Lori Arnold

10 December 2013

A Letter to My Son

Now that I am a mother, I no longer read for myself alone. I read with you constantly in mind, Daniel. Reading literature is such an important part of who I am that I can hardly wait to share my favorite books with you. My excitement over sharing books is similar to what many people feel about teaching their children to love their favorite sports teams. I also feel a heavy responsibility for your education. Raising you to be a reader (of quality literature) is one of my highest priorities. Although I have long dreamed about sharing great literature with you, I have recently begun to question my own definition of great literature. My own education is an example of the biases that influence education in the United States, which I recognized during this course in postcolonial literature, and this realization will hopefully assist me in my desire to educate you to love literature.

As I discussed in my midterm and research journal, my own primary and secondary education focused almost exclusively on American and British literature. I particularly enjoyed British literature courses in college. This limited perspective of literature relates to objective 3b from our course, which addresses, “Americans’ resistance to or ignorance of postcolonial” literature. It seems that discomfort with the many atrocities of European imperialism has caused many Americans to focus primary and secondary school curricula on the shiny, happy bits i.e. Austen and Wordsworth, and shy away from teaching literature that focuses on the heavy ramifications of imperialism. Many American students like myself stick to what they know in college, like I did and choose to take courses that focus exclusively on their areas of interest. On the other hand, many colleges expend most of their effort in teaching the ‘old canon,’ which is primarily composed of texts by dead white men. Objective three from our course focuses on the motive Americans may have for failing to critique colonialism in the classroom. I posit that there are primarily two different reasons for this. The first reason is our relative geographical isolation from many other countries. We share a border with only two other countries and we have made colonization attempts on both (another aspect of American literature that is glossed over in some school curricula.) I believe that living in a border state should cause me to be sensitive to the fact that many Mexicans view Texas as a state that was taken through colonization. Secondly, for most of our history, the United States’ government has been closely allied with European imperial powers. To this day, Great Britain remains an important ally for the United States and has assisted our military in neo-colonial ventures in the Middle East recently. As long as former empires continue to be strong allies for the United States, our government has strong motivations for keeping children loyal to the literature of the United States and Great Britain. Of course, until very recently, I had no idea that it was possible to feel loyalty to the literature of a country.

Taking this colonial/postcolonial literature course, has opened my eyes to my own ignorance of other literature, cultures, and history. After having taken the course, I appreciate that a multicultural literature requirement has recently been added to the graduate degree program at UHCL in an effort to expand beyond the traditional canon. From the beginning of my coursework I knew that I wanted to take colonial/postcolonial literature. As I elaborated at length in my midterm and research journal, I am an unashamed Anglophile, and I thought that postcolonial literature would allow me to fulfill my multicultural literature requirement, while still reading some of my own favorite literature. However, I had no idea how many of my own literary weaknesses would be revealed. At times in this course I have been embarrassed by how little I know of world literature and recent world history. This is a sentiment shared by many students upon taking this course. We are forced to acknowledge some of our own blind spots and the reality that we are products of an education system that is governed by political motives. In addition to seeing the flaws in my own education, I have become very thankful that through this course I have been exposed to both postcolonial criticism and texts from many different cultures. I have to admit that the section that resonated most strongly for me in our course was our discussion of Africa. This would likely have not been the case if Oyinna Ogbinna had not been in our course. It has truly been a gift to learn from her personal history, which also reminds me of the wonderful opportunities that we have in our global society to learn from people of varying cultures that we encounter every day. Although future courses may not have the opportunity to learn from a Nigerian when they read Things Fall Apart, through the incorporation of texts from students in previous classes, they will hopefully read and appreciate her thoughtful midterm and research essay. To me, this is one of the greatest strengths of this course. The opportunity to learn from other students as well as the professor is very encouraging to me as a graduate student because I am still learning to gain confidence in my ability to read and write as a literary professional. Although my research journal initially appeared to be a reflection of my limited views of literature, I made some surprising discoveries about Forster, that encourage me to believe that literature criticism is constantly changing and viewing literature from a different perspective. I learned from my research journal that Forster was very sympathetic to many oppressed groups including women, the colonized, and homosexuals like himself. Reflecting on all of the lessons that I learned from this course has caused me to begin consider how I can teach you differently, Daniel.

