LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 12 : 9 September 2012
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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The Suffrage of Elvira: A Post-Colonial Study

K. Ramajeyalakshmi, M.A., M.Phil.

The Suffrage of Elvira - Conventionally Plotted

The Suffrage of Elvira tells the story of an election campaign in the place called Elvira in the West Indies. Baksh and Chittaranjan are the leaders of the Muslim and Hindu communities respectively. They have been bribed into a temporary alliance against the Catibbean Black candidate. The Suffrage of Elvira has been described as the most conventionally plotted of all Naipaul’s novels. This probably refers to the fact that the novel seems to be much like a comedy of errors in which the action is advanced by a series of hilarious accidents. Politics in Elvira is clearly not the result of comic errors, but of the mentality of the inhabitants of Elvira, which have been conditioned by the environment and history of Elvira.

A Remote Place

Elvira is made doubly isolated by the remoteness of Trinidad in which it is situated. The reference to isolation and deprivation in The Suffrage of Elvira are appropriately associated with politics. There is a considerable truth in Foam’s assessment of the politics described in this novel: “In Trinidad democracy is a brand new thing. We are still creeping. We are a creeping nation” (SE: 14). Perhaps Trinidad’s unimportance to the rest of the world is underlined most heavily by Beharry’s explanation when Ganesh wishes that Hitler would bomb Trinidad: “But you forgetting that we is just a tiny little dot on some maps. If you ask me, I thank Hitler ain’t even knowing it have a place called Trinidad”. (SE: 112)

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

K. RamaJeyaLakshmi, M.A., M.Phil.
Assistant Professor of English
Standard Fireworks Rajaratnam College for Women
Sivakasi
Tamilnadu
India
lakshmi.ramajeya@gmail.com
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