcolonial study of A Passage to India attracts attention towards the ideas like
representation and creation of other by the colonizer, ambivalence, hybridity, and mimicry.
This novel is an example of colonial discourse. E.M. Forster wrote this novel after his visit to
India. He describes India as seen through the eyes of the colonizer because he himself was a
member of colonizing class. This points to the fact that colonial discourses tend to create
stereotypes because the colonizer fails to see the colonized subjects individually. Dr. Aziz is
presented as a member of the colonized educated class. He has a government job, can speak
English, has adopted English manners and is friendly towards the colonizers. He is presented
as a stereotype in the novel. A clear example of stereotyping is McBrydes belief in Oriental
Pathology. McBrydes scientific theory that Indians are lustful and threatening in fact

Aqeel 8

underlies aspects of the entire narrative. McBryde distastefully represents Dr. Aziz as a
typical Indian who reads pornography, visits prostitutes and, because of the climate, is a born
criminal. These traits of personality are attached to all the Indians. This is not the real
condition of all the Indians, it has been created and attached to the Indians by the imagination
of the English. Dr. Aziz belongs to the class that has received the education of the colonizer.
He is not the real product of India. He has been created by the training and education of the
colonizer. The criticism of the Dr. Aziz by the English is actually indirectly a criticism at the
colonizer himself because he is the product of the colonizers education.
The representation of the colonized is not only limited to the natives. It is extended to
the very landscape of India. The landscape of India is presented by the novelist as a
cartographer. The streets are referred to as a net, which symbolically points to the mind of the
natives as being captured by the chains of traditions and superstitions. The native gatherings
are presented as a mob that can be easily provoked. The scene after the trial is a clear
example in this regard.
The Indian society is religious and the religious places of Muslims and Hindus are
presented by the novelist. The mosque is presented when it is vacant. There is no religious
service in progress. It is only represented as a piece of architecture. The real function of
mosque is not shown. The picture of India in this colonial discourse is distorted.
Hybridity is another important discourse in the novel. Dr. Aziz is the hybrid product
of Indian and English culture. He is not religious minded but has respect for religion like an
Indian. He has adopted English ways and manners. He wears English dress. He has a
government job and has received English education. He is not fully Indian and not fully
English. In adopting the ways of the colonizer he has lost his identity as a pure native and he
is not fully English as he has sympathies with the colonized. He is seen as a typical Indian by

Aqeel 9

the English, though he is not a true representative of India as he has been created by the
English. He has adopted Englishness at the expense of Indianness.
The hybridity of Dr. Aziz makes him ambivalent. He is attracted by the English and at
the same time he feels repulsion for them. In the first chapter of the novel, Aziz meets Mrs.
Moore in the mosque. His first impression is that of repulsion on seeing an English in the
mosque. This repulsion is quite clear from his remark, Madam, this is a mosque, you have no
right here at all; you should have taken of your shoes; this is a holy place for Moslems.
When he comes to know that she has taken off her shoes he is happily reconciled and talks to
her. The happy ending of the scene depicts the attraction of Aziz towards the English.
After the trial Aziz develops repulsion for the English but still he is in service of the
government. He is still a friend of Mr. Fielding and even forgives Adela Quested for the
accusation at his request. He is not totally against the English and not wholly attracted
towards them.
Ambivalence is also present in the attitude of the colonizer. The English feel repulsion
from the Indians and this repulsion is only increased after the incident of Marabar Caves. At
the same time some members of the colonizers camp are attracted towards the natives. Mrs.
Moore and Adela Quested are interested in seeing the real India. Mr. Fielding has friendly
relation with Aziz. After the incident of Marabar Caves the English gather in the club to
assert their Englishness. They are angry at the incident but Fielding takes side of the Indian,
Dr. Aziz. Even during the trial, a moment when Adelas repulsion is at its peak, she feels
attraction towards the pankha wala in the court room.
Homi Bhabhas concept of mimicry can also be perceived in the novel. Dr. Aziz
mimics the English in many ways. He speaks like them, dresses like them, behaves like them
and visits them and in all this he mimics the English. He is Anglicized but not English. In
mimicking the colonizer he has given up his identity as a native. For Bhabha mimicry is

