Ideological Operation of Othering: A Postcolonial Reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankensteinand Charlotte Bronte’sJane Eyre

Abstract

This thesis studiesFrankensteinandJane Eyre,two crucial nineteenth centuryworks by two prominentwriters Mary Shelley and Charlotte Bronte. Both these worksbelong to the era of high colonialism. This study brings into communication thepervasive form of colonial desire and its operation through the ideology of otheringwhich is subversive in the novels. The operation of othering is shown in the form ofbinarity in which metropolis is presented as the ‘home’ and ‘colonies’ the ‘mistress’.Regardless of the people in colonies, people within the colonizing country areoppressed as other. This study applies the postcolonial approach of othering in order todemonstrate how the resistance to empire and its imperial desires emerge out of theimperial culture of othering in the novels. Contrary to the existing readings of thenovels from the Marxist, feministand postcolonial perspectives which largely drawupon the theme of resistance in literary texts, this thesis deals with resistance on thepart of the marginalized characters. As a result, it presents how hysterical, slave andmonstrous [colonized] concomitantly exhibits colonizers [civilize, imperative andrational] are rude, brutal, and monstrous in attitudes and behaviors. Mr. Rochester,who assumes an English gentleman inJane Eyre,is rude; for he denies freedom to begiven to wife Bertha Mason. Likewise, Victor who owes European humanismcharacterized by science becomes monstrous when he refutes love and care to his ownchild for an instance. By subverting the ideological operation of othering and colonial desires in thenovels, this study comes up with the point that desire of the marginalized people to beemancipated is muted. By reading the muted voices of socially excluded characters inthe thesis, it argues that British empire’s social mission of civilizing others based onthe idea othering subverted in texts likeFrankesteinandJane Eyre.