Cultural Studies - 205

 Five Types of Cultural Studies 

Name: Dhruvita Dhameliya

Roll no : 03

Semester: 3

Year:- 2021 to 2023

Subject:- Cultural Studies

Topic :- Five Types of Cultural Studies 

Email ID:

dhameliyadhruvita24@gmail.com

Submitted to: S. B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

What is Culture:-

Culture is a word for the way of life of groups of people, the behaviour, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next generation. There are different Types of Culture.

Culture is the feature and knowledge of a particular group of people, bounding language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. Culture is an integrated set of patterns of human activities, knowledge and belief within a community or social group and the symbolic structures. Culture is the purity of savour in the fine arts and humanities.

Culture is a circle of religion, food, what we wear, how we wear it, our language, marriage, music, what we believe is right or wrong, how we sit at the table, how we meet visitors, how we behave with others, and a million other things. The outlook, attitudes, values, morals, goals, and customs shared by a society all are included in culture. Culture is a complex concept which impacts virtually every aspect of our lives both consciously and subconsciously.

“Culture has two aspects: the known meanings and directions, which its members are trained to; the new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested. These are the ordinary processes of human societies and human minds, and we see through them the nature of a culture: that it is always both traditional and creative; that it has both the most ordinary common meanings and the finest individual meanings. We use the word culture in these two senses: to mean a whole way of life--the common meanings; to mean the arts and learning--the special processes of discovery and creative effort.” – Raymond Williams.

Culture is the expression of our own nature in our way of life and thinking in our everyday dealings in art, literature, religion, reaction and enjoyments as members of society. Culture is a system of values and beliefs which we share with others, all of which gives us a sense of belongings or identity.

Culture is important for all the things we do in this world. The beliefs that create religion, wars, the way of life and many challenges. The first thing we have to define is culture and why is it important in the work life. Culture is a notoriously difficult term to define Culture consists in patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts: the essential core of culture consists traditional, historically derived and selected ideas and specially their attached values.

Schein (1990) defines culture as,

 "how people feel about the organisation, the authority: system and the degree of employee involvement and commitment"  he continues, adding that culture can be viewed as a widely held, shared set of values, beliefs and ideas Culture refers to society and its way of life. It is defined as a set of values and beliefs, or a cluster of learned behaviours that we share with others in a particular society, giving us a sense of belongingness and identity Because of this, cultural understanding is becoming even more important because of the call to interact with many individuals from other countries and other cultures further adds three basics components of culture, namely: 

1)What people think

2)What they do

 3)The material products they produce

 All forms of culture exhibit unique ways and value systems that aid and affect individuals in their perception and reaction to different life circumstances. Culture at its most basic level can be defined as shared symbols, norms, and values in a social organisation.

In America, we have a strong material culture based on production of certain items, like cars. America is proud of its car culture. We make cars; we drive cars; we use cars as symbols of our place in society, wealth, or feelings about the environment. Cars, plus the other things that we physically create as Americans, define our material culture. Now, material culture does not mean that it is an object that is bought and sold; it can also be something we all make. For instance, macaroni art is a common thing we all did as children. It is something that is common enough to unite us and therefore part of our material culture.

The other category is nonmaterial culture, or the intangible things produced by a culture. In other words, the parts of culture you cannot touch, feel, taste, or hold. Common examples include social roles, ethics, beliefs, or even language. As a culture, Americans believe in equality. But you cannot hold equality, or make it out of macaroni noodles. Equality is something that does not actually exist; it is an idea that a culture produces about the treatment of people. This is nonmaterial culture, and it is just as big of an influence on our lives as material culture is.

Five Types of Cultural Studies

British Cultural Materialism

New Historicism

American Multiculturalism

Postmodernism & Popular Culture

Postcolonial Studies

1:- British Cultural Materialism

Cultural studies is referred to as "cultural materialism" in Britain, and it has a long tradition. In the later nineteenth century Matthew Arnold sought to redefine the "givens" of British culture. Edward Burnett Tylor's pioneering anthropological study Primitive cultural argued that "culture or civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is a complex whole which includes knowledge belief, art, morals, low, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society". Claude Levi-Strauss's influence moved British thinkers to assign "culture" to primitive peoples, and then, with the work of British scholars like Raymond Williams memorably states: "There are no message; there are only ways of seeing other people as masses" 

Cultural materialism began in earnest in the 1950s with the work of F.R.Leavis, heavily influenced by Matthew Arnold's analyses of bourgeois culture. Leavis sought to use the educational system to distribute literary knowledge and appreciation more widely; leavisites promoted the "great tradition" of Shakespeare and Milton to improve the moral sensibilities of a wider range of readers than just the elite.

