Silent Rebellions: Unspoken Resistance in Marginalized Voices of English Literature

Abstract

English literature has been a power negotiation site with the dominant ideologies being reinvented, challenged and reformulated. Although explicit forms of resistance are well received, specific unconscious resistance forms that are embedded through silence, fragmentation, the use of coded language, and loss of narrative are influence tactics of marginalized voices. The paper will analyse the analysis of silent rebellion as a concept within the selected texts of English literature and how authors belonging to a group of marginalized people express a resistance without necessarily putting it to a test. This paper examines how silence serves as a non-disruptive means as well as a strategic narrative, through an analysis of writings of Charlotte Bronte, Toni Morrison, Jean Rhys, and Samuel Beckett, which deal with the issues of silence as a means or tactic that defies hegemonic rules of race, gender, class, and colonial power. Marginalized characters and authors transform and challenge control or hegemonic discourses by pre-empting the unspoken and the understated as they proclaim alternative ways of agency. According to the paper, silence in the works is dynamic and tactical resistance that reinvent rebellion that is not evident in protest.