Colonial Attempts to Control and Overcome Nature in Prospero's Daughter

Year 2020, Volume: 2 Issue: 1, 17 - 31, 30.04.2020

Cengiz Karagöz

Abstract

Elizabeth Nunez is a postcolonial writer whose writings centre on such subject matters as racism, gender, colonialism and identity that often concern the setting of America and the Caribbean islands. Her novel Prospero’s Daughter pieces together a variety of subject matters that incorporates master-slave relationship, oppression and intersection of race and social status in the Caribbean. It is also possible to treat the novel with reference to nature and what it inspires for the white man and the native people. The author unfolds the white man’s presumption that nature acts as a source of disease and evil and assumes the role of an enemy that operates against him. For the white man, animals in Trinidad as in other tropical lands also pose threat because of their potential to poison and sting. According to the colonial mindset, nature in the island needs to be controlled and civilized by altering its flora through botanic gardens. In the novel, the garden stands for the colonial ambition to defy nature with the help of certain devices which can preserve plants inside from harsh climate conditions outside. The garden becomes the symbol of taking possession of the island and is reflected as a space in which the Western political, temporal and spatial norms are pervasive.

Keywords

Elizabeth Nunez, Colonialism, Nature, Plants, Botanic Garden

Colonial Attempts to Control and Overcome Nature in Prospero’s Daughter

Abstract

Elizabeth Nunez is a postcolonial writer whose writings centre on such subject matters as racism, gender, colonialism and identity that often concern the setting of America and the Caribbean islands. Her novel Prospero’s Daughter pieces together a variety of subject matters that incorporates master-slave relationship, oppression and intersection of race and social status in the Caribbean. It is also possible to treat the novel with reference to nature and what it inspires for the white man and the native people. The author unfolds the white man’s presumption that nature acts as a source of disease and evil and assumes the role of an enemy that operates against him. For the white man, animals in Trinidad as in other tropical lands also pose threat because of their potential to poison and sting. According to the colonial mindset, nature in the island needs to be controlled and civilized by altering its flora through botanic gardens. In the novel, the garden stands for the colonial ambition to defy nature with the help of certain devices which can preserve plants inside from harsh climate conditions outside. The garden becomes the symbol of taking possession of the island and is reflected as a space in which the Western political, temporal and spatial norms are pervasive.

Keywords

Elizabeth Nunez, Colonialism, Nature, Plants, Botanic Garden

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