As a product of homeschooling myself, I have long desired to homeschool my own children. Until taking this course, I have felt very confident in my ability to teach you literature. However, this course has exposed so many areas of ignorance that it has caused me to question my own knowledge and ability to properly educate my own child. Unfortunately, I do not believe there is much hope for sweeping change in the United States’ education system because of the political motives outlined above, so it will be up to me to insure that you have some exposure to multicultural literature, Daniel. I believe that individual teachers can make choices that will influence the literature that their students read as well, which will ultimately change the focus of American education from being very ethnocentric to embracing the global society that is rapidly becoming reality. There are two ways that Dr. White incorporated postcolonial texts into our class that made them more accessible to American students.

The intertextuality of discussing colonial and postcolonial texts together, as outlined in objective one for our course, was very helpful. Two of the major colonial texts we read, Robinson Crusoe and Heart of Darkness were familiar to most of the students in the class because they are regularly assigned in American classrooms. Thus, the students began from a place of familiarity in learning to embrace the ‘others’ that we encountered in reading postcolonial texts. I believe that intertextuality is a very important strategy for teaching critical thinking skills to younger students and for helping them to willingly tackle texts that may be very different from those they are used to. Although it would be somewhat difficult to incorporate American literature, which younger students are generally more familiar with, and postcolonial texts, I believe that it is possible because many postcolonial texts, such as Lucy and Jasmine address issues of transnational migration, as discussed in objective 1b. These two texts discuss the American discomfort with ‘others’ and Jasmine specifically critiques their disinterest in learning about other cultures. I would like to use intertextuality as a tool for teaching literature to students of all ages, but I believe that it is specifically useful for teaching older students who are ready to begin developing critical thinking skills about issues of colonization and the issues that arise post colonization. Objective two from our course, specifically explored issues of genre in postcolonial literature. There was one class discussion that we had about teaching literature that stuck with me and that has caused me to continue reflecting on how I would like to teach literature. Dr. White raised the question of whether literature should be taught from a chronological perspective or by genre. My classmate, Kristine Vermillion, defended teaching by genre as similar to teaching the basics of math and science before branching out into specific subsets of those subjects. Her comments stayed with me and I have come to believe that the most effortless way to incorporate world literature in teaching children is through teaching genre. I remember that in my own high school curriculum, I read world literature in tenth grade; however, in this ‘conservative Christian home school curriculum’ world literature was actually European and American literature. Young children will not find Derek Walcott’s poetry any different from the poetry of Wordsworth or Poe, if they begin reading all three poets at the same time. I know that Walcott is not ‘canonical’ yet, but I believe that teaching the ‘canon’ exclusively is an antiquated idea that does not reflect the global society that you will grow up in, Daniel. If I am truly keeping in mind the current changes in the global society and economy, I should make a concerted effort to teach Chinese literature. Of course this brings up the important point that teaching literature by this method will require much more effort from me. I am still not very familiar with postcolonial or world literature, but I am eager to learn more. American education is so focused on American and British literature that any teachers who desire to incorporate non-European literature will have to do a lot of their own work. I realize that this will even be true for me as I will not find a ready made literature curriculum that meets my needs. Thus, I would like to incorporate postcolonial literature into teaching you genres at a young age and then use intertextuality to teach you about the realities of colonialism through teaching you colonial/postcolonial literature in high school.

As the course is ending, I realize that the adventure is just beginning. I have a very long list of books to read over Christmas break (while writing my thesis). A very long reading list is one of the blessings of a course like this. Rather than seeking to be an in depth discussion of postcolonial literature, I recognize that this has been an introductory course. Along the way Dr. White has carefully mentioned texts that that have not been able to read, but that could explore on our own in the future. I have been eyeing books at the library for the past month that I cannot wait to check out once the semester is over. This is one of the joys of being a lifelong reader, Daniel. Literature study is not about passing classes to finish high school or a college degree. It is about reading to learn more about yourself and the world around you. I hope that through teaching you the literature of many other cultures, I will help you to be more aware and welcoming of people of other cultures.

