Boggley wollah and 'sulphur-steams': Colonialism in 'Vanity Fair' and 'Jane Eyre'

This thesis examines Vanity Fair's Indian connection by focusing on Jos Sedley, and investigates Jane Eyre's Jamaican coloniality through a discussion of Bertha, Richard Mason, and Edward Rochester. These characters in both novels provide a potential critique of Britain's imperial project by suggesting that the colonies are locations of physical, psychic and moral corruption as well as degeneracy and death.;The introductory chapter includes historical background for both colonial loci. Chapter 2 examines Vanity Fair's Jos Sedley, the corpulent Collector of Boggley wollah. As an employee of the British East India Company, Jos Sedley at first appears to be a parodic portrait of an early nineteenth-century Anglo-Indian nabob; however, as the novel progresses, Jos's actions, character traits, treatment by the Company, and relationships with his family and other characters reveal a possible critique of Britain's commercial project in India. Chapter 3 moves from Asia to the Caribbean to focus on three characters in Jane Eyre with direct or indirect connections to the Jamaican sugar-slave system: Bertha Mason Rochester, Richard Mason, and Edward Rochester. Through her connection to a corrupt, slave-driven colonial economic system, Bertha seems to devolve into a dehumanized, monstrous creature; Richard too appears monstrous, imbecilic, and immature; and Rochester is seduced by colonial sensuality and avarice. The thesis concludes by briefly examining in Chapter 4 some key late twentieth-century, early twenty-first century postcolonial concerns and demonstrating how Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre may have anticipated some of these postcolonial ideas.