From centre-stage to the wings: the process of cultural adjustment in arrow of god and tess of the d’urbervilles

Abstract

The essay examines culture and cultural adjustment in two novels—Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe and Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. Using Edward Said’s theory on culture as a foundation, it compares the relative elasticity of a fictional, precolonial West African society, Umuaro, with the relative stiffness of a fictional Victorian society, Wessex. The essay pictures culture as a large cell with core elements located at the centre, like a nucleus. The study then proceeds to apply this mental picture to the texts, seeing the two protagonists as analogous of core elements in their cultures and hence as equivalent to the nuclei at the centre of their respective cells. Both protagonists are pivotal figures initially. This is expressed symbolically in terms of the centralized position of the core elements in the cultural cell. At the end of the day, however, both protagonists have become social outcasts, which again is expressed symbolically in terms of the movement of the core elements away from the centre to the periphery. The essay concludes that the symbolic reproduction of culture re-inforces the literal one, and that Achebe and Hardy equally recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the communities they are describing.