The Reconstruction of Female Subjectivity in The Poisonwood Bible: Navigating Dual Otherness in the Postcolonial Predicament

Abstract

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible is a famous work in contemporary American literature, exploring the intersections of colonialism, gender, and trauma. While existing scholarship has analyzed the novel from postcolonial and ecofeminist perspectives, a systematic study focusing on the contradictory Otherness of its white female characters, as both complicit colonial agents and victims of patriarchy, and their narrative path to healing remains underdeveloped. This paper tries to discuss from this perspective. Employing the frameworks of the postcolonial The Other and feminist trauma theory through close reading, this study analyzes the narratives of the five women from the Price’s. It first examines how their trauma stems from a dual alienation, failed cultural intermediaries in the colonial context, and silenced subordinates within the patriarchal family, and becomes embodied through illness, physical strain, and death. The core argument posits that healing is achieved through narrative resistance. The women’s distinct voices constitute a polyphonic practice of recovery. By seizing their own discursive authority, they dismantle the monolithic, rigid narrative represented by Father Nathan, which conflates Christian dogma, patriarchal rule, and colonial conquest and reconstruct fluid, relational selves through non-exploitative connections with the land and people of the Congo. Thus, The Poisonwood Bible is not merely a critique of oppression but an ecofeminist parable demonstrating that narration itself is therapeutic. True redemption lies not in condescending salvation but in humble listening, adaptation, and interdependence, offering useful materials and examples into the complexities of identity in a postcolonial world.