Aqeel 10

never far from mockery. The mimicry of the colonizer can be taken as its parody. The
difference of the colonizer and the colonized subject narrows down and it proves as a crack in
the authority of the colonizer. The colonized subject tries to mimic the colonizer in exercising
authority as well. In mimicry lie the seeds of destruction of the colonizer.
Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garca Marquez
Of Love and Other Demons is a multi-dimensional novel. From the postcolonial
perspective the problem of identity of the protagonist begins with the beginning of the novel.
Right from her birth Sierva Mara is not accepted by her parents. The following
passage from the text is important to identify the problem of identity of the
protagonist.

The girl, daughter of an aristocrat and a commoner, had the childhood of a


foundling. Her mother hated her from the moment she nursed her for the first and only
time, and then refused to keep the baby with her for fear she would kill her. Dominga
de Adviento suckled her, baptized her in Christ, and consecrated her to Olokun, a
Yoruban deity of indeterminate sex whose face is presumed to be so dreadful it is seen
only in dreams, and always hidden by a mask. Transplanted to the courtyard of the
slaves, Sierva Mara learned to dance before she could speak, learned three African
languages at the same time, learned to drink roosters blood before breakfast and to
glide past Christians unseen and unheard, like an incorporeal being.
The beginning of the passage tells that she is not acceptable for her parents because
she is the result of miscegenation. She is not accepted by her father as a pure aristocrat
because of low social status of Bernarda. Her mother, Bernarda, too does not accept her and
has a fear that this girl would kill her. Her fear is rooted in her unconscious because of the
idea that Mara is the offspring of an aristocrat who have exploited the natives and Bernarda
being one of the commoners is haunted by this fear.

Aqeel 11

After being rejected by both her parents Mara is left to the care of a colored servant,
Dominga de Adviento who runs the slave quarters. Dominga baptizes her in Christ and
consecrates her to Olokun. This creates a duality in the religion of Mara. She is not fully
Christian and not fully heathen. She has become a hybrid creature. Having born of parents of
different dissent she does not know her location in society. She has been transplanted to the
enclave of the slaves. She is not allowed any place in the house because her mother is afraid
of her. Even when she grows up she is not allowed to enter the bedroom of her mother
because she feels something mysterious about her way of staring.
Mara further faces the loss of identity because she is growing up with slaves. She has
learned African dance and three African languages. She does not have a mother tongue. She
speaks the language of Dominga. Mara also follows the slaves in their life style. She drinks
the blood of rooster which is considered to create magical qualities in her character. Thus she
has lost everything that can claim her identity. She is the hybrid creature biologically_ being
born of miscegenation between aristocrat and a common woman, and she is hybrid culturally.
She is not even accepted by the Church as the further proceedings of the novel tell. She is
accused of having Black qualities because she is very popular with the slaves. The Abbess
does not like her at all because she is not purely an aristocrat.
Another important postcolonial discourse in the novel is marginalizing of the Other.
Some characters in the novel can be understood as manifestations of the Other: Abernuncio
de Sa Pereira is a good example. Abernuncio is a Jew, non-Spaniard and a humanist in a
society rooted in fervent Catholicism. He is not accepted by the society. He has been sidelined by the society. The Church has branded him as a heretic because he is a Jew. He is not
well-off and lives among his books. His directions as a doctor are not followed by the
Christians. Delaura meets him secretly because he is afraid of being seen by at the house of
Abernuncio. Abernuncio is a humanist and he believes in humanity more than religion. His

