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    Colonial boundaries, intimacies and ambiguities in Theo Gift's "Cape Town Dicky"
    (Univeristy of the Western Cape, 2000) Mohadien, Feroza
    This mini-dissertation explores colonial identities and relationships in Theo Gift’s “Cape Town Dicky”, an example of late Victorian literature. The sociopolitical conditions surrounding the text will be briefly related to literature. In the analysis, postcolonial theories are employed to critically examine the mechanisms and representations of the superior ‘Self’ and inferior ‘Other’. Although these theories are useful in understanding attitudes towards the racial ‘Other’ in the text, they are not sufficient to understand the relationship between the two races. Postcolonial theories focus mainly on difference, to the neglect of more complex intimacies. This study consists of an exploration of the attempts at intimacies in the text, and the writer’s fears that render connections fragmentary. Anxieties concerning British colonial identity, and how these contradict the notion of innate British superiority, are explored. There is an implication in the text that ‘Britishness’ resides within the metropolitan space, and a distinction is drawn between the British centre and those from peripheral colonies. I also argue that the author’s celebration of the British Empire is ironic as the text exposes fears surrounding colonial ‘whiteness’, implying that the British living in the colonies are prone to white degeneracy. In this study, the instability of identities and stereotypes created by the writer in her attempt to accommodate the white ‘Self’, are revealed. Ambiguities regarding British ‘etiquette’ in terms of violence are also examined, as, although violence often portrayed as something offensive and to be avoided, it is also glorified under the guise of patriotism. Throughout the study, other Victorian children’s literature displaying similar preoccupations are noted to provide a more comprehensive analysis. The study also examines why these issues are explored in children’s literature.