2) New Historicism

A term coined by Raymond Williams and popularised by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield in their collection of essays Political Shakespeare, Cultural Materialism refers to a Marxist orientation of New Historicism, characterised by the analysis of any historical material within a politicised framework, in a radical and subversive manner. Cultural Materialism emphasises studying the historical context, looking at those historical aspects that have been discarded or silenced in other narratives of history, through an eclectic theoretical approach, backed by the political commitment arising from the influence of Marxist and Feminist perspective and thus executing a textual analysis—close reading that critiques traditional approaches, especially on canonical texts. 

 New Historicists believe in the textuality of history and the historicity of texts; they are aware of the political agendas of the text and hence are alert to the ways in which power exerts itself through implicit workings of ideology within the text. While they believe that New Historicists generate apolitical readings, in which there is no question of agency on the part of the marginalised, Cultural Materialists are consciously political, and aim at transforming the social order; as they seek readings that focus on the marginalised and the exploited, and also book at the possibilities of subversion and resistance in both the text and the interpretive act. They are conscious of the subversive potential of  literature for subcultural resistance and hence propose ‘dissident reading’, which interrogates the hidden political agenda and power struggles within a text.

New historicism has made its biggest mark on literary studies of the Renaissance and Romantic periods and has revised motions of literature as privileged, apolitical writing. Much new historicism focuses on the marginalisation of subjects such as those identified as witches, the insane, heretics, vagabonds, and political prisoners.

3) American Multiculturalism

The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for "ethnic pluralism", with the two terms often used interchangeably, and for cultural pluralism[1] in which various ethnic groups collaborate and enter into a dialogue with one another without having to sacrifice their particular identities. It can describe a mixed ethnic community area where multiple cultural traditions exist such as New York City or London or a single country within which they do such as Switzerland, Belgium or Russia. Groups associated with an indigenous, aboriginal or autochthonous ethnic group and settler-descended ethnic groups are often the focus.

Multiculturalism, in the context of the “American mosaic,” celebrates the unique cultural heritage of racial and ethnic groups, some of whom seek to preserve their native languages and lifestyles. In a sense, individuals can be Americans and at the same time claim other identities, including those based on racial and ethnic heritage, gender, and sexual preference.

“Multiculturalism” is similar. Some things that are reasonably labelled “multiculturalism” are mostly bad, and others are mostly good. We can all imagine bad versions of multiculturalism — ones that dramatically undermine the social cohesion necessary to maintain order or defend the nation in war; ones in which many people in a modern economy speak mutually unintelligible languages; ones in which members of some subcultures feel comfortable violently attacking people, whether of their own culture or of others; and so on. But America is also founded on its own sort of multiculturalism, which has usually (though not always) stood us in good stead. Here are four constitutional manifestations of this multiculturalism.

4)Postmodernism & Popular Culture

The “post” in postmodern suggests “after”. Postmodernism is best understood as a questioning of the ideas and values associated with a form of modernism that believes in progress and innovation. Modernism insists on a clear divide between art and popular culture.

But like modernism, postmodernism does not designate any one style of art or culture. On the contrary, it is often associated with pluralism and an abandonment of conventional ideas of originality and authorship in favour of a pastiche of “dead” styles.

Though first used in the 1930s to describe a specific conservative counter-trend within Latin American modernism, the term “postmodernism” as we now generally use it refers to a specific style of art and thought that rose to prominence in the United States and Europe after World War II, reaching its full definition as a movement by the early 1970s. As the name implies, postmodernism is generally defined in relation to Western modernism, though the exact nature of this relationship is still contested. One thing almost all theorists of postmodernism agree on, however, is that, while it draws in significant ways upon the modernist tradition of “high” art, postmodernism also maintains a close connection with popular culture, bridging the gap between “high” and “low” art that many see as central to the ethos of modernism.

5)Postcolonial Studies

The field of Postcolonial Studies has been gaining prominence since the 1970s. Some would date its rise in the Western academy from the publication of Edward Said’s influential critique of Western constructions of the Orient in his 1978 book, Orientalism. The growing currency within the academy of the term “postcolonial” was consolidated by the appearance in 1989 of The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. Since then, the use of cognate terms “Commonwealth” and “Third World” that were used to describe the literature of Europe’s former colonies has become rarer. Although there is considerable debate over the precise parameters of the field and the definition of the term “postcolonial,” in a very general sense, it is the study of the interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized in the modern period. The European empire is said to have held sway over more than 85% of the rest of the globe by the time of the First World War, having consolidated its control over several centuries. The sheer extent and duration of the European empire and its disintegration after the Second World War have led to widespread interest in postcolonial literature and criticism in our own times.

