Dixon, Julie (2002) The arcane and the ordinary: an exploration of patriarchy and the postcolonial in the writing of Beth Yahp, Catherine Lim and Shirley Geok-Lin Lim. PhD thesis, Victoria University of Technology.

Abstract

This thesis critically examines the work of Beth Yahp, Catherine Lim and Shirley Geok-lin Lim. Particular emphasis is given to four texts. The first is Beth Yahp's The Crocodile Fury, the second is Catherine Lim's The Bondmaid, the third is Catherine Lim's The Teardrop Story Woman, and the final text is Shirley Geok-lin Lim's Among the White Moonfaces. The thesis addresses a perceived lack of detailed critical engagement with the work of these writers. At the same time as these texts were being published, ideas of the postcolorual gained theoretical credence. The term, postcolonial, could be applied to these texts if one took the simplest common denominator: they had all been set in areas colonised by the British who had since departed, hence post - colony. However, while the ideas of self and other, of centre and margin, of subaltemity and of hybridity reverberated within the writing, such ideas never fully explained it. Feminist theory has also addressed these issues, and others which have little to do with colonisation and much to do with the experience of being a woman. The tension between the explanatory power of these perspectives and the ways in which the writing challenges the implied homogeneity of much in theory is examined in detail in the study which follows.

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