Aqeel 12

diagnosis of Maras disease is not given any weight. The Church upholds its claim of Mara
being possessed by demons and in the end it takes her life.
Magic realism of the Latin American society is also highlighted in this novel. Right
from the beginning the element of supernatural and magic are entwined in the story. The
growth of hair of Mara even after her death may be considered unreal in many societies but
in that particular society it is looked at as reality because magic is reality for them. After her
birth Mara did not breathe and the mid wife claimed that she will not survive but Dominga
prays to her god and promises never to cut her hair till her wedding day and the she breathes.
This very incident tells about the beliefs of the natives in supernatural. The claim that Mara
was able to glide past the Christians without being seen refers to her magical qualities which
were accepted in that society as reality. This magical reality is put against the social reality of
the colonizers discourse. The belief in supernatural and magic is considered to be illogical
and unreal by the European colonizers. The colonizer never represented this belief in
supernatural and magic as a reality. They rather branded it as illogical. This suppression of
the belief of natives hampers the colonizer from presenting a real picture of the colonized.
The representation of the colonized subject by the colonizer is distorted; rather it looks down
upon the culture of the colonized because of their beliefs in such ideas.
There are some examples of the exploitation of salves by the colonizers and their
masters. They are packed like animals on the ships. They are chained and caged when they
are brought to the city. Slave trade is not illegal and not considered inhuman because it gives
much more profit than any other trade. They are not treated like human beings. In the first
chapter the slaves are not allowed to be unloaded on the port because of some disease and
only the healthy ones are allowed to enter the city. They are no longer human beings; they are
commodity for the colonizer. The slaves are deprived of basic human needs. Sexual
exploitation of the slaves is common practice. Bernarda, the wife of Marquis, has many

Aqeel 13

slaves in her plantation and she uses the male slave to satisfy her desire. The Marquis treats
them like his dogs and often lets his dogs loose on them.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garca Marquez


One Hundred Years of Solitude is, in the words of Salman Rushdie, the greatest novel
in any language of the last fifty years. It is largely known as a fiction in which the
boundaries of reality and fantasy mix up. A postcolonial reading of the novel reveals it to be a
novel, not about myth and history but about the myth of history and its demystifications. The
history of the Buenda family is a metaphor for the history of the whole Latin America, in
general, and particularly, of Columbia. The dictatorships faced by that part of the world and
the experience of colonization is deeply entrenched in the story.
There are a lot of incidents in the novel that indicate the exploitation and destruction
caused by the colonization. The attack of Sir Francis Drake at Riohacha in the sixteenth
century is a clear example in this regard. His attack is referred to as an attack of a pirate in the
novel. It is worth noting that Francis Drake is knighted by the colonizer and he is a pirate for
the natives. The colonizer represents the events in a way which suits him best. The attack of
Francis Drake had a horrible impact on the natives. The great-grandmother of Ursula became
mentally disturbed because of the noise caused by the firing of cannons. She tries to burn
herself to death to free herself from the horrors she has experienced during and after the
attack. She could not sleep because she dreams of the English coming to her bedroom with
their dogs and submitting her to shameless tortures with their hot iron rods. Her mental peace
is totally destroyed and her life has become a living death. Her condition forces her family to
migrate to some other place. The colonizer is so much oppressive that the natives are bound
to move somewhere else. The natives are displaced.

Aqeel 14

Another important incident is the arrival of Mr. Herbert from the civilized world. He
comes to Macondo for the captive-balloon business. He comes to this land thinking it very
primitive. He fails in his enterprise because the residents of Macondo are not so primitive and
they have experienced the ride of flying carpet of the gypsies. Like a typical colonizer he
comes with the preconceived idea of the primitiveness of the lands unknown to him.
He comes to Macondo with the idea of business but later on captures the land which is
rich in banana crops_ an idea common in colonizing history. The conquest and control of
other peoples lands motivated by a desire to secure native natural resources and labour power
at low cost by whatever means possible is an agenda of the colonizers.
Mr. Herbert establishes Banana Company which later on brings railway and cars to
Macondo and the native life is disturbed by this new mess. Colonel Aureliano who is very
much disturbed by the banana business says, Look at the mess weve got ourselves into
Just because we invited a gringo to eat some bananas. As time passes in the book we see
the Banana Plantation has its own police which is so strict that they tend to kill the local
citizens for small offence causing tremendous rage in the heart of the locals specially Colonel
Aureliano Buenda who claims, one of these days, Im going to arm my boys so we can get
rid of these shitty gringos and during the course of the week at different places along the
coast, his 16 sons were hunted down like rabbits by invisible criminals who aimed at the
center of their crosses of ash and the last of his sons is killed after some years. The parallels
are so close to experiences of the colonized nations_ Agents of the imperialists who wipe out
rebellious elements through unknown secret agents rather than through open means.
The experiences of the workers at the Banana Company are very much like the
experience of the Africans in Heart of Darkness. The Africans were given copper wires, as
salary, which were of no use to them. Here the workers at the Banana Plantation are not paid
in real money but in scrip, which was good only to buy Virginia ham in the company

