{"id":226,"date":"2017-03-15T19:21:27","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T19:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/?p=226"},"modified":"2020-08-31T20:39:01","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T20:39:01","slug":"spivak-and-why-berthas-humanity-is-a-hard-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/2017\/03\/15\/spivak-and-why-berthas-humanity-is-a-hard-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Spivak and Why Bertha&#8217;s Humanity is a Hard Question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Spivak&#8217;s primary argument is for an imperialist reading of feminism with the ultimate goal of &#8220;incit[ing] a degree of rage against the imperialist narrativization of history, precisely because it produces so abject a script for a female we would rather celebrate&#8221; (658). The &#8220;female we would rather celebrate&#8221; refers to Jane Eyre. The way Spivak constructs her argument is though the dichotomy of sexual reproduction versus soul making. She suggests that imperial constructions of &#8220;native&#8221; females (females from the impossible country) are more likely to engage in sexual reproduction, while &#8220;othered&#8221; females (females from the colonized country) must engage in soul making. She gives the example of Bertha Mason. Bertha is seen as being between an animal and a human because she Jamaican Creole. Therefore, Bertha is an imperially other (or lesser being) seen only as having a half formed (human) self. She needs to &#8220;make\/ develop a soul&#8221; in order to be seen as an (equal?) individual to someone like Jane who already enjoys the imperial luxury of being recognized as someone with a soul.<\/p>\n<p>The way I eventually came to understand this article (summarized in the first paragraph of this post) made me think about one of our in-class discussions: How do we\/ can we analyze Berta Mason as a human being, rather than a psychological inverse of Jane? I remembered how much I struggled. I remembered thinking, &#8220;of course we should be able to view her as an individual,&#8221; yet I felt like I never had a full picture of her as a human. I kept getting sidetracked by the animalistic wat she was described. Spivak&#8217;s article helped me understand why I might have struggled so much: I couldn&#8217;t see past the imperial viewpoint held by the majority of the characters. I let their descriptions cloud my judgement. To the imperial characters, Bertha is an othered figure, someone\/something not like them. They do not acknowledge Bertha&#8217;s humanity because she, as a lesser imperial figure, is a lesser human (if human at all).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 344px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/janeeyre1847.pbworks.com\/f\/bertha.jpg\" width=\"344\" height=\"280\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image of humanity<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img02.deviantart.net\/f6e7\/i\/2009\/241\/8\/2\/bertha_mason_by_makena.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"677\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image of the &#8220;other&#8221;<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spivak&#8217;s primary argument is for an imperialist reading of feminism with the ultimate goal of &#8220;incit[ing] a degree of rage against the imperialist narrativization of history, precisely because it produces so abject a script for a female we would rather celebrate&#8221; (658). The &#8220;female we would rather celebrate&#8221; refers to Jane Eyre. The way Spivak &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/2017\/03\/15\/spivak-and-why-berthas-humanity-is-a-hard-question\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Spivak and Why Bertha&#8217;s Humanity is a Hard Question<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2304,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138876,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2017","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2304"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}