Post colonial refers to a historian phase undergone by third world countries after the decline of colonialism for the era, when countries in Asian Africa, Latina/o America, and the Caribbean separated from the European empires and were left to rebuild themselves. Many third words focus on both colonialism and the change that created a postcolonial culture.

Conclusion:-

So, these all are Five Types of Cultural Studies. To understand culture we have to understand cultural studies.

Word Count:- 2150

Works Cited

Crossman, Ashley. “The Definition of Popular Culture in Sociology.” ThoughtCo, 9 December 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/popular-culture-definition-3026453. Accessed 4 November 2022.

“cultural studies | interdisciplinary field | Britannica.” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/cultural-studies. Accessed 4 November 2022.

“Cultural Studies Overview & Theory | Cultural Studies Definition - Video & Lesson Transcript.” Study.com, 4 August 2022, https://study.com/learn/lesson/cultural-studies-overview-theory.html. Accessed 4 November 2022.

“What is cultural studies? | The British Academy.” British Academy, 18 August 2020, https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/what-is-cultural-studies/. Accessed 4 November 2022.

Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies - 204

 Derrida & Deconstruction 

Name: Dhruvita Dhameliya

Roll no : 03

Semester: 3

Year:- 2021 to 2023

Subject:- Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies

Topic :- Derrida & Deconstruction 

Email ID: 

dhameliyadhruvita24@gmail.com

Submitted to: S. B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed a philosophical approach that came to be known as deconstruction, which he utilised in numerous texts, and which was developed through close readings of the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy.

During his career, Derrida published more than 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and public presentations. He had a significant influence on the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, literature, law, anthropology, historiography, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, architecture, and political theory.

What is Deconstruction?

Deconstruction doesn't actually mean "demolition" ; instead it means "breaking down" or analysing something, especially the words in a work of fiction or nonfiction to discover its true significance, which is supposedly almost never exactly what the author intended. 

The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was originated by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences which take precedence over appearances, instead considering the constantly changing complex function of language, making static and idealist ideas of it inadequate. 

Deconstruction is a poststructuralist theory, based largely but not exclusively on the writings of Derrida. It is in the first instance a philosophical theory and a theory directed towards the re-reading of philosophical writings. Its impact on literature, mediated in North America largely through the influences of theorists at Yale University, is based

1) On the fact that deconstruction sees all writing as a complex historical, cultural process rooted in the relations of texts to each other and in the institutions and conventions of writing.

2)On the sophistication and intensity of its sense that human knowledge is not as controllable or as convincing as Western thought would have it and that language operates in subtle and often contradictory ways, so that certainty will always elude us.

Darrida denied deconstructing any work. And he asked a question that it is possible to define? Derrida became a very difficult philosopher to read and the one reason is that it is difficult to define.

Deconstruction by its very nature defies institutionalisation in an authoritative definition. The concept was first outlined by Derrida in Of Grammatology where he explored the interplay between language and the construction of meaning. From this early work, and later works in which he has attempted to explain deconstruction to others, most notably the Letter to a Japanese Friend, it is possible to provide a basic explanation of what deconstruction is commonly understood to mean. Three key features emerge from Derrida’s work as making deconstruction possible. These are,

 First, the inherent desire to have a centre, or focal point, to structure understanding- logocentrism

Second, the reduction of meaning to set definitions that are committed to writing- nothing beyond the text; and, 

Finally, how the reduction of meaning to writing captures opposition within that concept itself -différance. These three features found the possibility of deconstruction as an on-going process of questioning the accepted basis of meaning. 

While the concept initially arose in the context of language, it is equally applicable to the study of law. Derrida considered deconstruction to be a ‘problematization of the foundation of law, morality and politics.’

1 - For him it was both ‘foreseeable and desirable that studies of deconstructive style should culminate in the problematic of law and justice.’

2 - Deconstruction is therefore a means of interrogating the relationship between the two.

For Derrida, it is this logocentrism, and the idea of the exteriority of meaning, that opens up the possibility of deconstruction. He examines how the natural ‘origin’ of meaning and its ‘institution’ in writing cannot be so easily separated. Rather than nature justice and institution law existing independently of each other, Derrida suggests that nature itself is constructed only with reference to the institution. So rather than law being a direct embodiment of justice, how we understand both justice and law is determined by the interplay between the two. This is a rejection of the rigid separation that makes the quest for certainty possible — of the very idea that justice exists as a prior objective standard to be discovered. By reading law as reflecting or embodying the natural origin of justice, what is ignored or concealed are all the other possible interpretations of justice that are not embodied or encapsulated in the law. In this way writing defines nature, as well as reflecting it.