Aqeel 15

commissaries. The Banana Company later on massacres 3000 workers mercilessly at the
plantation because they are asking for their rights and have gone on a strike. The dead bodies
of 3000 workers are thrown into the sea and the authorities issue a report that the strikers
have abandoned their strike and have left to their homes satisfactorily. The colonizer takes
measures to erase this incident from the memory of natives by declaring it in text books that
nothing ever happened in Macondo. The only survivor, Jos Arcadio Segundo, has the
memory of this massacre but he is believed by no one. This indicates the power of colonial
discourse and also indicates that facts do no matter to the colonial historian.
Colonizing on individualist level is shown by Fernanda Del Carpia when she starts
changing the rules of the Buenda house with her so-called civilized ideas. Later she even
tries to corner Young Auereliano her grand-son by Renata Remidios (meme) and Mauricio
Babilonia. She was ashamed that the people might find out he was an illegitimate kid of her
daughter_ a fear common to the European colonizers. She keeps him locked inside the house
and even refuses to send him out to study. Fernanda looked at Young Aureliano as dirt. Later
on, he is treated more as a maidservant than a grand-son and it is only after the arrival of Jos
Arcadio (the priest) and Fernandas death that he is given the permission to go out. This
freedom of movement is given so late in life that it has blocked his individual and spiritual
growth as a person in society and the lack of exposure and experience makes him a misfit
who will not be able to defend himself from the outside world and its dangers. Aureliano here
represents the colonized subject who is devoid of every positive activity after being exploited
by the colonizer.
Like many Latin American writers Mrquez has been inextricably linked to a style of
literature known as Magical Realism literature of this type is usually characterized by
elements of the fantastic woven into the story with a deadpan sense of presentation. M.H.
Abrams in his A Glossary of Literary Terms, explains magical realism as an interweave, in

Aqeel 16

an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism in representing ordinary events and


descriptive details together with fantastic and dreamlike elements, as well as with materials
derived from myth and fairy tales. One Hundred Years of Solitude is filled with such
illusions like The Priest who levitated after drinking Chocolate, The sky crying a rain of
yellow flowers on the death of Jos Arcadio Buenda., Mr. Herberts the one in the captiveballoon business not being successful in taking anyone up in Mocondo because they
considered that invention backward after having seen and tried the gypsies flying carpets.,
Remedios ascension to heaven, The trail of blood of Jos Arcadio which flowed from his
bedroom, went out into the streets, passed along the streets of the Turks, entered the Buenda
house even hugged the wall as not to stain the rugs and finally stopped in the kitchen where
rsula was working And many more of such extraordinary supernatural things occur in the
course of the novel. In his defense Mrquez says, The tone that I eventually used in One
Hundred Years of Solitude was based on the way my grandmother used to tell stories Some
critics claim that magical realism is a postcolonial hangover, a category used by whites to
marginalize the fiction of the other. However, this term has a long and quite distinctive
history in Latin American criticism and was first used in a wider postcolonial context by
Jacques Stephen Alexis, in his essay Of the Magical Realism of the Haitians (1956) Alexis
sought to reconcile the arguments of post-war, radical intellectuals in favour of social realism
as a tool for revolutionary social representation, with a recognition that in many post-colonial
societies a peasant, pre-industrial population had its imaginative life rooted in a living
tradition of the mythic, the legendary and the magical. It origins however lay in the specific
need to link social revolution to local cultural tradition and they were a distinctive feature of
the colonial cultural and the collective forms by which colonial societies gave expression to
their identity and emphasized their difference with the alien oppressors. They were modes of
expression of their cultural reality. It also questions rational liner narrative in the light of

