POST COLONIAL FEMINIST STUDY OF FREEMAN'S A DISOBEDIENT GIRL

Abstract

The current study investigates Freeman’s A Disobedient Girl by using postcolonial feminist theory and it specifically employs Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s analysis of Western feminist discourse highlighted in Under Western Eyes. Her theory suggests that Western feminists create stereotypes about women from the South by representing them as helpless victims across all situations. The study uses Mohanty’s conceptual framework to analyze Freeman’s portrayal of Sri Lankan women through the examples of Latha and Biso who demonstrate resistance and agency despite their constrained socio-political setting. The study analyzes how Sri Lankan women push back against patriarchal and colonial systems through their management of gender-class-colonial inherited structures in their stereotypical views depicting women as helpless victims. The study concentrates on documenting the resistance strategies of these female characters because it shows how Freeman criticizes Western feminism for not recognizing the complex realities of oppressed women. Through incorporation of Mohanty’s differential consciousness framework this research advocates both complex interpretations of female experiences in postcolonial societies and feminist theories beyond universalizing frameworks to understand specific South Asian women’s lives. The collected evidence shows the necessity for feminist scholarship to develop contextualized resistance to portray women's agency in postcolonial circumstances as well as to break the traditional representations.