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Title SUBVERTING THE MONOLITH: A POSTCOLONIAL FEMINIST STUDY OF SELECTED SRI LANKAN FICTION

Author(s) KAINAT IFTIKHAR

Abstract This dissertation is a reading of two Sri Lankan novels: Cinnamon Gardens (1998) and A Disobedient Girl (2009). This project rests on the premise that the western feminists categorize the third world women as a monolithic entity and consider them as other. Both the selected texts provide ample amount of space to examine the rejection of universalism and binaristic hierarchies along with exploration into the representation of the indigenous women by Sri Lankan authors. Postcolonial feminism or the ‘Third World feminism’ originated as a critique of mainstreams in the western feminist discourse. It investigated the portrayal of women in the literature and society of the colonized countries as marginalized and oppressed, such that they are considered as inferior beings. Therefore, this research contests the totalization and the universalization of western colonial discourse by studying the unique female experiences in the selected novels. To investigate this, Mohanty’s essay “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse” (1984) serves as the main theoretical lens. The major dynamics of the postcolonial feminist stance, studied in this research are: i) The representation of the third world as “monolithic universal image.” ii) The representation of the indigenous women by Sri Lankan authors to fight the binary of ‘Other.’ These two major objectives of this research aid to subvert the monolith assumptions set by some western feminists for the third world women of color (women specifically belonging to areas like India, Bengal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia etc). The novels, Cinnamon Gardens (1998) and A Disobedient Girl (2009) bring to light the female characters who try to resist and break the colonial and patriarchal imposed dynamics of silencing and suppressing women in the Sri Lankan society. The findings reveal that the novelists have realistically given voice and visibility to the idea of the third world Sri Lankan woman as headstrong, determined, educated, and rational. Thus, this research has problematized the marginalization of the third world brown women at the hand of those western white feminists, who manipulate the women in the third world. Moreover, both writers, Shyam Selvadurai and Ru Freeman, through their novels, depict the unconventional journey of struggle and empowerment of the Sri Lankan women within their society and norms, howsoever, tyrannical the circumstances may be.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2022-01-25

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