(Im)Possibilities of Development: Women and the paradox of growth in Malaysian novel

Abstract

Though women figure prominently in the developmental discourses of postcolonial nations, their position vacillates between tradition that needs to be preserved and modernization which is essential if one has to ‘catch up’ with the developed or the so-called ‘first’ world. This study approaches this ambivalence surrounding the question of women and development through the lens of literature. It turns to two turn-of-the century novels, Chuah Guat Eng’s Echoes of Silence (1994) and Yang-May Ooi’s The Flame Tree (1998), to examine the representations of women and development, and the position of women contra development in colonial and postcolonial Malaysia. The article explores the coloniality embedded withing the narratives of growth – of the women protagonist against the backdrop of developing nation – highlighting the points where the far-reaching changes were made in the condition of women and the intergenerational continuities that transmitted the uneven structure of development. The focus on Malaysian Chinese writers also foregrounds the coloniality of race and gender that Malaysia inherited from the colonizers, and which continues to shape the lives of the postcolonial subject. The two novels provide a glimpse of the problems underlying the developmental agendas in postcolonial nations and call for a shift in the understanding of development – from the prescriptive sense (‘how it should be for the third-world women’) to the considerations of national and global frameworks that shape developmental trajectories which limit the choices and agency of women.