Women as a Doubly Oppressed Group in Postcolonial Literature

The concurrent rise of feminist and postcolonial literature in the twentieth century causes them to be strongly intertwined in many literature courses including this course. Another reason for this connection relates to objective two from our course regarding the genre of the novel. Female authors have been involved in writing novels nearly as long as the genre has existed in English. While women have long been involved in writing novels, the more famous novels by British women writers do not usually concern the colonies as a major topic. The fact remains that some of the most famous novels in English are authored by women, which indicates that this genre is allows women a powerful voice. In our course, we have often discussed issues of gender that arise in the texts. In his midterm essay, Jacob McCleese addressed some issues of gender surrounding the texts we read in the first half of the course. He specifically addresses the problems readers encounter with colonial texts that fail to give women a voice. In the second half of the course, this theme continued, but I also observed that male authors of postcolonial texts also often fail to give women a strong voice. However, I find it curious that in this course, all of the colonial texts we read were written by men, while two of the major postcolonial texts we read were written by women. Although it would make sense to read in a course about colonial/postcolonial literature course, texts by women on either side of this binary, the fact remains that few British female authors wrote novels that could be considered colonial because of the limits that these women faced. Literary critics and professors often consider both women and colonized people members of oppressed groups. Thus, colonized women are doubly oppressed in many cases. The texts read in this course highlight the oppressive attitudes toward women that both colonizers and colonized cultures exhibit as well as the relative freedom that women find in migration to Western countries, specifically the United States. In this essay, I will examine the colonizers’ attitude toward women as illustrated in The Man Who Would be King and The Heart of Darkness, traditional colonized cultures’ attitudes toward women in Train to Pakistan and Things Fall Apart, and finally the women’s response to oppression in Lucy and Jasmine.

In Imperial Great Britain, many misogynist colonizers have conflicting views of women. They often display misogynist attitudes towards both women of their own society and native colonized women; however, those attitudes usually take different forms. The Man Who Would be King and The Heart of Darkness both objectify women and display very misogynist attitudes towards all women. In both texts, the male characters portray a fascination with the exoticized “other” women. For Dravot, in The Man Who Would be King, this causes him to desire to possess a native woman; however, he does not view them as truly human, so he believes that he can have any woman that he wants. Although Dravot expresses admiration for the native women when he tells Peachey, “‘These women are whiter than you or me, and a Queen I will have” (Kipling para. 2.54), he ultimately displays no respect for their desires or views. When the native men attempt to explain why giving a girl to Dravot goes against their customs, he displays a typical colonizer’s attitude toward native customs. As long as they did not interfere with his desires, Dravot did not mind allowing the natives to continue their cultural customs, but when they resist his lust for a native woman, he threatens to use force against her: “I’ll hearten you with the butt of a gun so that you’ll never want to be heartened again” (Kipling, para. 2.64). As Kipling portrays them, the two men have no moral qualms about using force against those they believe to be inferior toward themselves. While Peachey admires the natives’ custom of consulting the women’s desires in marriage, Dravot does not. Ultimately, the natives that Peachey and Dravot have conquered are too afraid of them to defend their women against Dravot’s lust. Although they attempt to appease Dravot by giving him the object of his desire, Kipling reminds the reader that she is indeed human by allowing the girl to take control of her own destiny. Kipling may not grant the woman a voice to describe her feelings toward becoming the wife of a ‘god,’ but he does give her agency to expose him as human. When the girl bites Dravot (para. 2.74), she signals the beginning of the end for the two conquerors. Kipling implies through this sequence of events that women are the undoing of men, which reflects a popular attitude toward women that they will cause the destruction of men. Thus, the portrayal of women in The Man Who Would be King, reflects a some what conflicting view of women generally, which indicates the beginning of a shift in the view of women.

