Politics of Male Representation and Female Resistance in Burmese Days

Abstract

This thesis deals with female resistance against male and patriarchal domination in Orwell's Burmese Days.The novel also presentsdevasting picture of both domestic corruption and British Colonial rule, where imperial forces dominate the native people as interesting but inferior. But the focus of this thesis is on the conflict between male and female characters and love-hate relations between them. I have used politics of male representation and female resistance as critical tool to analyze the text. Information has been collected through various resources including published books, essays and article as well as website reviews. This fiction displays many instances of dominating mentality of characters who take females as weak, inferior, child-like and submissive characters. In the fiction male characters U Po Kyin, Mr. Flory and Mr. Verrall are shown as blind followers of patriarchal ideology who tend to dominate and confine women in one way or the other. However they are counterattacked by female characters eventually. So the love-hate relationship between males and females is well projected. The study concludes that even as women are initially shown as completely servile and subordinated towards the male, they ultimately resist and get victory over male domination.