Artigo Acesso aberto

Investigating The Nature Of Gaze In Agnes Keith’s Land Below The Wind

2019; Linguagem: Inglês

10.15405/epsbs.2019.09.70

ISSN

2357-1330

Autores

Yosuke Nimura, Mohamad Rashidi Pakri,

Tópico(s)

Socioeconomic Development in Asia

Resumo

Agnes Keith’s Land Below the Wind (1939) is an autobiographical semi-fictional novel written based on her life in Sandakan, North Borneo. It provides a detailed account of her joyful—but at times challenging—life with her husband and their cheerful local servants. Keith’s narrative is generally light-hearted and comical in nature adorned with cutting sarcasm hither and thither. Moreover, it also presents her open-mindedness as well as her affection for the land where they lived and the people there. Nevertheless, her unique position as the American wife of a British colonial officer renders her writing ambivalent nature: colonial and un-colonial. While her empirical observation of the local people offers the readers her deep affection towards them, that very gaze, is simultaneously, in numerous occasions, highly orientalist. The present study investigates the unique nature of the gaze of Agnes Keith in her Land Below the Wind predominantly focusing on her descriptions of her servants and other local people

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