Conrad portrays also portrays a conflicting view of women in Heart of Darkness through the contrast between the African woman and Kurtz’ white fiancee. Women are completely absent from the beginning of the novel, and when they do appear it is only in relation to a man. The two women that Conrad brings into the novel are both related to Kurtz, which gives them value to Marlowe. The native woman Marlowe describes in Heart of Darkness displays a similar sense of desperation as the native girl in The Man Who Would be King. As Marlowe describes her, “She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress” (Conrad para. 2.51). The language that Conrad uses to describe the native woman is inhuman and savage. Marlowe does not have any direct interaction with the woman, thus her only value is in her relationship to Kurtz. She is not a thinking woman in Marlowe’s description of her. Rather, “her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some struggling, half-shaped resolve...like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose” (Conrad para. 2.52). The woman is representative of Marlowe’s view of Africa itself as a tangle of emotions rather than of introspective rationality. Kurtz is initially described as the ultimate, rational man who does not allow emotions to intervene with his primary goal of sending ivory downriver. However, the African woman represents his decline into the deep irrationality of Africa. Although Marlowe regrets Kurtz’s downfall, he does not judge the man for taking an African mistress. To him, this is simply a reflection of the continent’s influence on Kurtz’s mind. In contrast, Marlowe describes Kurtz’s Intended as a quiet, stoic woman who has experienced great grief, but “she had a mature capacity for fidelity, for belief, for suffering” (Conrad para. 2.90). This description illustrates Marlowe’s admiration for the Intended. Marlowe’s portrayal of this woman is characteristic of the qualities that he values in Kurtz. Marlowe admires Kurtz’s Intended for her quiet forbearance of her grief and is disturbed by the primitive wildness that he sees in the African woman. In both texts, women are portrayed as objects of men’s sexual desire. Dravot believes he can have any woman that he wants for the taking, while Kurtz actually does take an African mistress, which Marlowe does not judge.

When we read Train to Pakistan and Things Fall Apart in class, I noticed that although these texts are postcolonial, the two male authors portray women in a similar light to the colonial male authors. In reference to objective one from our course, which deals with intertextuality, I observed that postcolonial male authors may critique colonialism for its oppressiveness, but they often overlook the issues of gender that are present in colonial texts. In fact, by portraying the traditional cultures that existed before colonialism, as in Things Fall Apart, or that attempt to continue despite colonization, as in Train to Pakistan, the male authors reveal many similarities between the colonizers and colonized in their view of women as less than men. Although both Train to Pakistan and Things Fall Apart portray traditional cultures that are male dominated , there are brief indications that modernization is coming and will have an impact on the role of women in society. In Train to Pakistan, Singh progresses beyond the colonial texts by allowing women a voice, although their discussions continue to center around men. Unlike Heart of Darkness, which features two periphery female characters, the two primary female characters, a dancer who is not named, and Nooran, the love interest of Jugga, a local thief. The interaction between Hukum Chand and the dancer reflects the subservient role that women have in traditional Indian society; however, it also portrays the complications that have resulted from colonial intervention. Chand, while a native himself, represents the colonial government to the village people and the girls’ grandmother refers to him as “the Government” (28). When Chand asks for the girl, he is told, “She has never been near a man before. I have reared her for your honor’s pleasure” (29). This view of women as simply objects for men’s pleasure is horrific, particularly when Singh describes the near rape scene (31). However, Singh does not judge Chand for wanting a young girl to fulfill his lustful desires. In her final essay, Nicole Wheatley, from a previous class, expresses horror and outrage over the (near) rape scene in novel; however, in our class discussion we emphasized that ultimately Chand does not rape the girl. At times it seems as if Chand desires an emotional connection with the girl, albeit in a rather sick way because he frequently reflects that she is about the same age as his dead daughter. Perhaps the combination of Chand’s failure to consummate the relationship and his true desire for companionship are Singh’s way of showing the flaws in a culture that treats women merely as objects. Singh portrays the other female character, Nooran, as a tool of the local village politics. The subinspector sees her relationship with Jugga as positive because it will keep the young man out of trouble (23). Again, the subinspector and village police are a product of the colonial government and do not seem at all concerned about how Nooran is affected by their manipulations of Jugga. Nooran recognizes that she is powerless in her society when she discovers that she is pregnant, but she cannot tell Jugga because he is in jail. Instead, in desperation she turns to Jugga’s mother: “Beybey, I have Jugga’s child inside me. If I go to Pakistan they will kill it when they know it has a Sikh father” (131). Although the Sikhs and Muslims coexisted peacefully in Mano Majra, Nooran understands that she has broken a societal code and will be punished for it if she does not receive protection from Jugga. The two women form an unspoken bond because of the unborn baby, and “A vague hope filled Nooran’s being. She felt as if she belonged to the house and the house to her...She could come back even if Jugga failed to turn up” (131). This scene between the two women gives the reader some hope that women will begin to control their own lives; however, this is the only conversation between two women in the novel and Train to Pakistan ends without explaining what will happen to Nooran and Jugga’s child.

