Oppression from Within and Narrative Imperialism

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Oppression from Within and Narrative Imperialism ‘The colonial ideology’ is embedded in recent forms of cultural representation. They are very much here and now but coded, defamiliarized and transformed into new types. As prof. Spivak says,”---imperialist project are displaced and dispersed into modern forms.” One of the convictions of Marxism is that all cultural forms seek to ensure that the dominant classes in society remain dominant. To put in the words of Edward Said ‘the self’ tries to exercise his/ her authority over ‘the other’(Said:1978). Thedominant group maintains the authority not by overt means but by indirect means, using discursive strategies i.e. narrative technique. In this paper I will attempt to analyze the case of Jane Eyre as explained in Prof. Spivak’sessay ‘Three Women’s Texts and a Critique Imperialism.’ I will also attempt to explain a treatment given by Charlotte Bronte to two different women character in Jane Eyre and imperialism works there. Literature is one of the possible sites of subjugation.This is clearly evident in Jane Eyre, a novel by Charlotte Bronte a civilized western white woman or for that matter an author who like an imperialist presented distorted picture of Jamaican Bertha. Prof. Spivak’s reading of Jane Eyre traces hidden imperialist sub-text in Jane Eyre’s narrative of bourgeois female individualism. By tracing this, she challenges Anglo-American Feminist reading of Jane Eyre which celebrates Jane’s heroic narrative of self determination to the exclusion of Bertha Mason’s colonial genealogy. Bronte’s novel presents a superior representation of Jane ,the western woman and Bertha’s representation as subservient to Jane .This is a typical tendency of Anglo-American feminist literary criticism to privilege the individual narrative of
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