Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice and Toni Morrison in Beloved view normative and descriptive feminism especially through the character analysis of Elizabeth and Sethe. Austen presents Elizabeth through the normative feminist view as a woman with the power to judge the situation, to make opinion and to take the decision according to her understanding and intelligence. In the male-oriented society, she establishes herself as an independent being and challenges the second-rate woman concept. On the other way, Toni Morrison views that Sethe moulded by normative feminist characteristics fells herself as a topic of descriptive feminist concept-woman of inherited identity who has to make herself weak and subordinate to man in every aspect. Having strong determination and capacity of getting freedom, her struggle to stand independently causes her isolation from the male-centred community which leads to her distract mentality and incapability to breathe in this society. This paper aims at presenting Elizabeth as an unequivocal voice and model of normative feminist view to exert woman as equally capable, qualified, respected and important being as man. The paper also aims at showing how Elizabeth with normative feminist quality in Pride and Prejudice has been transfigured as Sethe with descriptive feminism in Beloved, whose struggle to lead an independent self and to exercise her potentiality as woman self is hindered by male mechanism which is an inevitable path of a woman.
E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India nourishes the facet of superiority and inferiority, self and other between occident and orient revealed in Orientalism. Through the character analysis and the development of the plot, the writer shows the conflicts of these senses. The novel narrates the colonial exercise-the English’s rule in India and the relationship between the Indians and the English. The perceived idea, misconception, and colonial politics prevail in the two races. The characters from the English and the Indians find the oriental concept a barrier in their integration for giving pre-eminence of everything occidental and representing the oriental as an inferior other. On the other hand, though Chaudhuri in his travelogue, A Passage to England rounds with a preconceived idea formulated by the west, he feels doubt to meet the west. But he feels home with the west after meeting them. The writer, through his experience, tries to find out the explanation of the west’s negative view on the East. The article tries to explore whether a proper reconciliation or harmony is possible in the conflict of orient and occident following thesis-antithesis-synthesis through the comparative analysis of these books.
The ambivalence for the attraction and repulsion shapes the colonizer and colonized’s duality sense for integrating each other’s way of life. It leads to create a hybridity sense, but this hybridity turns to mimicry. Forster’s A Passage to India portrays this sense through the character analysis. This novel exposes the ambivalent attitude of the Indians and the English to adopt the respective culture as the ruler and the ruled in India leading to hybridity sense. The development of events in the novel also shows some distorted sense in the character’s relationship and individual personality that creates a kind of tension. Chaudhuri, in his travelogue with his colonial experience, shapes his ambivalent attitude to integrate into the English traits. But his real experience with the West confirms his previous knowledge and he adopts his proper sense of hybridity by praising almost everything in western life and by showing the limitation of his country’s way of life. But his presentation in the travelogue makes a question of his stereotyped personality. The article initiates to explore reconciliation in this tension, applying the thesis-antithesis-synthesis technique through the comparative analysis of these two books.
The well-known myth of binary- England and India creates a conflict for the contrastive attitude in E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India and Nirad C Chaudhuri’s travelogue A Passage to England. The binary opposition of Anglo-Indian as colonizers and Indians as colonized leads to another set of binary, white-colored, and civilized-primitive in A Passage to India. This binary contradicts each other to form them in another set of binary, controller-controlled during the British imperial rule in India. The contrastive structure is in the form of conflict reflected in their outlook, behavior, and lifestyle in this novel. On the other hand, by an eight-week-journey in western countries, Chaudhuri, as an Indian in England, exposes what he observes in the west together with the reality of India in the travelogue. He recognizes the social binaries upholded by Jacques Derrida in A Passage to England. Chaudhuri in his book has executed this binary sense as England-India, British-Indians possessing two independent entities of the world. The two writers, through Hegel’s dialectic process, place the binary opposition implanting Derrida’s view. The article focuses on the nature of the conflict and tries to explore reconciliation of the conflicts based on the comparative analysis of two books.
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