On The Margins

V. S. Naipaul, one of the important writers of contemporary English literature, depicts the disintegration of indigenous culture caused by the intrusion of colonizer's in his earlier autobiographical A House for Mr. Biswas. The novel develops through out the hero Mr. Biswas's whole life. In this male-centered novel, many female characters that are closely attached to the hero's life are vividly presented. With his multicultural background, Naipaul characterizes his female characters in a comparatively true and completely new way which is different from that applied by the western writers, or that applied by the indigenous writers. Actually the life of these females in the Tulsis Naipaul presents in the novel provides the readers with a new vantage to observe the women in the once-colonized countries like Trinidad. This paper focuses on female's double marginalization in the novel: with the collapse of the Indian tradition, women of the first immigrant generation in the Tulsis suffer from the dual oppression of the patriarchy and colpnialism. On the one hand, they lose the security and profit they could have gained from the tradition; on the other hand they have to live under the double oppression both from the patriarchy and colonialism. Because the big family system is replaced by the nuclear families, the second generation women in the Tulsis in one part have to live under the oppression of the patriarchy of home culture, while in another part, because of the economic dependence and traditional bondage, they are marginalized by society. In this sense they are doubly marginalized by the patriarchy within the family and society outside. For those who choose to be professional women in new modern society, they, to a certain degree, have constructed a new identity which is different from the traditional one just as mothers and wives, yet still they are marginalized by the patriarchy of the metropolis and they are excluded from the indigenous tradition. By depicting such women belonging to different generations in the Tulsis, Naipaul gives a true narration of women's life in the once-colonized countries, meanwhile he shows his contradictory feelings of hale-hatred and half-love toward them.