The Postcolonial Comparative Study of Select Novels of Zadie Smith Andrea Levy and Monica Ali A Gender Perspective

Abstract

This doctoral research aims at to explore the contemporary postcolonial British society which once claimed to be homogeneous and identified itself as located at the centre with the white supremacist celebrating the standards and measures set by the whites who reside in the First World to measure the standards of development and progress of Other world. Today, people migrate not only for better future prospectus but rather migration becomes an indelible fact of social life because of the sea change in ICT and in the means of transportation. The contemporary British society, because of this global change has undergone a never dreamed metamorphosis which has shattered the expectation of the whites. Rudyard Kipling, a staunch advocator of Colonialism, writes about this distinctive race - the whites, that: West is West and East is East: the twain shall never meet. The postcolonial British society, today than ever before becomes multicultural that celebrates heterogeneity and hybridity. Even, the empire has migrated to its mother country to fulfill its requirements of labour with the hope of heightening its life. However, it is frustrated when it finds that it has no place in its mother country; all its dreams never have transformed into reality and the fact of life is bitter as Hortense, Samad, Nazneen and Gilbert face the predicament being the black immigrants. Thus, the British society; once white today becomes heterogeneous, multilingual, multiethnic, multiracial that celebrates pluralism, multiculturalism and hybridity. The present thesis along with this postcolonial deconstructive examination analyses the changing gender dynamics in the context of decolonization and postcolonization; although, the implicit threat of neocolonization is there but it majorly emphasizes on the life of the black immigrants and significantly females who have undergone multilayered exploitation. newlineIn fact, in all these novels, the females who are docile, submissive, trapped at home, at the beginning, but at last, emerge out as family pr