Questioning the Canon and Re-Writing/Re-Righting the Female Colonized Subject: Mary Seacole’s Wonderful Adventures and George Bernard Shaw’s The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God

Abstract

Albeit different in terms of formal solutions and conception, Mary Seacole’s 'Wonderful Adventures' (1857) and G.B. Shaw’s 'The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God' (1932) share an oppositional aesthetics which, in both cases, helps undermine any prevailing representation of the colonial Other. Indeed, Seacole’s and Shaw’s works manipulate the trope of travel in such a way as to overcome traditional conceptions of the literary canon as well as hegemonic visions of subjectivities. In taking into consideration the innovative representation of the Black colonized woman as delineated in both works, the essay aims to show the way in which they present an anti-normative identity model of the Black woman so as to deconstruct the White/Black dichotomy.