Inheritance and expectations: the ambivalence of the colonial orphan figure in post-colonial re-writings of Charles Dickenss Great Expectations.

This thesis considers the colonial literary relationship between the centre and the margin in the field of post-colonial counter-discourse. As such, this thesis investigates the possibility of disrupting the dominance of Empire, which is often rhetorically constructed through the certainty of the parent and child binary relationship. By analysing the orphans affiliational associations, which exist beyond the traditional binary of parent and child in the colonial relationship, I argue that the orphan, as both figure and trope, becomes a site of resistance to the dominant colonial discourse. Re-reading Charles Dickenss Great Expectations with two Australian re-writings of his text in mind Peter Careys Jack Maggs and Gail Joness Sixty Lights this thesis investigates the particular case of post-colonial counter-discursive practice, and explores the way in which the orphan figure in each re-writing inscribes their expectations and thereby refigures the power hierarchy between the canonical European text and the post-colonial re-writing.In order to do so, I have organised this thesis into four main chapters, each of which develops a specific interrogation of the orphan figure in light of post-colonial theory and criticism. So, chapter one considers the colonial figure and the trope of parent and child, investigating the influence that this trope wields in casting the racialised colonial Other as savage and primitive, but, ultimately, child-like. Chapter two furthers this observation by highlighting the disruptive affect of such naturalised perspectives of the colonial Otherevidenced in post-colonial theory through the motion of the key concepts of ambivalence and abjection. And, it is in this context that chapters three and four stand as direct examinations of the disruptive affect of the orphan figure. Discussing Peter Careys Jack Maggs and Gail Joness Sixty Lights (respectively), these last two chapters formalise the subversive agency assumed by the orphan, and locate it in the very practice of writing back to the centre