3)How deconstruction happen it's own:-

The idea of deconstruction is therefore concerned with countering the idea of a transcendental origin or natural referent. It refutes the notion that it is possible to transgress the institution in order to discover something beyond — the existence of an independent origin. This idea is famously encapsulated in the phrase ‘There is nothing outside of the text’, which is often used to summarise Derrida’s work. 

For Derrida the origin does not exist independently of its institution, but exists only ‘through its functioning within a classification and therefore within a system of differences…’ In his own words, Derrida terms this phenomenon ‘différance’, and it is this idea that forms the basis of deconstruction. Différance refers to the fact that meaning cannot be regarded as fixed or static, but is constantly evolving. It arises from the constant process of negotiation between competing concepts. Rather than pursuing the truth of a natural origin, what deconstruction requires is the interrogation of these competing interpretations that combine to produce meaning.

The act of institution—or writing —itself captures this constant competition between the differing possible interpretations of meaning within the institution. The effect of the translation of thought into language is therefore to inscribe différance into the structure of meaning. It simultaneously embodies the desired meaning as intended by the author, and the constraints placed on that meaning through the act of interpretation of the text. In this regard, meaning is defined equally by what is included in the institution and what is not. At any one time, one concept will be dominant over the other, thus excluding the other. However while the idea of exclusion suggests the absence of any presence of that which is excluded, in fact that which is instituted depends for its existence on what has been excluded. The two exist in a relationship of hierarchy in which one will always be dominant over the other. The dominant concept is the one that manages to legitimise itself as the reflection of the natural order thereby squeezing out competing interpretations that remain trapped as the excluded trace within the dominant meaning.

When we read something, say a short story, a novel, or a philosophy book, we tend to think of it as a whole, we think of it as a-novel a dramatic history, a funny story, a mysterious story etc..., as a philosophy currently, be it historical materialism, rationalism, utilitarianism etc... and so on. This notion of understanding of the written word isn't quite right to Derrida, he thinks that even the smallest and simplest texts are filled with something that Derrida calls aporias that comes from the Greek, which means 'non pass' or 'difficulty of passing'. Derrida insists that these aporias appear all over the texts through the reading method of deconstruction and that no degree of analysis can eliminate them.

Now, this deconstruction method and its implications in various fields like ethics, cannot be understood without the understanding of some concepts that Derrida introduced in his book Of Grammatology, being one of the most important and the one I am going to explain here, the concept of différance.

In French, différance is pronounced the same as 'différence', the latter is French for the English word 'difference'. Before Derrida the term différance lacked meaning, or, in other words, meant nothing; An anecdote says that Derrida's mother once apprehended him for writing it wrong. The reason behind his creation of this neologism is that it allowed him to express a series of senses that were useful for him to express something complex about language.

For a deep understanding of the term and in general, the notion of deconstruction.

The notion of différance pretends to account for the three senses that are contained in the verb 'différer' in english 'to differ' that are: postpone, being different, and disagree. Derrida considers these respectively as a sense of: temporization, spacing, and controversy. Since the sustantive 'différence' didn't expressed any of these senses, he created the new term from différant 'that is differing'; different which both are pronounced the same in french; and différend -discrepancy, to achieve a term that unified the triple meaning. to understand in practice the function of temporization and spacing of différance, let's imagine that someone enounces something like "The race..." and then enounces "...that saw my friend..." and after a pause he/she continues "on the stadium that was crowded..." etc. The meaning of 'race' differs the more information is added and results are different in every moment.

Considering these two senses of différance a new perspective about language is formed: the meaning of anything that is said, it's always differed, because it depends on the next thing that it's said, and then that too depends on the next thing etc; And another consequence is that, the meaning of every term that we use depends on its differences with the terms we haven't used. Therefore, the meaning isn't self contained in the text, at the same time that, being all the text, there is nothing outside of it.

Differance, that in French is pronounced the same as 'difference' but it's written with an alteration in one vocal, it's an aspect of language that only writing gives account for.