Writing about the Igbo people of Nigeria at the time of colonization, Achebe explores many issues relevant to gender in Things Fall Apart. The male protagonist, Okonkwo, expects his three wives to care for his home and provide him with children that prove his reputation as a great man. As a respected member of his village, Okonkwo takes his role as a husband and father seriously, but his primary concern is that his family does not disgrace him or his family history. Although women play an important role in Things Fall Apart, they clearly have a subservient role in society, as Achebe demonstrates in the novel. There are several examples in the novel, of Okonkwo beating his wives, which goes unpunished in all except one instance. In one remarkable episode in the novel, Okonkwo breaks an important village custom by beating his youngest wife during the Week of Peace and as a result he must make a sacrifice to the goddess he offended (Achebe 29-31). It is important to note that Achebe writes, “Okonkwo was provoked to justifiable anger by his youngest wife” (29). Thus, it is the breaking of village custom that is Okonkwo’s misdeed, not beating his wife. Later in the novel, Okonkwo also reflects on the things he wishes to teach his son about becoming a man: “No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man” (Achebe 53). The Igbo society that Achebe describes pre-colonization is very strongly patriarchal and views the subservience of his wives as essential to a man’s worth. While Achebe does make the protagonist of the novel a man who is very concerned with his reputation as a patriarch, he does demonstrate a complicated viewpoint of Igbo society and culture. In the first part of the novel, before Okonkwo’s exile, there are several lovely passages that describe everyday life in the village of Umuofia. Achebe even includes conversations between women in which no men are involved (40-43). The conversations between Ekwefi and her daughter Ezinma are not focused on men exclusively, but rather they demonstrate a loving relationship between a mother and daughter. Also, as Achebe portrays the polygamous relationship of Okonkwo with his three wives as primarily harmonious and the wives even defend each other at times. In the wife beating scene mentioned above, the first wife tries to cover for the youngest wife in order to protect her from the beating or least lessen Okonkwo’s wrath (29). However, it does seem ironic that a man would portray a polygamous relationship as naturally positive and harmonious. There is a disturbing lack of agency among the women in Things Fall Apart. They do not have a choice in the men that they marry and Achebe does not give them the opportunity to express their views on issues of twin abandonment or wife beating. In his critique of Heart of Darkness, Achebe expresses a deep unhappiness with Conrad’s failure to give the African natives dialogue, which he sees as dehumanizing the natives (Achebe para. 14c). I believe that a similar critique can be made of Achebe’s treatment of women in Things Fall Apart. Achebe’s novel, written in 1959, before the rise of feminist criticism, does have some strong similarities to colonial novels in its failure to give women a strong voice or the ability to change their own lives. Although Achebe does not give a voice to women in his novel, recent novels by female Nigerian authors are beginning to provide perspective of women’s experience. I recently picked up Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as a result of taking this course and I am delighted to report that Adichie does give a deeply feminine perspective of events in Nigeria surrounding the Biafran War. I admire Things Fall Apart, but I am also grateful to find women writers from Nigeria who can also speak up and give a voice to a woman’s perspective.

Lucy and Jasmine represent the convergence of postcolonial and feminist literature in our course. These two novels spoke powerfully to the class, in part because of their distinctive writing styles. These two novels also feature female protagonists, who are as complicated as the colonial/postcolonial situations that they face. The four novels featuring male protagonists are less personal and sometimes difficult to connect with. An important aspect of contemporary novels is the relatable protagonists, which makes them appealing to modern readers. Thus, Lucy and Jasmine were a refreshing break from all of the men. While I may not always like Lucy or Jasmine, I cannot deny the power that these characters possess to capture my attention until the end of the novel. I may not always understand or agree with the decisions that the women make, but I have to care about what they do. Both novels, unlike the previous four novels are written primarily in the first person and the reader can easily begin to care for the title character. I also noticed that the narrative of the novels is not linear. In Lucy, Kincaid uses one experience that Lucy has in New York to flashback to a memory of Antigua. Although Lucy tells the reader many times that she is trying to forget Antigua (Kincaid 23), the continual flashbacks tell a different story. The narrative in Jasmine is more circular and her migration from India to different parts of the United States is even more complex than Lucy’s move from Antigua to New York. At times it is difficult for the reader to understand where an episode fits chronologically in Jasmine’s narrative. Mukherjee uses a fascinating method to help keep Jasmine’s history aligned through the different identities that Jasmine takes on as she moves from one location and circumstance to another. As noted in our class discussion led by Valerie Mead, Jasmine’s constantly changing identity is one way that she can be identified with the Indian goddess, Kali. This is one way that our class was able to identify with and understand the immense complexity of Indian culture. However, both novels show very clearly that the girls have a complex relationship with their past, and particularly their childhood in a former colony.

