Paper Titles in Periodical
International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences
Volume 60

Subscribe

Subscribe to our Newsletter and get informed about new publication regulary and special discounts for subscribers!

ILSHS > Volume 60 > Edward Said’s Orientalism and the Representation...
< Back to Volume

Edward Said’s Orientalism and the Representation of Oriental Women in George Orwell’s Burmese Days

Full Text PDF

Abstract:

Edward Said’s groundbreaking text, Orientalism is a contrapuntal reading of imperial discourse about the non-Western Other. It indcates that the Western intellectual is in the service of the hegemonic culture. In this influential text, Said shows how imperial and colonial hegemony is implicated in discursive and textual production. Orientalism is a critique of Western texts that have represented the East as an exotic and inferior other and construct the Orient by a set of recurring stereotypical images and clichés. Said’s analysis of Orientalism shows the negative stereotypes or images of native women as well. As a result, Orientalism has engendered feminist scholarship and debate in Middle East studies. For Said, many Western scholars, orientalists, colonial authorities and writers systematically created the orientalist discourse and the misrepresentation of the Orient. George Orwell as a Western writer experienced imperialism at first hand while serving as an Assistant Superintendent of Imperial Police in Burma from 1922 to 1927. One of Orwell’s major concerns during his life was the issue of imperialism and colonialism which is reflected in his first published novel, Burmese Days. Orwell’s own political purpose in this novel was to convince the reader that imperialism was morally wrong. Although he saw imperialism as one of the major injustices of his time and had declared himself against Empire, in Burmese Days, Orwell, consciously and unconsciously, repudiated his views and followed the Orientalist discourse. In this study, the authors demonstrate how Orwell maintains a white male Eurocentric imperialist viewpoint. The authors attempt to examine how the ‘female subalterns’ are represented in Burmese Days. While Oriental women are represented as the oppressed ones, they are also regarded as being submissive, voiceless, seductive and promiscuous.

Info:

Periodical:
International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences (Volume 60)
Pages:
22-33
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILSHS.60.22
Citation:
E. Shabanirad and S. M. Marandi, "Edward Said’s Orientalism and the Representation of Oriental Women in George Orwell’s Burmese Days", International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, Vol. 60, pp. 22-33, 2015
Online since:
Sep 2015
Authors:
Ensieh Shabanirad, Seyyed Mohammad Marandi
Keywords:
Burmese Days, Contrapuntal Reading, Edward Said, Female Subalterns, Orientalism, Orwell, Representation
Export:
RIS, BibTeX, Text
Distribution:
Open Access

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

References:

Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (2007). Post Colonial Studies: the Key Concepts. New York: Routledge.

Bertens, Hans. (2001). Literary Theory: The Basics. London: Routledge.

Bohmer, Elleke. (2005). Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gandhi, Leela. (1998). Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York: Columbia University.

Lazaro, Alberto. (2001). The Road from George Orwell: His Achievement and Legacy. Bern: Peter Lang AG.

Loomba, A. (1998). Colonialism-Postcolonialism. London: Routledge.

Macfie,A. L. (2002). Orientalism. London: Longman.

Marandi, Seyyed Mohammad. (2005). Life After Postmodernism and Contrapuntal Texual Analysis. Pazhuhesh-e Zabanha-ye Khareji. 20, 161-184.

McLeod, J. (2000). Beginning postcolonialism. Manchester, U. K: Manchester University Press.

Orwell, George. Burmese Days. n. d. .

Rai, Alok. (1988). Orwell and the Politics of Despair. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Said, E. W. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf.

Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.

Said (1983) The World, The Text, and The Critic. London: Faber and Faber.

Sardar, Z. (1999). Orientalism. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak?, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. New York, NY: Columbia UP.

Tyson, Lois. (2006). Critical Theory Today. New York: Routledge.

Yegenoglu, Meyda. (1998) Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism. London: Cambridge University Press.

Young, R.J.C. (2001). Postcolonialism. UK: Blackwell Publishers.

Show More Hide