Since ancient Greece, philosophers have suspected the written language, for example in the platonic dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates tells a myth about writing and says that it just gives an "appearance of wisdom", but not real wisdom. Derrida proposes to invert this concept: according to him, the written word allows us to see something about language that the spoken word hides. Plato in his critique of writing, thinks about the idea that, without the author, the father of the text, the reader can't explain or clarify the apologies that the text may contain. This way, we believe that the meaning of the text depends on the presence of its author that can help us clarify it; the same way that we suppose that the meaning of 'race' (in our little example above) depends on the presence of a race.

That said, Derrida remind us that the habitual definition of sign is that what is in place of the thing itself, in a way that, the sign represents the presence of the thing in the absence of it: here there is already a difference, in the double sense of a temporal distance (temporization) and being different (spacing). This, in Derrida's opinion, supports the idea that, what is said about the sign, can be said, -and with more reason- about the text.

"We only think in signs."

Jacques Derrida.

If we admit that the meaning, depends on the two directions of differance, then we should question ourselves the way we think about the world, that means being conscious that the meaning isn't as direct and clear as it seems, and that it is always susceptible of being disclosed by the deconstruction of it; And, that our ways of thinking, speaking, or writting, imply political, ludic, sexual, historic, and ethic matters among others, that we don't always acknowledge or admit. This is why some philosophers have argued that deconstruction is above all, an ethic practice: by reading a text in a deconstructive way, we question ourselves its statements and at the same time, we reveal to complicated ethic problems that may have been occult.

"We are all mediators, translators."

Jacques Derrida.

Word Count -2021

Works Cited

“deconstruction | Definition, Philosophy, Theory, Examples, & Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 September 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/deconstruction. Accessed 4 November 2022.

Naas, Michael, et al. “Jacques Derrida (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 22 November 2006, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/. Accessed 4 November 2022.

Salmon, Peter. “How to deconstruct the world.” Psyche.Co, 19 May 2021, https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-deconstruct-the-world-by-thinking-like-jacques-derrida. Accessed 4 November 2022.

Postcolonial-Studies - 203

COMPARISON OF PORTRAYALS OF FEMININE VOICES IN J.M. COETZEE’S FOE AND JEAN RHYS’ WIDE SARGASSO SEA

Name: Dhruvita Dhameliya

Roll no : 03

Semester: 3

Year:- 2021 to 2023

Subject:- Postcolonial-Studies

Topic :-COMPARISON OF PORTRAYALS OF FEMININE VOICES IN J.M. COETZEE’S FOE AND JEAN RHYS’ WIDE SARGASSO SEA

Email ID:

dhameliyadhruvita24@gmail.com

Submitted to: S. B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

J.M.Coetzee:-

John Maxwell Coetze is a South African–Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language.He has won the Booker Prize (twice), the CNA Prize (thrice), the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina étranger, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and holds a number of other awards and honorary doctorates.

Coetzee has received numerous awards throughout his career, although he has a reputation for avoiding award ceremonies.

Coetzee was the first writer to be awarded the Booker Prize twice: for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983, and for Disgrace in 1999. As of 2020, four other authors have achieved this, J.G. Farrell, Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel, and Margaret Atwood.

Introduction of Novel:-

Foe is a novel by J.M. Coetzee that was written in 1986, 267 years after the publication of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Foe was written in response to DeFoe’s Robinson Crusoe and, through the words of J.M. Coetzee, the character of Susan Barton describes her life during and after her time on the desolate island with Cruso. The major difference between the two novels is that Foe assimilates a woman’s voice into the highly masculine story of Robinson Crusoe. Barton’s time on “Cruso’s island” is spent in preoccupation with Cruso’s way of life, and life after her rescue is spent in reflection of her relationships with Cruso, Friday, and Foe. This female voice is presented through the words of a male author, J.M. Coetzee, who presents Barton as a submissive supporting actress to the extremely dominant character of Robinson Crusoe. Coetzee’s Foe bestows a voice on the female castaway but fails to award her a voice of strength because Robinson Crusoe dominates not only the island they are both stranded on, but also the whole story itself.

Now I would like to compare the mediums and effects of voice and silence in the lives of the female characters of the re-written postcolonial texts Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea and J.M. Coetzee's Foe. I want to show that Rhys and Coetzee used the names of Antoinette and Susan to show women's treatment during the 19th century. Treated as inferiors to men and lacking the freedom to do or say as they pleased, the treatment of women and their struggle to find a voice was a focus of both novels. 

 Introduction:-

"Woman' is only a social construct that has no basis in nature, that 'woman, in other words, is a term whose definition depends upon the context in which it is being discussed and not upon some set of sexual organs or social experiences. This renders the experience women have of themselves and the meaning of their social relationships problematic."

Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea and J.M. Coetzee's Foe are both postcolonial re-written texts having strong female characters as the narrators. Rhys tried to give the silenced Bertha in Jane Eyre a voice of her own with Antoinette. Coetzee changed the whole notion of adventure stories by having a female adventurer, Susan Barton, narrating her experiences instead of a male character, as shown in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Both novels attempted to give voice to women, a representation of the postcolonial times in which women were starting to find their individuality. The research will analyze the similarities and differences from the discussion started in the previous chapters in the representation of the feminine voice in the two postcolonial novels,

The female characters narrated both novels in different ways. In J.M. Coetzee's Foe, Susan Barton believed that language played a big part in expressing oneself. Without proper language, one can never communicate one's true self to its fullest to society. She frequently lamented the fact that Friday could not speak, even though he communicated with music - "There are times when I ask myself whether, in his earlier life, he had the slightest mastery of language, whether he knows what kind of thing language is." It seemed to Susan that speech was an irreplaceable form of communication to achieve the freedom of individuality as Susan states referring to Friday - "He does not know what freedom is. Freedom is a word, less than a word, a noise, one of the multitudes of noises I make when I open my mouth." This implies that for Susan, language is the essence of freedom, and if one doesn't have the medium of speech, he or she won't be able to understand the meaning and significance of freedom as well.

However, in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, the female character Antoinette never focused so much on the usage of language to express her voice. What mattered the most was conveying her thoughts and emotions in an accessible medium, which would get her the most attention. Antoinette uses a wide range of communication mediums and talks in metaphors, dreams, and madness. For example, while in the convent, she talks about her dream and says, "I dreamed I was in Hell." This could be a metaphor for her future entrapment in a palace in England.

While in Wide Sargasso Sea, a female writer, Jean Rhys, attempts to give another female Creole character, Bertha, a voice of her own through Antoinette and succeeds to a certain extent in allowing the readers an opportunity to hear Bertha's side of the story. Even though she still needs a male character, Rochester, to define Antoinette in the many crucial parts of the novel. By taking Antoinette's voice away in essential parts, Jean Rhys raises the question of whether she could bring Bertha out of the patriarchal notions that Bronte had made her a victim of in Jane Eyre.

On the other hand, in J.M. Coetzee's Foe, Coetzee attempts to create a strong female persona who is willing to tell her own story. The author fails to maintain the boldness and independence in the character as Susan Barton's story ended up depending on men, both in context and writing. It can be argued that Coetzee was deliberately playing with the character of Susan by giving readers the idea in the beginning that he was creating a strong female voice. Even though, in the end, he took the narrative authority away from her and proved that Susan never really had the power to tell her own story. It is a clear representation of the times when women were starting to find their feet as individuals; however, they had still not completely moved on from the ideas thrust into them as children of a patriarchal society.

The stories allow us to look at the same stories done before, from the previously voiceless female's perspective, in a society that views women differently and more powerfully than ever before in human history. The novels focus on not only the female characters' voices but also their silences as it satirically portrays the silencing of women. Thus, these novels are good representations of how far forward the voice of women has come in literature.

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is an attempt to rewrite the story of Bertha, whose voice was completely overpowered by that of Bronte in Jane Eyre. Antoinette, in Wide Sargasso Sea, portrays the character of Bertha from Jane Eyre. As the chief narrator of the novel, Antoinette's perspective allows readers to see Bertha's side of the story. Through Antoinette, Rhys gave Bertha a voice to express her feelings, thoughts, and emotions that went unspoken in Jane Eyre. Thus, Wide Sargasso Sea provides readers with a much more feminine perspective, representative of the postcolonial times, of the story of Jane Eyre.

Similarly, in Foe, Coetzee, despite being a male author, tried to give a female character a chance to tell her story in the context of the hugely popular tale of Robinson Crusoe that Daniel Defoe previously told. While the thought of this famous adventure story being told from a female perspective would have been impossible before, postcolonial literature is not limited by such boundaries Coetzee tried to use the character of Susan to represent the newly empowered feminist of the era, allowing readers to gain an idea of an intimate picture of the obstacles, conflicts, powers, and freedom of a woman in a postcolonial society.

