Race, Gender, and Nationalism in Emily Eden’s Up the Country (1866) and Edith Wharton’s In Morocco (1920).
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Date
2018
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou
Abstract
This dissertation provides a postcolonial comparative study of Emily Eden’s Up TheCountry
(1866) and Edith Wharton’s In Morocco (1920) by focusing on Race, Gender, and Nationalism. To
carry out this study, we have relied on Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) and Reina Lewis’s
Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation (1996).The emphasis has been put on
the affinities in the two authors’ misrepresentation and Orientalist description of the ‘natives’ and
their cultural and social structures. Yet, our analysis is not restricted to the study of similarities
between the two works. We have also examined Eden’s and Wharton’s different approaches to
celebrate and consolidate their respective nations’ imperial ideologies.This dissertation has
examined how the Gender role has gained these women writers a privileged access to the forbidden
sphere which enable them to study the ‘Oriental woman’ closely. The authors have adopted a
feminist attitude in relation to their Orientalist and colonialist description of the ‘natives’. After an
analysis of the two works, we have come to some conclusions. The first conclusion is that both
Eden and Wharton stigmatize the natives by depicting them as backward and inferior. They also
reflect a racial and superior attitude of the white man who represents the ‘West’ as the center of
civilization, in opposition to the ‘East’ dismissed as primitive and uncivilized. The second
conclusion reveals that Eden and Wharton adopt a feminist attitude and reinforce the Orientalist
and colonialist discourse. The last conclusion reveals that both Eden and Wharton embrace the
imperial enterprise and support their nations’ ideologies of expansion and the domination of the
Orient
Description
30cm ; 61p.
Keywords
Postcolonial, Race, Orientalism, Gender, Nationalism, Imperialism.
Citation
Littérature Générale et Comparée.