Imperial Ideology In Domestic Novel

The present thesis purports to make a study of the manifest implicit relation between English estate and overseas plantation, domestic order and colonial peace in Belinda,arguing that the author endorses patriarchal colonialism and colonial project. To support my argument, the critical approach of Saidian contrapuntal analysis is applied to exploring colonial dimensions in a domestic novel by associating women characters with the colonial other, female education with colonial homogenization, and process of domestication at home with that of colonization abroad.In light of thematic focus on connotation of conjugality beyond domestic sphere, my argument begins by contextualizing subject matter of the novel in an age of colonial expansion alongside a series of colonial rebellions and positing an interrelation between domestic equilibrium and imperial stability. By revealing the authorial treatment of women characters as metaphors for colonial subjects who undergo education and subjugation for the sake of colonial enterprise, I further states how positive correlation between imperial project and family life is established in Belinda. My reading illuminates understated colonial themes beneath the portrayal of family life in a domestic novel. It also reveals the author’s deep-seated allegiance to patriarchal colonialism and her partiality for colonial rule based on new-styled patriarchy.In so doing, the thesis comes to the conclusion that Belinda is a veiled colonial text institutionalized with imperial ideology. It testifies to post-colonial criticism that British literature in the heyday of colonial empire inherently constitutes colonial discourse, involved indirectly in practices of colonization as a consequence.