Comparison of "Silence":-

The use of silence is another area in which the two novels differ. In Coetzee's Foe, Susan Barton is seen eventually having to resort to silence to avoid conflict and confusion when Foe starts to overpower her in the novel's third part. Foe's statements, opinions, and manipulations confused Susan's beliefs and emotions so much that she decided to become silent even though she had been narrating the story from the beginning,

"Silence is generally deplored because it is taken to be a result and a symbol of passivity and powerlessness: Those who are denied speech cannot make their experience known and thus cannot influence the course of their lives or history." A point to be argued in this is that sometimes Susan Barton deliberately chose silence over speech as she did not want the readers of Foe to know everything that was going on in her mind. She says to Foe while defining the difference between her and Friday's silence - "Whereas the silence I keep regarding Bahia and other matters is chosen and purposeful." 

"Allowing individuals to make of her what they will, she retains her sense of

superiority "I smiled at them at all, allowing them to think little of her, she retains her privacy in a novel where there is much isolation but little of that valuable commodity."

In this regard, one may argue that Susan expressed little about her authentic self. holding her emotions, she was able to keep an upper hand over others sometimes, as other By holding her emotions, she was able to keep an upper hand over others sometimes, as other individuals might get confused about her authentic personality and opinions regarding things, and this made her come out as a mysterious lady in front of others who had a secret heart and mind.

However, this compromise completely goes against her original intention as she feels that the expression of her voice is entirely dependent on Foe's writing and silence is the best way to deal with this helpless state. Susan's innate desire to tell her story is there; however, she is unable to put her thoughts into words without the validation of Cruso, which contributes to her silence.

This silence is not a choice as she is compromising her voice and letting Foe's version dominate just so she can have her story told; even if it is not the version, she will write it herself. On the other hand, in Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, the silence was Antoinette's method to get noticed, as she could not affect her husband through her speech. When Christophine tries to talk her out of her marriage, she says, "I am not rich now, I have no money of my own at all, everything I had belongs to him". She could have rebelled, but it appears as if she has internalized her silenced and submissive existence. But even though Antoinette's complete silence gave her attention, it was not in a positive manner as, in her husband's opinion, the silence was a sign of her impending insanity as Rochester stated - "She's as mad as the other, I thought, and turned to the window." Antoinette's silence, even though may have been intentional, didn't get her a positive response from Rochester; instead, it made her look even more insane in the eyes of Rochester as he continually keeps referring to her as insane- 

"My lunatic. My mad girl."

As Rochester continues to refuse to acknowledge Antoinette's voice, she decides to push herself into a world of silence. Her silence soon becomes overpowered by madness as she starts expressing her deepest thoughts and desires through her silent actions, which in Rochester's eyes is mad silence. She chooses to be seen as a madwoman in front of society as her mad silence succeeds in providing her curiosity and attention from her husband and society and, thus, the feeling of being significant.

Moreover, Rochester objectified Antoinette by referring to her as a doll numerous times in his narration, which shows that Rochester has downgraded Antoinette to a simple doll because of her mad silence. Here one can notice the indirect use of ventriloquism as in ventriloquism, one is merely a puppet in the hands of the ventriloquist, and again, For Rochester, Antoinette's eyes, voice, smile, and everything else are as unexpressive as those of a doll. He is unable to see the struggle and pain behind the doll's face. Throughout her life, no one understood her; no one heard her silent cries -

"Antoinette is a child of silence, to whom communication, words, speech bring only unhappiness and rejection...She is silenced first by her mother, who denies her existence, and then by Rochester, who refuses to be the reader of her story." 

Submissiveness Towards the Male Counterpart:- 

Another consistent idea in both the novels is that of females being given attention and importance because of their bodies and succumbing to the desires of males, "sexual appetite was considered one of the chief symptoms of moral insanity in women" .

In Foe, the character of Susan Barton, who came across as a strong-willed individual woman, driven towards her goal of publishing her own story, is seen physically surrendering to both the male characters, Cruso and Foe.

Foe and Cruso both see Susan as a physical object and desire her sexually. At the same time, Susan seems to have an innate need to please both men, eventually giving up her body per their wishes to create a place for herself in a world where men overpowered her. Her sexuality characterizes Susan. Susan's sexuality is first displayed at the beginning of the novel. The fact that she excuses his actions of degradation to an impulse of desire solidifies her role as an accessory in the novel; she not only lets Cruso use her but excuses it as a right of his male desires. One can argue that Susan's lack of resistance against the men's physical urges came from the fact that she realized and accepted the male domination that prevailed and thought that the physical union was a duty. However, she was confused about the whole notion of the physical union, as she stated:

"Was I to regret what had passed between Cruso and me? Would it have been better if we continued to live as brother and sister, host and guest, master and servant, or whatever it was we had been? Chance had cast me on his island, and luck had thrown me in his arms. In a world of possibility, is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid, our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep, and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives."

