KAREN BLIXEN AS THE FEMALE COLONIZER IN OUT OF AFRICA

Authors : Merve Aydoğdu Çelik

Pages : 1-10

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Publication Date : 2020-06-15

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Karen von Blixen-Finecke (1885-1962) aka Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa (1937) is a document of her life as a colonial settler in Kenya where she establishes a coffee plantation in her prime. The novel, written through first person narration, recounts her seventeen-year-experience in Kenya as a plantation owner in which she describes the African population and landscape at length. Even though its content and its narrator-protagonist respectively render Out of Africa suitable for both postcolonial and autobiographical analysis, the present study examines the narrator-protagonist as the female colonizer within postcolonial framework. Much as Blixen’s novel is a memoir, she cannot avoid discursive colonization because she presents an exotic and romanticised view of Africa. When she helps the natives, she cannot hide her feeling of superiority. Even though she does not seem content with the colonial system running in Kenya, she does not take action to change the system. Therefore, this paper concludes that Karen Blixen acknowledges her presence in Kenya as a colonizer and regards the colonization process as a natural phenomenon. 
Keywords : Isak Dinesen, Karen Blixen, sömürgecilik sonrası edebiyatı, sömürgecilik