Although the two girls grew up in former colonies, it is clear that they experienced a society struggling to come to terms with modernity as addressed in objective two of our course. in Lucy, the reader slowly learns that the girl blames lack of opportunities that her mother and other women in Antigua faced on the problems created by colonization. She does not discuss what the traditional society was prior to colonization, but that is partly because the novel is set in postcolonial Antigua. The way that Kincaid portrays it in both Lucy and the excerpt from A Small Place that we read in class, the society and culture of Antigua has been completely eradicated by colonization. The bitterness that Kincaid displays is evidence of this, which reminds the reader that women suffer more than almost any other group as a result of colonization. Jasmine, on the other hand, provides a clearer picture of postcolonial India. The society Jasmine has been born into is still strongly patriarchal; however, Mukherjee portrays that as more similar to traditional Indian society and does not blame colonization for oppressing her. Jasmine’s entire family suffered from the Partition that resulted from Indian independence (Mukherjee 44), but she primarily focuses on the positive things that result from it. Although in traditional Indian society, women are completely subservient to men, Jasmine’s father allows her to get an education and asks for her opinion when she has a potential suitor (Mukherjee 48). While still living in India, Jasmine marries for love at only fourteen, but her husband does value her and encourages her to continue learning English, which serves her well later. However, as a result of the tensions stirred up between the Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus, Jasmine’s husband, Prakash Vijh is killed, which prompts Jasmine’s move to the United States. The male-authored texts we read in class simply ignored the possibility of women’s sexual desires. One way that postcolonial society provides new opportunities for the girls is that they are able to express their own sexual desires. The discussions of sex in both Lucy and Jasmine are frank and at times disturbing. As I acknowledged in my midterm, I found the discussions of sex in Lucy made me a little uncomfortable and I was no less uncomfortable with the sexuality in Jasmine. While Lucy always tried to make herself appear more powerful than the men she had sex with, Jasmine is clearly the victim of rape and the only way that she is able to escape is by killing her rapist. Lucy recognizes that men believe that they can have power over women through sex in her first sexual experience and takes decisive action to show that she is truly in control. She says, “but when I saw how much it mattered to him to be the first boy I had been, with, I could not give him such a hold over me” (Kincaid 83). While Lucy merely uses words to take control of the situation, which was not truly serious, Jasmine feels she must take much stronger action in order to regain control of her sexuality and life. Her choice to murder the man who raped her, just after arriving in the United States, reflects the absolute helplessness she felt (Mukherjee 118-119). As a new, illegal immigrant to the United States, Jasmine does not believe that she has any legal ability to get help, which drives her to murder. The male authored texts we studied in this course, primarily denied women agency or even an opinion on sex. Thus, the description of sex in both novels is more complex than the descriptions of sex that appear in the male authored texts.

The three varieties of texts, discussed in this essay illustrate the prevailing attitudes toward women in traditional societies, in modern empires, and finally the freedom they are gaining through the opportunities of transnational migration. I believe that the complex portrayal of gender that can be gathered from reading all of these texts in concert can be beneficial to learning how colonization impacts women specifically. However, I find that the failure to compare postcolonial texts by women to colonial texts by women is somewhat frustrating. This is an aspect of literary criticism that appears to be a continuation of the idea that male authored texts that are part of the widely accepted canon are the standard by which other texts such as female authored texts and texts by minorities should be measured. I would offer that discussions of Lucy and Jasmine would greatly benefit from reading them alongside Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out or Aphra Behn’s The Widow Ranter. These two texts are set in colonies and address some of the issues surrounding colonization from a female perspective. Another alternative would include a reinstatement of Forster’s A Passage to India because, while it is a colonial text, it does give a voice to both women and Indian natives. The discussion of gender in this course has been a success, but the inclusion of more female authored works or a course that focuses specifically on combining feminist and postcolonial critique would be even more exciting.