Susan's intuitive submission to a dominant man proves that she wants to see herself as "a free woman," but in her heart, she cannot get herself out of the tendency to bow down to a robust, masculine figure. Coetzee makes Barton the woman behind the man, defining her as a "free and autonomous being like all human creatures that finds herself living in a world where men compel her to assume the status of the Other"

Quest for "Identity"

Both the novels focus on the search for individual identity and end up defining the female protagonist in relation to other males' treatment of her. Foe's main protagonist, Susan Barton, is seen as depending on the male characters to define her identity. At the story's start, Susan Barton lives with Cruso and Friday on Cruso's island, obeying Cruso's orders; she sleeps with Cruso as it makes her feel more significant to Cruso. She also defines her voice in relation to Friday by comparing his muteness to her speaking ability. Even though she works as Friday's ventriloquist, he helps her realize the importance of speech and expressing oneself with words. Similarly, when Susan meets Foe, she starts to define herself according to his views of her, and she becomes a confused individual who bends to Foe's every whim and opinion. She ends up sleeping with him to gain his acceptance and starts to define her freedom and voice in relation to how much creative freedom Foe chose to give her.

Similarly, Antoinette defines her identity by relating it to her husband Rochester's treatment of her, which decides what she thinks about herself. To gain Rochester's notice, she resorts to any means and mediums, such as madness, silence, sex, etc... Antoinette is seen requesting Christophine, a motherly figure to her, to help Antoinette gain her husband's love and affection. Eventually, Rochester's influence became so severe that Antoinette's emotions and expressions are entirely defined by his behavior toward her, and when his ignorance reaches extreme levels, it results in Antoinette losing her mind and going mad as Anja Loomba stated, "within the framework of psychoanalytic discourse, anti-colonial resistance is coded as madness."

One more significant matter to consider hereis that in both the novels, the lack of freedom and voice affected the individuals so much that it became a matter of existence for both Antoinette and Susan. The insecurities, doubts, and helplessness were created in their hearts and minds mostly from their interactions with the male characters, which eventually took away their sense of self and existence. The belief in their existence depends on the freedom, voice, and validation that they seek to receive throughout the story.

While Susan and Antoinette both search for their voices throughout the novels, their journeys pass through different paths. In Foe, Susan Barton starts as a strong and confident individual, believing in her individuality as a free woman and looking to share her story with the world. However, as the story progressed, she ended up compromising on her ideals more and more and bowing down to the dominating male voices. Foe's power as a writer and his knowledge and skills of manipulation succeeded in confusing Susan about her identity, individuality, and freedom. She ended up losing her essence and substance, as a woman, to Foe.

Conclusion:-

The presence of women has affected every culture and society in human history, whether they were oppressed or liberated. Throughout most of history, women were forced to suppress their voices and be subservient to men in each crucial aspect of life, including the one place where true expression of oneself is of utmost importance - literature. Countless years of discrimination in literature, full of male writers who portrayed women as the weaker gender dependent on men, hindered the women's liberation movement even more. The fact that women could not even truly express themselves in literature resulted in them having little power over their representation for hundreds of years. As a consequence, the female voice had been lost for ages. However, The feminist voice, suppressed for so many years before, also found its way to literature in the 20th century. The postcolonial age has seen more feminine writers, stronger feminine characters, and the true power of the feminine voice. Postcolonial novels like Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea and J.M. Coetzee's Foe are two hugely influential pieces of work that tried to capture this latest definition of what it means to be a woman in this era. In every aspect of their lives, the presence of men was not only constant but also influential in how Susan and Antoinette felt, how happy they were and how they expressed themselves. Their voices were more powerful and expressive than those of women in the literature previously, but they were still affected by men in a significant way. Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea and JM. Coetzee's Foe are reflective of the fact that, even though women were coming out strong and putting their perspectives and opinions quite courageously forward during the postcolonial era, they still could not completely liberate themselves from the power of men that had overwhelmed them for centuries previously.

Word Count:- 3436

Works Cited

Azam, Nushrat. “A Feminist Critique of “Voice” and the “Other” in J.M. Coetzee’s Post-colonial Novel “Foe.”” ResearchGate, December 2018, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331840804_A_Feminist_Critique_of_Voice_and_the_Other_in_JM_Coetzee's_Post-colonial_Novel_Foe. Accessed 2022.

DeBuck, Katie. “Susan Barton: The Woman on “Cruso's Island” | Magnificat.” Marymount Commons, https://commons.marymount.edu/magnificat/susan-barton-the-woman-on-crusos-island/. Accessed 4 November 2022.