The postcolonial female bildungsroman as counter-discourse: strategies of resistence in Merle Hodge's Crick Crack, Monkey and Simi Bedford's Yoruba Girl Dancing

The aim of this thesis is to examine the counter-discursive strategies employed in Merle Hodge's Trinidadian bildungsroman novel Crick Crack, Monkey and Simi Bedford's African bildungsroman novel Yoruba Girl Dancing. By examining the postcolonial female child's perspective and voice in these novels, I propose that the authors appropriate the Western-based genre of the bildungsroman and make it their own by skilfully subverting both the form and content. This thesis initially explores how Hodge and Bedford deviate from the traditional linear trajectory of the bildungsroman by depicting a reversal of this narrative in the beginnings of their novels. I then introduce Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the chronotope to examine how the authors further disrupt this linear trajectory by exploring the past histories that shape the current realities of the protagonists. Moreover, I highlight the ways in which the authors challenge the content of the traditional bildungsroman by drawing attention to the often-silenced realities of the postcolonial female child. In this, I observe the violent ways in which colonial education often violates the subjectivity of the female protagonists as well as the ways in which this sort of education opens a unique space of agency for these characters. This thesis concludes with a study of the endings of the novels, examining the ways in which the authors convey how the psychic violence that the postcolonial female child experiences is not easily negotiated and resolved, unlike the traditional bildungsroman, which often ends in resolution.