(Im)Possibilities of Development: Women and the Paradox of Growth in the Malaysian Novel

Abstract

Abstract: Though women figure prominently in the discourses of postcolonial nations that concern development, these discourses position women in a way that vacillates between tradition, which needs to be preserved, and modernization, essential for "catching up" to the developed or so-called first world. This article approaches the 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 problematize the depiction of the "Third World" woman and development in colonial and postcolonial Malaysia. The article explores the coloniality embedded within narratives of growth of the women protagonists against the backdrop of the developing nation—and highlights when the conditions for women underwent far-reaching changes, for instance, at the end of colonial rule, when women became a part of an independent social and political nation, and persistent structures of marginalization and discrimination resulted in decreased opportunities for women. The article's focus on Malaysian Chinese writers foregrounds the colonial constructions of race and gender that Malaysia inherited from the colonizers, which continues to shape the lives of postcolonial subjects. 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 a prescriptive sense of "how it should be for the third-world women" to a consideration of national and global frameworks of development that limit the choices and agency of women.