Aqeel 17

indigenous cultural factors and as a body of text that recognizes the need to keep alive the
elements of pre-colonial culture.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys


In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys confronts the possibility of another side to Jane
Eyre. The story of Bertha, the first Mrs Rochester, Wide Sargasso Sea is not only a brilliant
deconstruction of Bront's legacy, but is also a damning history of colonialism in the
Caribbean. Rhys has tried to present things from a perspective other than that of the
colonizer. The distorted representation_ by the European colonizers of other races_ has been
deconstructed by the representation from different perspective.
The story is set just after the emancipation of the slaves, in that uneasy time when
racial relations in the Caribbean were at their most strained. Antoinette (Rhys renames her
and has Rochester impose the name of Bertha on her when their relationship dissolves) is
descended from the plantation owners, and her father has had many children by negro
women. She can be accepted neither by the negro community nor by the representatives of
the colonial centre. As a white creole she is nothing. The taint of racial impurity, coupled with
the suspicion that she is mentally imbalanced brings about her inevitable downfall. Her
hybridity dissolves her identity. It makes her character ambivalent. She is neither totally
against the colonizer nor fully attracted by towards him.
Rhys shows that in Jane Eyre Bertha has been treated as the Other. She has been
marginalized. Her room in the house of Rochester is well away from the rooms of other
members of the house. Her actions are presented as evil working of her magic and she has

Aqeel 18

been presented as mad. Rhys gives voice of the marginalized Bertha and in doing so she gives
voice to the colonized subject who has been marginalized in the colonial discourse.
Rhys divides the speaking voice between Rochester and Antoinette, thus avoiding the
suppression of alternative voices which she recognizes in Bronte's text. Rochester, who is
never named in the novel, is not portrayed as an evil tyrant, but as a proud and bigoted
younger brother betrayed by his family into a loveless marriage. His double standards with
regards to the former slaves and Antoinette's family involvement with them are exposed when
he chooses to sleep with the maid, Amelie, thus displaying the promiscuous behavior and
attraction to the negro community which he accuses Antoinette of harboring. His character is
also ambivalent.
Rhys negotiates with Bronte's text. As an already canonical text, the merging of
Antoinette's fate into that of Bertha's is inevitable, but Rhys allows us to interpret the fate of
Antoinette differently by having the ending open. Antoinette dreams of the fire and leaps to
her death, but the novel ends with her resolution to act rather than a description of her death
or an exact repetition of Bronte's words. Thus the possibility of a different fate for Rhys's
character is left intact. The more recent text can be said to have an influence on the earlier
text and to extend its possibilities.
The character of Christophine is important as a site of alternative power. Christophine
forces Rochester to recognize her as the holder of judicial authority and she reduces him to
mimicry of her words as he admits that her words echoed in his head. This is a reversal of the
normal colonizer/colonized role where, according to Bhabha and Fanon, the colonized is a
mere parrot who must come to terms with the master discourse of the metropolitan centre.
The source of Christophine's power is obeah and she is central to the narrative action, as

Aqeel 19

Antoinette calls to her at the end of the novel to release her from the zombie-like state to
which Rochester has reduced her.
The desire to rewrite the master narratives of Western discourse is a common colonial
practice, with texts like The Tempest, Robinson Crusoe and Great Expectations being given
the same scrutiny that Rhys affords to Bronte's text. The telling of a story from another point
of view can be seen as an extension of the deconstructive project to explore the gaps and
silences in a text. Since writing has long been recognized as one of the strongest forms of
cultural control, the rewriting of central narratives of colonial superiority is a liberating act
for those from the former colonies. Rhys's text is a highly sophisticated example of coming to
terms with European perceptions of the Caribbean creole community.

You might also like