Reading literature through the looking glass of theory.
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness is the quintessential colonial tale: it's about a guy who works for a Belgian ivory-trading company and sails along the Congo River witnessing the hatred, violence, and misun...
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre is—drumroll please—the heroine of Jane Eyre. She's an orphan in nineteenth-century England so, like everyone in that category, she's got a hard-knock life. When she graduates from th...
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
As good postcolonialist Shmoopers, we can't mention Jane Eyre without bringing up Jean Rhys' retelling of Bertha Mason's story, Wide Sargasso Sea. And honestly, what's more postcolonial than a no...
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart is generally seen as Achebe's way of taking back Africa from Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness. More than that, it's Achebe's way of talking back to Conrad about Africa....
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Once upon a time India was owned by Britain. Then, on August 15, 1947, it didn't anymore. Saleem Sinai was born at the stroke of midnight on the day when India became independent, and for that reas...